David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: TV

  • Hey kids, get a job like me!

    At the risk of exposing myself to green screen-related graphical editing tomfoolery… allow me to fill you in on my recent fantastic experience as a professional writer and presenter for Video Educational Australasia.

    A few months ago, I auditioned at VEA as a presenter. I happen to casually mention I was also a writer. I didn’t think much of it, until several weeks later when I was offered a gig as a writer for an educational video they were making, ironically called “How will this help me get a job?” And of course I jumped on the idea.

    The video is aimed at high school students and discusses several skills employers look for when they’re hiring people. I had to write several scenes demonstrating those skills, eg. communication, team work, etc. And best of all, I could be funny! So I had a great time coming up with scenes (sketches, if you will) emphasising the importance of each skill.

    VEA cast three young actors to play three young people on the verge of entering the workforce. The talented Lisa Marie Shaw, Aldi Godjali and Rhys Thomas. I also wrote in a role for a presenter, which I was lucky enough to land myself.

    Here we all are:

    The video was shot in a day and a half. One full day for the three actors to film the scenes, and one half day for myself to film the intros and summaries for each chapter of the 20 minute video.

    I stopped by VEA’s Fitzroy studio on Tuesday to experience the novelty of complete strangers reading lines I wrote and acting out scenes I created…

    In case you’re colour blind, the whole thing was shot in front of a green screen. Backgrounds will be added later digitally (as it’s cheaper that filming on a real tropical island!).

    Coincidentally, I happened to know the boom operator, Elliott Klein. We both worked on the pilot for Channel 31’s “Late Night Tonight” with TV’s Michael Lanzer.

    Industry contacts: one of the best things, if not THE best thing, about becoming a member of RMITV student television.

    This was another special moment for me, as it was the first time I’d held a boom…

    Hehehe… booms are great!

    Hey, remember my advice earlier this year borne from one of my uglier experiences in student television? Well let me remind you… if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, get in with the crew! It makes for a much better working atmosphere:

    Someone feel free to add a beach background for that photo. Or a volcano or something. That’d be pretty cool…

    So that about wrapped it up for Day 1. Unfortunately due to another VEA production, the camera was due somewhere else by 10am Wednesday. So we all got to the studio at 6AM in order to get my presenting parts recorded. 6AM!?! Jeeze…

    I can’t seem to get to bed early, even if I know I have to be up before dawn. So I finally managed to get to sleep around my usual time of 1:30am. I was on three and a half hours sleep for this.

    Also, they didn’t have a teleprompter for me, so I had to memorise these quite wordy spiels. And some of what I originally wrote had been altered by VEA’s advisers to ensure the educational elements were on message. This was a challenge, but by God it was fun!

    Most of my presentation pieces were filmed at and around “my” desk. I’m sort of an arrogant boss-type character, laying down the employment wisdom on the young folk.

    Unlike when I was a sports correspondent on Channel 31’s “Newsline”, on this occasion my wandering eye brows were permitted, even encouraged, by director Bryce McNamara!

    We wrapped by about 10:45am. I went home and crashed on my bed. I fell asleep in my suit (I even still had my shoes on).

    At about 5pm I woke up and got ready for my weekly quiz night down at The Peacock Hotel in Northcote. After that nap, I was surprisingly refreshed. Turned out to be a good night too.

    All up, a fantastic day of working in show biz!

    So look out on the VEA website for “How will this help me get a job?” Funnily enough, with the project done, I’m back to looking for work…

    I’d recommend you purchase a copy. You might find a few subtle David M. Green-related references buried in the script…

    Special thanks to Anoar Ahmed for giving me this incredible opportunity. And thanks to Bryce and the rest of the cast and crew. It was truly a pleasure to work with you all.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    I still can’t believe I was paid to do that!

  • 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.

  • TANGS Ep 1-2: Meet Gerald Field-Mann

    The All New Garage Show

    Starring
    Gerald Field-Mann & Kevin Callahan

    Episode 1 – 2: Meet Gerald Field-Mann

    Gerald introduces himself.

    Another pointless project by David M. Green & Lachlan Cowlishaw

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    A transaction of pancreas.

  • TANGS Ep 1-1: Where’s my ice cream?

    The All New Garage Show

    Starring
    Gerald Field-Mann & Kevin Callahan

    Episode 1 – 1: Where’s my ice cream?

    Gerald eyes Kevin’s icecream.

    Another pointless project by David M. Green & Lachlan Cowlishaw

    Hello!

    David M. Green here (obviously). Thanks to everyone who’s distributing kudos in both Lachlan’s and my respected direction with regard to our latest no-budget audio visual garage-themed venture: The All New Garage Show (I feel there should be an exclamation mark after “Show”. Oh well, I’ve established there isn’t one now, so I guess I’ll have to run with it. Or without it, rather).

    The overwhelming concensus seems to be that Lachlan and I have a remarkable on-screen chemistry. I agree. Certainly I can think of no one else whom I share such a comic interrelationship. Watching it back, I think to myself, “you cannot artificially create that back and fourth effect.” I don’t think we could even write it. It just comes naturally. Also, with a script, that just creates opportunities to make mistakes. We’re just making it up as we go along. But enough of this wanky self-indulgent analysis!

    A bunch of these little segments are edited and are trickling online at Lachlan’s discretion. I’ll be posting some more here this week. So won’t you please enjoy TANGS(!).

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Milky treat. It was time to eat it.

  • Two suits, two cameras and a garage

    Hello there!

    This was an odd spur of the moment project championed by fellow RMIT journalism student, TV’s Lachlan Cowlishaw: “Hey, let’s set up a talk show set in my garage and just goof around!” I agreed on one condition: that we’d include cameras in that equation. A sensible decision.

    So that’s the gist of it. Lachlan dressed his garage with a sheet, a couple of deck chairs and a set of bed-side table drawers as a desk. And last Wednesday I caught the 207 bus out to Doncaster in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, wearing my only suit. I arrived at Lachlan’s house, we spent maybe 15 minutes jotting down some ideas. Came up with the name of the show and character names on the day, set the cameras rolling and just ad-libbed for an hour.

    I play host Gerald Field-Mann, a failed has-been TV personality, which in all respects is essentially who I am anyway. Lachlan plays Kevin Callahan: producer, sidekick and garage owner. We also take turns playing other guest characters too.

    Probably the most basic TV show set-up in history. No crew. No lighting. No white balance. No camera operators. No script. Just the two of us making it up as we go along. It was a lot of fun and I think you can see that coming through when you watch the clips.

    We’ve uploaded the first clip to a new YouTube account. Feel free to subscribe.

    Lachlan is handling the editing, and more segments will be going online soon. This really was his idea. I’m just along for the ride. Although, this may end up being our “Televisionman” project. Organising to make a REAL television show is pretty tedious. At least this way we’re in control and can do whatever we want.

    So please enjoy the first of many TANGS segments: What’s ticking off Matthew Newton?

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Is bad comedy the new good comedy?