David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: RMIT

  • David M. Green. Ballarat. WIN!

    What a week!

    Greetings. Forgive my absence. Just got back from Ballarat yesterday for my week of work placement with the WIN TV News team, organised through RMIT for my post-graduate diploma in journalism. In summary… awesome.

    Allow me to start from the beginning…

    Last Sunday, after buying two new ties suitable for television, I left Melbourne for Ballarat on a $7 V-line train ticket…

    On the train ride I spent most of the journey chatting with a very nice lady named Dona, a resident of Ballarat, about various topics related to our respected lives. When we arrived in Ballarat she very generously let me ride in her taxi to my motel. She gave me her card and told me to call her later in the week to “catch up”. Nice town so far!

    The motel that was to be my home for the next 6 days was the Ballarat Mid-City Motor Inn:

    The support beams covered in gold tiles, brown-themed interior, bubble-shaped furniture and choice of font gives the place a 1960s Vegas feel, which I for one very much enjoyed…

    On Sunday night I seemed to be the only person staying there, so I had the buffet breakfast the next morning all to myself, which highlighted another problem with travelling alone: being forced to take my own pictures of myself, which after a while does become tedious:

    I tried walking to the WIN TV station on the first day but turns out it’s 3km… It looked a lot closer on Google Maps…

    I considered hiring a car but it would cost $200, plus a $200 deposit, and the only place I found that would rent a car to someone under 25 operated on a “cash only” basis.

    I woke up Monday morning intending to do it, but on my way there I came to the conclusion I couldn’t be bothered, so just caught taxis to the TV station and bummed a lift back to town from a different reporter every day.

    And thus I arrived at WIN.

    WIN TV is Australia’s largest commercial television network, and has one of the largest broadcast areas of any TV network in the world. However, due to the low population density of regional Australia, their maximum theoretical viewership is about 5 million.

    Forgive the bad reflection on this diagram (Tasmania should be completely blue)…

     

    So, first day with the WIN News team: tiring. It had been a long time since I’d worked a full day. By about 2:30 I was just about falling asleep! Plus there was a lot of information to take in. And I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to be doing…

    I tagged along with reporter Nathan Tanti and camera-man Matt McKinley while they did a few interviews and got some vision for the evening’s bulletin.

     

    As the week went on I tagged along with all of the Ballarat reporters at least once. They work very hard out in the country. The reporters generally do two stories everyday. The capital city reporters for Nine, Seven, Ten, etc. have the luxury of only having to do one, generally.

    So I got out and about sitting in the back of the white WIN News four-wheel-drives. I got to see a lot of Ballarat and the surrounding areas, which was pretty cool…

     

    Plus I didn’t have to pay to get into Sovereign Hill!

    Ballarat is the central WIN News station for all of Victoria. Every weekday, Ballarat coordinates six local news bulletins for Victoria’s six regional markets: Bendigo, Albury, Shepparton, Mildura, Traralgon and of course, Ballarat, which has the studio facilities:

    That means that anchorman Bruce Roberts reads six pre-recorded news bulletins a day. That’s 30 news bulletins a week!

    Bruce is a class act. Fantastic voice and delivery. Cares deeply about the news. And the nicest guy in the world. I watched him read the news “live” in the studio:

    And then again on my motel TV:

    Except for Friday, when acting news director Jeff Sly filled in…

    Jeff’s got a great voice too. In fact, I was very impressed with the professionalism of everyone at WIN News. The journalists and camera guys, the guys in the control rooms, were all just fantastic. Great people and a pleasure to work with.

    And they make a quality product. It’s the only local television news service in regional Victoria. Not even the ABC does that…

    By about Wednesday I was feeling a bit more confident and got my head around the ENPS news software they use at WIN (industry standard, apparently). I started writing news briefs for the bulletin – short 15 second summaries to be read out during the “regional round-up” section of the news.

    It was pretty cool writing stuff and then seeing Bruce read it on the air!

    Then on Thursday the highlight of the week occurred. I accompanied Nathan Tanti to the Ballarat court. There were two cases on in different courts at the same time, so he covered the more important one in the County Court and I sat in on the one in the Magistrate’s Court.

    My guy got bail, and very quickly left the dock and walked out. We weren’t really prepared for this and didn’t have a camera guy with us. Nathan was still in the other court, so I called Jonothan “Jono” Kendall at the news desk and he sent a camera down. Dan arrived just in time to get some vision of the guy leaving the court with his family. Bang! We had a television news story!

    Got back to the office and I wrote a 30 second RVO (Reader Voice Over) story to go with the footage. Bruce read it out on the news that night!It was an exhilarating feeling. Probably the greatest moment in my journalism career up to this moment…

    Later in the week I also caught up with Dona from the train. She runs a bar called “Portico” on Dana Street. She very generously invited me along to a friendly get-together with some of her friends and family. There’s nothing like travelling alone to force you to talk to total strangers.

    I also ate dinner in an Indian restaurant with a gentleman named Karl, who would also have otherwise dined alone. Very good company.

    On Friday night I also briefly hung out with some drunk girls staying in another room at the motel. That was all right for a laff… and a couple of photos…

    And that just about wrapped it up.

    Bit slow to start with but by the end of the week I was sourcing stories and writing them and they were actually going to air. I voiced a few packaged stories as well just for my showreel. They were a bit understaffed this week with a few people on holiday, so they didn’t have time to edit any of my unnecessary extra work. Hopefully I’ll get a DVD in the mail this week.

    I caught a train back across the plain in the rain, as I took vain self-portrait photos:

    But yes, television news is something I very much enjoyed, and if last week’s experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that I can do it, and I like it.

    Thank you very much to the good people at WIN TV Ballarat for showing me the intricacies of their industry, and to Mandy Crane at RMIT for setting it all up for me, and of course to my Mother for paying for the motel room.

    Now I’m back in Melbourne. The search for full time work in broadcast continues…

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    WIN News… just for the week.

  • Adelaideans reading the news on Melbourne’s 3RRR

    Greetings!

    Just yesterday I handed in my final assignment, thus completing my post-graduate diploma of journalism at RMIT University!

    This month has been incredibly busy. As if getting my major uni assignments in on time wasn’t enough, I also started two new jobs (Quiz Meisters Trivia host, plus a job writing for VEA, but more about that later); we got a new real estate agent (throwing my share-housing situation into uncertainty); plus I’ve been making arrangements for my work placement with WIN TV in Ballarat next week.

    But I wanted to make a special blog entry about my recent experience reading the radio news on Melbourne’s RRR. We had to do this as part of the radio journalism subject at uni and I’ve gotta say, I absolutely LOVED it! It was a lot of fun.

    We were put into groups of four. Coincidentally, I was paired with Bec Puddy and Ben Hagemann, both former Adelaideans (like myself). We were also joined by the lovely Maddy Maung.

    We arrived at RMIT University’s Swanston Street radio studios in Building 6 at 8am. We then wrote the news, recorded phone interviews for grab stories and recorded a voice-report or two, before reading the news live to air at midday, via some sort of link to the RRR Studios in Brunswick. Each team got to do it twice.

    Here are the highlights from our team’s days:

    It was great! There was an unofficial contest going between teams to see who could get the biggest person to give a quote. I myself managed to get Fiona Pattern, president of the Australian Sex Party. On the second day, Ben got the Chilean ambassador to Australia. One of the other groups got Tony Windsor. I think the winner goes to whichever team got the East Timor opposition leader. Well done… jerks…

    Day one was probably more enjoyable for me, as I got to read the news and because it was a slow news day, there was more room for some funny stories, eg. “the sex lives of women 40+” and “toilet phones”. On the second day however, I was quite ill and really had to drag myself into the studio. Surprisingly, my throat held out long enough for me to record a voice-report. Luckily I made it in because Maddy was sick as well, and without me it would have just been Bec and Ben.

     

    This was actually the first time I’d ever read REAL news on the radio. And thank God I enjoyed it, because I was kinda banking on this when I decided to come to Melbourne to study journalism. I could certainly see myself doing this everyday.

    Of course the reality of a REAL radio news room would probably involve half as many people, and instead of spending four hours preparing for one five-minute bulletin, you’d probably be doing them every half hour, possibly for two different radio stations…

    But hey, bring it on!

    As for the next challenge, I’m off to Ballarat for a week of work experience with the WIN TV News team!

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    That is one sweet-arse panel they’ve got in the RMIT studio.

  • A Melbourne winter

    Ahoy!

    Ah yes, winter in Melbourne; A time for regular umbrella locomotion and excessive electric bills. Also time for one Coburg furniture store to throw another redundant sale:

    One wonders what “conditions” would require the customer to pay MORE than full price…

    But anywho, it’s been a productive winter in Melbourne for David M. Green. I’m past the half way point on my path to becoming a fully qualified journalist. Gaining more and more experience in radio, TV and life in general. I also bought some new underpants. I usually procrastinate when it comes to buying clothes, like all men, no doubt. But it really was becoming an embarrassment…

    My boxers were literally tearing apart at the seams. So I had to replace them with some new ones. Shame. I had some good times in those underpants… But like any relationship, eventually one party outgrows the other and turns them into a polishing rag for shoes or dust-prone surfaces.

    Major things to report…

    My sister Hannah came to visit a couple of weeks ago, which was very nice. Gave me a chance to see some touristy things I’d been putting off, like going up the Eureka Tower and visiting the Titanic exhibit at Melbourne Museum. Fascinating. We had a quick look at the National Gallery of Victoria as well. I’ve been in Melbourne long enough for it to feel like home now. That mysteriousness it had when I first arrived in February has long since gone. So it was interesting to see it from an outsider’s eyes again. It’s a wonderful city.

    I also gained an entire university life’s worth of wacky experiences last month when I participated in the RMIT Student Union Annual Scavanger Hunt with four of my fellow post grad journalism buddies. It was like Revenge of the Nerds or that episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes to college (“Homer Goes to College”). A few things we may or may not have actually done (I’ll keep it ambiguous to protect the reputation of the educational institution): Swam in the fountain in front of the Royal Exhibition Building, busked in Swanston Street singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, leap-frogged down Bowen Street, streaked through the Melbourne University Union Building, crammed all of us into a public toilet stall at the Brunswick Hotel, plus much more… Those wacky students…

    Something I will reveal I did was sing to Madonna appallingly at a karaoke bar. Listen to this for a bootleg recording…

    Click to hear DMG’s Madonna Karaoke

    Here are some happy snaps from that surreal and utterly exhausting 24 hours…

    There’s some other footage floating around out there. I’m sure that will surface at some point in the future…

    Oh yeah,by the way. We won! $100 each. Not bad for 24 hours’ work. That’s… $4 an hour… hmm… Experience. It was the experience… yeah…

    In other news I’m writing and recording a lot. Keep checking here on my blog, and the SYN page, as I’m posting stuff up all the time.

    I also finally hopped on the Twitter bandwagon. I’m David_M_Green. Feel free to follow me, if you’re into that crap.

    So yes, everything else is good. Nothing major to complain about. Loving my time here in Melbourne! If you pretend Lachlan is the City of Melbourne, this pretty much sums up how I feel:

    Ah you crazy kids.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    New underpants. Feelin’ good.

  • Live Television Debut!

    Greetings!

    Very exciting week last week: it was my turn to be on Newsline! I was the sports correspondent on May 18 2010 under the weighted anchoring of TV’s Ben Hagemann and Alicia Muling. The programme broadcast live on Channel 31 Melbourne from 4pm to 4:30pm.

    Coming to Melbourne and studying television journalism at RMIT has really opened my eyes to the practicalities of television production. It’s an incredible organisational feat. So much preparation goes into it. There’s a crew of about 15 people behind the scenes and putting together a 30-minute news programme and broadcasting LIVE five days a week is amazing. It still surprises me that we actually get to do this (as students, not professionals remember… not yet anyway).

    Special thanks also to TV’s Jill Singer, executive producer for Newsline. I can’t imagine the effort she’s put into getting this show off the ground. She’s done a wonderful job.

    Without beating around the bush, or using excessive cliches, I absolutely loved this. Each show has two hosts and three correspondents (news, business and sport). In some ways it’s actually harder to be a correspondent, as you’re up in a small room on your own with a green screen behind you and a camera pointed at your head, and unlike the hosts, the correspondents don’t get no autocue. All that presenting experience for YouTube sure came in handy.

    Even though I had to glance at my notes occasionally to remember some names, I’m very happy with my performance. I took it seriously. And how many opportunities does anyone get to do LIVE TV these days? How many shows are even done live anymore? And the people on those shows are mostly weathered TV veterans. Newsline and the resources at RMIT University provide an invaluable experience for newcomers to the industry, such as myself, and I am very grateful for the opportunity.

    Here are some snapshots of that day’s creation of Newsline, a voyeristic peak into the magic of student television news:

    This shan’t be my only dabble in television, of that I can assure you.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Photos my Yinmin Maung with Ben Hagemann’s camera.

  • Sports! (Not the Huey Lewis kind)

    Greetings!

    This just to hand: I, David M. Green, will now be the “sports correspondent” on Channel 31 Melbourne’s “Newsline” on Tuesday May 17 2010 at 4pm. Anchoring that day will be the veritable Ben Hagemann and the actual Alicia Muling. So tune in to see RMIT student journalism in its purest televisual form.

    Little known fact about myself: I actually played Australian Rules football for 3 years back in the mid to late 1990s. Some good times, like singing along to that Goldburn Valley sliced peaches commercial circa 1996 featuring the “Oarsome Foursome”… although it’s only incidental we were at football training at the time. And some bad times too, like the time I “accidentally” broke a bottle at the top of the Brighton Rugby Club stadium and watched in horror as broken glass bounced down most of the concrete steps, echoing around the entire ground and alerting security. True story.

    Unfortunately there probably won’t be any badminton results to report; another one of my former sporting passions. Possibly some golf news though… Tune in.

    But in all seriousness, it’s a proper news show. I will actually be reporting on the sporting news of the day in a professional manner.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    This is the only sporting-related photo of myself I could find at short notice: