David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: TV

  • 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

  • The Magic Factory Podcast! 3SYN 90.7FM

    Yes finally!

    It’s been two weeks since Antonio Cafasso and I teamed up for a 7-hour straight graveyard broadcast on Melbourne’s SYN 90.7FM, and I’ve finally cut together the podcast.

    Now, I know you people are busy with your various “commitments” (work/family/various drug addictions/etc.) so I’ve created a “Best of The Magic Factory” podcast just for you, the listener on the go:

    The Magic Factory – BEST OF – Podcast  (66 mins)
    Featuring the best bits of David M. Green & Antonio Cafasso’s graveyard shift on 3SYN 90.7FM January 27-28 2011. Taylor’s Hill Tailors, Antonio’s weight loss job, David M. Green’s Songs to Have Sex to, live cross to Sam Mac in Perth, Shane Warne Soundboard Prank Calls, re-setting public transport, The Magic Factory Newsroom, fun with sound effects & Alan Jones clips, song intro challenge, Lorne Lawns & a live call from “Steve” at a Lilydale petrol station.

    But for the REAL fans, or if you just don’t have a life and you’d like to listen to the FULL podcast, you’re in luck!

    The complete The Magic Factory podcast can be downloaded below in three parts, for your convenience. Obviously the music has been removed, which reduces 7 hours to about 3 hours and 45 minutes.

    Perfect for any long drive (when, for some reason, you don’t want to listen to music). Alternatively, import them into your Grand Theft Auto PC game so you can listen to Antonio and me play wacky sound effects as you mow down hookers with an AK-47!

    The Magic Factory FULL Podcast PART #1 (72 mins)
    Taylor’s Hill Tailors, driving in Melbourne & dealing with VicRoads, Antonio’s weight loss job, David M. Green’s Songs to Have Sex to, live cross to Sam Mac in Perth, Shane Warne Soundboard Prank Calls,  re-setting public transport, Too Easy: The Webseries & DMG’s pen.

    The Magic Factory FULL Podcast PART #2 (72 mins)
    DMG’s adventures in commercial radio, The Magic Factory Newsroom, origins of the Alan Jones clips, horrible share-housing experiences, Peter Macinkovic calls in, DMG records some demo radio talkbreaks for Gold 104.3FM, song intro challenge, Antonio’s hilarious fart sounds, Lorne Lawns & Rove L.A.

    The Magic Factory FULL Podcast PART #3 (79 mins)
    Elaborately over-produced IDs, bed music samples, Adelaide v. Melbourne, more Alan Jones, DMG “picks up” at the cinema, texts from the listeners, David M. Green’s Songs to Have Sex to (reprise), DMG’s “31 Questions” TV game show pilot, a live call from “Steve” at a Lilydale petrol station, plans for the day, a chat with Nicholas Waxman from “Get Cereal” & a live call from “Jennifer”, some random listener.

    Overall a fantastic experience. Comedy on radio is a huge passion of mine and it was great to get back behind the panel. Although, I’m not jumping at the opportunity to do 7 hours straight again… This is us at 6AM…

    Although, a return to a regular hour slot is not out of the question. The question is where, who and when…

    Special thanks again to Antonio. You can hear from the clips we were genuinely having a great time. The laughter is real, I can assure you. That’s what makes great radio, in my opinion.

    Happy listening.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    I’m radioactive!

  • Tom’s employed. Now David M. Green wants a job!

    The image you see above is a photo of my bed, lined with 22 rejection letters, the majority of which I’ve received in the last 2 years.

    And don’t worry, I’m aware of the irony of so many examples of rejection placed at a location where I’m usually quite successful at getting jobs…

    This is of course not an accurate reflection of how many jobs I’ve applied for.

    The ABC recently changed their policy of sending rejection notices via mail, and now conduct their rejections via email, putting them in line with most of society.

    Well, I say “most” but then again, commercial radio and TV stations rarely get back to me at all. It was a very rare occasion the other week when I received two letters from commercial radio station jobs I’d recently applied for.

    Not only that, but they both had signatures written with an actual pen, not some xeroxed mass produced rejection template… So a genuine thank you to K-Rock Geelong and ZooFM Dubbo for taking the time to personally respond.

    Once in a blue moon will I actually receive a phone call. Those are usually reserved for occasions where I’ve actually made it to an interview.

    So here’s the situation folks…

    I’ve finished my graduate diploma in journalism (with distinction!) from RMIT University. I would like to stay in, or at least close to Melbourne, because there is a high probability that I’ll be hosting a TV game show on Channel 31 in early 2011. And I just can’t miss this opportunity.

    But in the mean time, I have a strange craving to WORK. I would like a job, preferably in the field of media. Radio or TV ideally. Wouldn’t say no to a job in print at this point. Doesn’t have to be journalism related. I may or may not have mentioned on this website that I’m also a comedian… And a producer for that matter.

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green

    PS. Probably my favourite rejection letter in the above photo is the one I got in 2008 from RMIT University, rejecting my application for the journalism degree I’ve just completed (with distinction).

  • 31 Questions: Making a TV Pilot.

    I fulfilled another life-long dream on Thursday. I hosted a TV show.

    Although it’s not what I envisioned when I moved to Melbourne – hosting a TV game show – filming the pilot for “31 Questions” on Thursday was certainly one of the highlights of my entertainment career.

    This was my first opportunity to combine the host/writer roles for television. I’ve previously combined these roles for radio and YouTube, but this was essentially the first time I’ve been able to present my own material in my own style in a TV setting, which was absolutely fantastic. A very rare opportunity indeed.

    The first thing you’ve no doubt noticed is my zany jacket:

    I came up with the idea for the jacket before any of the segments. Let’s face it, the jacket is essentially the show. 31 Questions co-creator (& producer/director) Simon Eastwood and I found a beautiful silver jacket for $40 at Arthur Daley’s Clearance House on Swanston Street. And it fit perfectly. We couldn’t believe it. Then we ruined it by covering it with question marks.

    When I arrived on Thursday and saw the jacket in its “questionable” form for the first time, I thought the idea looked better in my imagination. It looked pretty crappy. But when it’s on TV it actually looks pretty good. Thank Christ. The miracle of television! And thanks to Simon and his sister for staying up til 6am the day of the pilot, sewing on the ?’s.

    Simon did a fantastic job. There’s so much to organise to film a TV show. And as it was the pilot, there were a few bugs we had to iron out. It turned out the questions were a little bit hard, and there weren’t enough of them, so we were under-time by about  8 minutes!

    I had to go and write some more questions, which we then filmed. And somehow Simon’s going to edit those extra questions into the show. Hehehe… Jeeze thank God I’m not doing that. It messed up the scores as well, so the guys in the control room had to watch back the tape to work out who won.

    This shot pretty much sums up how we felt at that moment:

    Joining me on camera was my good friend Lachlan Cowlishaw, acting as the show’s moderator. The idea was we were going to do some back and forth gag banter in between questions, but because we didn’t have enough cameras, whenever we wanted to do that we had to do it as a “pick-up”.

    That means we shot the whole segment, then at the end, repositioned the cameras so Lachlan and I could talk. But by that stage we’d lost the flow and weren’t quite sure what we were supposed to be doing.

    Not to worry. Simon’s worked out how to film this in a better way if the pilot gets picked up for a series. Likewise, Lachlan and myself will try to be funnier.

    It’s a good format for comedy though. We had a lot of fun with the questions and there’s plenty of room for gags and sketches, despite labelling it as a “game show”. Technically it’s “light entertainment”.

    All those years of reading scripted gags for my radio shows and trying to make it sound like I’m not reading from a script paid off. Turns out that skill is immediately transferable to reading scripted gags off an autocue.

    And an excellent job of operating the autocue by Emma Halfpenny. Thank you so much. Without your perfectly timed finger, I would have completely stuffed up my jokes!

    You’re worth your name in coins, which isn’t actually that much. Seriously, nice work.

    Thank you also to my glamorous assistant, Minky Cooper, keeping track of the scores. A particularly difficult job considering adding in the extra questions completely screwed up the scoring sequence.

    And we couldn’t have done it without the crew. I’ve said it many times before: crew people are the best people. Being the pilot, it was a bit of a shambles, and our studio booking ran overtime by about half an hour. A lot of people were there from 2pm until 10:30pm, all for no money.

    Everyone conducted themselves very professionally. I’m sorry I didn’t get to hang out with you all more and have a few laughs on the side. I didn’t even get to say thank you too each of you in person. I was pretty focused on the show. I think if we’re approved for a series, we’ll get our act together and have much more time for goofing around.

    Thank you all so much.

    And special thanks to the show’s inaugural contestants, Andrew and Carley. Thanks for being such good sports…

    I have very high standards for myself. I’m happy with how the pilot went. I think with editing it’ll look good. But I also think that we can make it a whole lot better.

    Practice makes perfect. Looking back at my old radio shows, whenever I started a new show they didn’t start getting good until about show 3 or 4. TV is a lot more complicated and labour-intensive than radio. And we were very fortunate to get such a great looking set for essentially no money. That’s half the battle right there.

    Simon and I have already worked out half a dozen ways to make the show better if we get approved for a series. Hopefully RMITV and Channel 31 will give us a chance.

    It was a goal of mine this year to move to Melbourne and make a TV show. I did it. And I’m happy. Now to do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again…

    Kind regards,
    TV’s David M. Green
    Thanks also to Olav Dias for taking some amazing photos. His ones are the 500×333 ones above (ie. the good ones).

  • 31 Questions: The TV game show pilot!

    About 4 months ago a conversation took place in RMIT University’s Studio A on the set of Channel 31 Melbourne’s “Tough Times”.

    I was sitting on the couch, providing my pale skin for the guys in the control room to configure the flesh tones. Fellow crew member Simon Eastwood was hanging around, talking to Eliza Beck (who later became RMITV General Manager). The conversation went something like this:

    Simon – “I want to make a TV show.”
    Eliza – “What sort of show?”
    Simon – “I don’t know, maybe a game show? Hey Dave, you wanna help me make a game show?”
    Me – “Can I host it?”
    Simon – “Sure.”
    Me – “Yeah!”

    So Simon would be producer/director, and I would be host/writer/executive producer. Essentially I would handle the content, and Simon would handle the technical and organisational side. And thank god, because no one ever wants to do that crap.

    And after more paperwork that I would have liked to worry about, Simon and I had a meeting with RMITV programming manager Naomi Davis. Basically our pitch was: “Channel 31 doesn’t have any game shows”. And we were quite quickly given the green light to make a pilot!

    “31 Questions” will be a standard quiz show with a youth/pop culture focus, a bit like Sale of the Century mixed with Spicks and Specks, Talkin’ Bout Your Generation and Vidiot (I loved that show in the mid ’90s!).

    In preparation for my new role as host, I’ve been researching famous game show hosts of the past. I’m sure there’s a few pointers I can pick up from this guy…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TRBwKFfJv4

    Jeeze… what a creep!

    Joining me on the show will be the show’s moderator Lachlan Cowlishaw, and our glamorous assistant Minky Cooper, currently the Monday host of 1700 on Channel 31.

    So we are filming the pilot for “31 Questions” the evening of Thursday 25 November 2010. If you live in Melbourne and would like to be in the studio audience, details are available on this Facebook event page.

    See you then!

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Man am I looking forward to this!