David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: photos

  • Everybody needs good extras, Neighbours.

    Last week I made my network television “acting” debut on the iconic Australian soap opera “Neighbours”.

    It was a fun, if not surreal experience, even if it was just a background extra in the coffee shop, which to my surprise was renamed “Harold’s Store”. Apparently this happened some years ago, long after I stopped watching semi-regularly.

    On March 23 I drove out to the studios in Melbourne’s fabulous eastern suburb of Nunawading to join the ranks of famous Australian personalities such as Kylie Minogue, Guy Pierce, Russell Crowe, and that lanky Irish guy who’s name I don’t know, who all started with minor roles and bit parts on Neighbours.

    I particularly enjoyed seeing what REALLY happens in the Neighbours’ coffee shop; the steam machine to simulate making a coffee; ads for fictional Erinsborough businesses on the community notice board; plastic fruit and cans of food that not only expired in 2006, but are also glued to the shelves.

    This wasn’t the first time I’d “acted” as an extra. I do have experience at not looking at cameras and pretending to have conversations with people without actually making any sound, having extra-ed on an episode of “McLeod’s Daughters” a few years ago (a scene that was cut), and more recently on Seven’s “Winners & Losers” (I’ll blog about that one in a few weeks!).

    Obviously TV shows take a while to edit, and I neglected to ask what episode number they were filming. So to be honest, I completely forgot about the whole thing until an old high school friend from Adelaide (who I hadn’t spoken to in about 5 years) spotted me floating around in the background on TV last week.

    Naturally I missed all of the broadcasts. But with the aid of online streaming technology, I was able to watch back last week’s shows and locate my three scenes.

    Because you’re obviously a busy man/woman, I’ll now present highlights from those scenes, showcasing my brilliant and subtle acting skills as a background extra:

    Episode 6167 – 24 May 2011

    Coincidentally, my first Neighbours appearance happened to go to air on my birthday. Cheers Ten Network!

    That’s me in the orange shirt (which is actually my shirt), pretending to shop at the cluttered single shelf at Harold’s Store. In reality I was just going through the stock and checking the expiration dates.

    It was quite a bizarre combination of perishables. Pasta sauce and wasabi peas in the same display basket? I can’t imagine a real shop organising their produce in such a higgledy piggledy fashion. Harold wouldn’t last ten minutes in the cut-throat real world of small business ownership.

    From this angle it looks like I’m leaning on Scott McGregor’s muscular shoulder:

    Episode 6169 – 26 May 2011

    Two days later I was back to steal a newspaper:

    Much to the production team’s credit, that’s not just an old copy of the Herald Sun with “Erinsborough Star” pasted on the cover. They’ve actually gone to the effort to make real newspapers, complete with fictional stories about various local characters, written in the proper hard news reverse pyramid style!

    I had a chance to read a couple of articles while we did a few takes.

    Note also two other extras have returned to Harold’s Store, having swapped tables this time:

    Episode 6170 – 27 May 2011

    The very next day, I was back at Harold’s Store! I really think the audience was starting to become familiar with my character’s newspaper-reading, coffee-drinking, general loitering in the background kinda style.

    And this time I seem to just hang out there for the whole day:

    One of the best things about being an extra in the coffee shop was the free food! They actually have a real kitchen on site, and the production team routinely brings out real food and beverages for the extras to snack on during the scene.

    In the above scene I’m drinking a latte. After an initial sip I realised they’d forgotten the sugar. I noticed there was some sugar on the table. However, when I went to tip some into my glass, the sugar remained stuck, fused to the bottom of the jar.

    One of the cast actors offered me some advice, “Uh, I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” It had obviously been there for YEARS.

    They gave me a delicious danish as well. Some of the other extras had sandwiches. One guy even had a hamburger with chips. It was a pretty sweet deal – getting paid to sit there silently and eat – especially considering I skipped breakfast that morning.

    Here I am eating a cupcake:

    These coffee shop scenes appeared throughout the episode. And I’m in every one of them. I’m guessing my character doesn’t have anywhere else to be.

    Towards the end of the episode the lighting on the other side of the front window was dimmed to indicate night time “outside”.

    I grabbed one more coffee for the road, as veteran Neighbours resident Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis) chats with Kate Ramsay (Ashleigh Brewer) in the foreground:

    And with my take away coffee, which in reality was just an empty cup, I departed Harold’s Store – and Erinsborough – probably forever.

    That’s my striped shirt on the other side of the door:

    Now to launch my singing career!

    You’ll be able to watch these episodes online in their entirety for a few more days, if you want a less static, but more drawn-out experience.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Did you hear Madge died?

  • Idiots & apostrophes

    I couldn’t believe the above typo when I saw it. On a poster for the  new Channel Nine TV series In Their Footsteps, they make one of the simplest mistakes in the English language… They forget the apostrophe. Our “NATIONS” heroes?

    Unfortunately, those posters are on bus shelters, tram stops and train stations all over Melbourne, and presumably, the rest of the country as well. How did that one get through the proof-readers? Unbelievable.

    Do you think those brave diggers were battling in the trenches, knee-deep in crimson mud, so that we could all prance about back home making up our own God damn grammatical rules as we go along?!? I DON’T THINK SO!

    Could be worse. They could have called the show “In There Footsteps” – one path that I hope we do not follow.

    What isn’t to understand about the apostrophe?

    If people aren’t leaving them out, they’re sticking them where they don’t belong, like the “well-educated” folks at Burnside Village. This snap was taken in Adelaide by my good friend Tim Wray:

    Obviously a grasp of proper apostrophe use isn’t one of Burnside Village’s “Must have’s” this Mother’s Day.

    I’m not 100% on “Mother’s Day” either. Really, shouldn’t it be “Mothers’ Day”, as it’s a day for ALL mothers, not just one?

    Let’s run through the basics.

    Plurals do not require apostrophes!

    The only exception to this rule is when to not use an apostrophe would create more confusion. For example, to write “Cross the t’s and dot the i’s” is more appropriate than “Cross the ts and dot the is”. Both versions however, are more appropriate than “Cross the i’s and dot the t’s”, but that’s another issue.

    We use apostrophes to imply ownership. For example, “this is David’s apostrophe”. If we’re talking about a collective ownership, such as a group of people, we would say: “the mouth-breathers’ grammatical skills need some work”.

    Lastly, we use apostrophes to indicate missing letter(s). For example, “they are” can be contracted to “they’re” with the help of our old friend, the apostrophe.

    Don’t have time to take the omnibus to the supermarket? Take the ‘bus instead!

    Now do as I do and go out there and use this knowledge of apostrophes to make yourself feel like a big man!

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Two apostrophes in every garage.

  • 31 Questions is back on track BABY!

    I used to watch “Sale of the Century” religiously when I was a kid, growing up in the early to mid-90s pre-Internet world. So it was a small dream fulfilled to not only meet former host Glenn Ridge, but to also film a sketch with him!

    It’s been quite some time since my last update on the progress of my RMITV Student Television game show production for Channel 31: “31 Questions”.

    The last piece of news I shared was when Channel 31 reviewed our pilot and said they wanted us to make another one. We were planning on filming a second pilot in late March, which would then allow us to go ahead with a 13-episode season.

    Unfortunately, it didn’t go as smoothly as we would have hoped. We weren’t allowed to shoot our second pilot and for a while there our whole show had actually been canceled by RMITV. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to go into the details, but I’m sure it will all come out years from now when someone decides to write a book on the history of RMITV… And when that happens I’ll be all too happy to provide insight.

    But anyway, the important thing is that after two months of production gridlock, we’ve finally been allowed to film our second pilot. And we kicked it off in style, by filming a sketch with TV legend Glenn Ridge!

    The shoot could not have gone better. Glenn very kindly donated his time and his production company office (Q Media) in Port Melbourne. Great guy and a total pro. An absolute pleasure to work with.

    We’ll have that sketch online soon. So make sure to SUBSCRIBE TO 31 QUESTIONS ON YOUTUBE and LIKE 31 QUESTIONS ON FACEBOOK to get all the latest notifications.

    This is hopefully going to be a recurring theme – tracking down notable past and present TV game show hosts and getting them to make cameo sketch appearances.

    TV’s John Burgess of “Wheel of Fortune” and “Burgo’s Catch Phrase” fame has said he’s up for it. Unfortunately though, he lives on the Gold Coast… so we’re not quite sure how we’re going to film it… You can always help out by throwing us a bone? There’s a donate button on the left side of my website.

    We haven’t got a studio date yet to film pilot #2, which will hopefully be episode #1 of a 13-episode first season. But we’re aiming to do it within the next month. Stay tuned.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    31 Questions
    Host – Writer – Producer

  • More bad grammar

    It’s been a while since my successful grammatical stand against the Commonwealth Bank, so if you’re in need of a reminder, check out BEFORE and AFTER David’s M. Green’s red correction pen.

    In the mean time I’ve accumulated a few more examples of bad grammar and general incompetence, so back by popular demand… it’s David M. Green: Grammar Nazi!

    What’s worse than finding human faeces in your hotel swimming pool?

    Well… actually, I’d probably prefer the bad grammar:

    Don’t worry. Darryl will sort you out.

    Went to see a movie at the Hoyts cinema at Melbourne’s fabulous Northland Shopping Centre the other day. Ain’t that just humanity at its worst?

    They’re not the kind of folk that take too kindly to outsiders, NEITHER their food NOR drink:

    And here’s an amusing Facebook slip-up from my good friend Rebecca McKinney. No explanation required:

    Jesus, what kind of stitch pattern is she using? She might have to give Darryl a call…

    Grammatical mistakes happen to the best of us. Stuff on Facebook is pretty forgivable, but once it’s printed and turned into signage – especially when it’s big business – grammar fans, let the mockery begin!

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    David M. Green: Grammar Nazi will return in “The Spellcheck Is Not Enough”.

  • One year in Melbourne!

    It’s one year to the day since I moved to Melbourne!

    February 13 2010. The day I cast off the dead-end one-horse town of Adelaide and flew to Melbourne to chase the show biz dream. What a year.

    I’ve done things I couldn’t dream of doing in Adelaide. The move remains, probably forever, one of my top 5 life decisions.

    They weren’t all good times. Moving cities is very hard. And my first month in Melbourne was terrible. For anyone who’s been through it, I’m sure you can relate to this:

    The above photo pretty much sums up the memory of my first few weeks in Melbourne. No family. No friends. No idea where anything was. No Internet. A shithouse sharehouse in Altona (which incidentally, has since been demolished). No idea how I was going to cope with journalism and a new casual job at a cinema that should have been great, but was made unnecessarily stressful by the boss, who was, and remains (probably forever), a complete arse hole.

    At one point, I think on my second shift there, he took me aside and said, “I don’t know how people do things in Adelaide, but this is Melbourne.” What a dick.

    But somehow I got through all that crap and 2010 turned out to present a bevy of experiences.

    I was hired and fired, I met new friends and fell out with them, got drunk, danced the night away, encountered people I’d only ever seen on TV, became a professional writer, hosted a television show, was rejected in a variety of contexts more times than I can recall, explored the suburbs, rode the rails, once walked from Flinders Street to Bell Street, was in a car accident, and learnt a whole lot of important life lessons, the grit of which I won’t go into here.

    As for the highlights, here’s a few photos that sum up the best of my first year in Melbourne…

    5. Interview #2 with Shaun Micallef

    It’s always an incredible honour to speak to my childhood hero and partial inspiration for moving to Melbourne. Those photos got me many an envious comment of praise. And I made sure to put the worst one on Shaun’s Wikipedia page, which for some reason, is still there. You can read my full interview with Shaun Micallef here… well, not “here”. Just over there, where the hyperlink is.

    4. Nightlife

    I never really “went out” in Adelaide. Melbourne 2010 was an awakening for my social life. Dancing to ’80s music at Trades Hall. Birthday parties at strange bars in strange suburbs I’d never heard of before. And unimaginable fun.

    For the most part of my first year in Melbourne, I didn’t have a car, and often found myself tagging along with strangers at 2 o’clock in the morning. I’ve had some very interesting conversations with taxi drivers, some of whom seemed to know less about Melbourne than I did.

    And I learnt a very important lesson about where my “limit” is. I haven’t been able to drink Carlton Draught since. Probably a good thing really.

    3. RMIT

    It was the catalyst for moving to Melbourne. I was accepted into the prestigious Graduate Diploma of Journalism at RMIT University, which I completed with distinction.

    It wasn’t just about the journalism. Radio, TV, writing, presenting, editing, dealing with people. I learnt so much in 2010. Universities aren’t just “degree factories”. I certainly grew as a person. I felt I grew more in my one year of journalism than I did in my three years of Behaviour Science at Flinders.

    One of the other benefits was the friendships. And I was invited into my fair share of beds…

    2. Television City

    The photo above has been by desktop background pretty much since November 25, 2010, when we shot the pilot for “31 Questions”, my community TV game show. THIS was why I moved to Melbourne. I want a career in television. I’m certainly on my way.

    Using “Studio A” at RMIT University city campus on fabulous Swanston Street, myself and a long list of volunteers filmed the first episode of “31 Questions”. We were under-time by 8 minutes. A bit of a shambles. But we got there in the end.

    At present we’ve been approved by RMITV Student Television for a series, pending approval from Channel 31 Melbourne. I’m very much looking forward to making 13 new episodes this year. Here’s hoping!

    1. Team Bell Street

    That’s right. “Team Bell Street”. After my horror share house experience in Altona, I frantically searched for somewhere else to live. After a long list of rejections, I eventually checked out a house at the end of the Number 1 tram line to East Coburg. Right on Bell Street.

    It was a little further out from the city than I wanted, but when Steph and Virginia offered me the room, I couldn’t refuse. It’s been almost a year since I moved in. A few people have come and gone – two German exchange students, Waldo and Toby. And after a couple of months, Kolinda moved in.

    I gotta say, I am very lucky to have found this place. I didn’t know any of them. They let me move in with them based purely on a brief meeting in their kitchen.

    I sometimes take them for granted, but together we’ve had a lot of laughs and I’ve always been able to count on Team Bell Street to cheer me up when I’m feeling down.

    They’re a good bunch. And Team Bell Street had a major role in me being able to claim Melbourne as my home.

    So as I raise a Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee, I say I couldn’t have asked for a better first year in Melbourne… Well, actually of course I could have… but it’ll do. And here’s to many, many more.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Melburnian