David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: community television

  • How to attract an audience

    Hi, I’m TV’s David M. Green – Host of the hilariously rating low budget TV game show “31 Questions”, Saturday nights 10PM on Channel 31 Melbourne & Geelong.

    Are you a comedian, musician, ventriloquist or some other type of performer?

    Putting on a show?

    Need an audience?

    Then watch this video for a few helpful hints on how to promote your gig and boost your audience numbers…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMvQADAE8k&feature=plcp

    I can only assume you now feel better about yourself.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Waster of other people’s time.

  • *Ding* Time to turn the page…

    Welcome to the next chapter in the DMG saga.

    It’s been some time since my last blog entry. My apologies if I’ve neglected the few souls who come here semi-regularly, hoping to discover some new David M. Green bloggy goodness.

    I suppose I can immediately blame Optus. I moved into this new apartment in Hawthorn on March 10. I was supposed to have Internet installed on March 23. It’s now April 6 and I’m still waiting for my wi-fi modem.

    Thank God for the “hotspot” function on my iPhone and the idiot in the neighbourhood with the unsecured wireless network, or I’d be living like it’s 1996.

    Hopefully I’ll properly merge onto the on-ramp to the Information Superhighway soon enough, and join the rest of you.

    I’m settling into my new place nicely. The kitchen is just about set up. I had to buy a fridge, a microwave, cutlery, crockery, cookware, the works.

    I even needed to buy a bench from IKEA, as there’s not enough built-in bench space…

    One Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and half of Gary Numan’s “Beserker” later…

    Tada! Gotta hand it to those Swedes. They know kitchen solutions.

    The lounge room/main room still needs some work. A couch is on its way from my lovely parents’ house in Adelaide. Then when I can muster the cash, I’ll get a coffee table and a bigger TV.

    Speaking of cash, I recently signed up with DJ Masters as a casual DJ. Thus far I’ve DJ-ed two weddings. One in Metung, near Lakes Entrance in eastern Victoria. The other in Shepparton, a couple of hours north of Melbourne.

    If you stalk me on Twitter you can follow my progress wearing suits and spinning tracks all over the state.

    Want David M. Green to DJ your next rhythmic social gathering for some reason? Go to the DJ Masters website. Ask for me by name. Or a vague description.

    I’ve also got a very promising new radio-related job in the pipeline. But more on that one soon.

    And then there’s 31 Questions. My big project for 2012.

    In a way, it’s been a blessing I lost the MTR job, because I have no idea how the hell I’d be able to produce, write and host this TV show if I was also working 40 hours a week.

    I’ve got most of the 13-episode season now written and it’s coming together nicely. We’ve already shot some pre-tape stuff, including this:

    And last night we had our first studio day. A very brief rehearsal and a chance to shoot some of the opening sketches.

    Not surprisingly, we were plagued by problems. The hallmark of community television.

    The most annoying hindrance was the absence of a large piece of our set, which we had constructed for our 2nd pilot in June 2011. It had simply disappeared from the store room!

    In hindsight, we probably should have checked last week everything was in order. But Jesus! It’s a huge object. No idea where it’s got to. It’s either been misplaced god knows where, stolen, or broken up and used for firewood.

    We were extremely fortunate to make a similar-looking replacement out of pieces of other sets. You can hardly tell the difference, right?

    In the 2nd pilot, we had 2 plasma TVs on set. But we arrived yesterday to discover one of them was broken.

    Fortunately I had a large poster of myself; an item I can stare at just as long, if not longer, than a flat screen television. An adequate replacement, no?

    There were some other technical issues as well. Something was wrong with the lighting desk, which meant we only had time to record three of the seven sketches I had planned.

    Hats off to our fantastic crew. Despite the setbacks, we all kept on and no one lost their cool.

    We’ve still got the next six Thursdays in the studio so hopefully we’ll squeeze the rest in.

    And I’m very happy with the new cast.

    There’s myself of course (but you know that).

    Taking over from Alasdair “Al” Tremblay-Birchall  is the fabulous Anthony McCormack (from The Good Show and many other things). We all loved Al but he has conflicting Melbourne Comedy Festival commitments.

    And it gives me great pleasure to introduce Sophie Loughran as our new 31 Questions scorekeeper.You’re gonna love her!

    From our rehearsals, we gel together like some sort of razzle dazzle entertainment ooze. And I’m really looking forward to working with the two of them more over the next 6 weeks. I think we got something here.

    Also, I got to wear a dress:

    Disturbingly, I stayed in that dress just a bit too long after shooting the relevant sketch. I enjoyed it considerably more than I was expecting…

    I don’t actually mind wearing lip stick and make-up, but here’s a fun fact for you: I absolutely hate face paint. Ever since I was 4. That one occasion at kindergarten in 1991 was the one and only time I ever had my face painted. From memory, it was some form of rainbow. Just didn’t care for it.

    But back to the present. Remember, we’ll need contestants on the show too. Plus there’s plenty (every) of seats available in our studio audiences. So sign up to RMITV and keep an eye on the 31 Questions Facebook and Twitter pages for updates.

    So big times ahead for the next six weeks. I’ve got a television series to make. And I have to scrape enough money together to pay for it, plus pay my considerably higher rent, and a cavalcade of bills and renewals… which always seem to come all at once, don’t they?

    Car registration, servicing, RACV membership, Internet, ambulance cover. All these bills and more! Christ!

    But then again, I could die tomorrow, and I’d still be in surplus.

    So life ain’t so bad, really.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    With a new found appreciation for women’s fashion.

  • 31 Questions iPilot 2.0

    Six thumbs up? Or a bunch of well-dressed criminals getting ready to surrender their fingerprints? You decide.

    Yes! The 31 Questions Re-pilot, Pilot Mach 2, or iPilot 2.0 if you will, was successfully recorded to tape on June 29, 2011.

    The evening at RMIT University’s fabulous Studio A went very well. The set looked great. Wonderful lighting. All the mics and cameras worked. The crew turned up (well, most of them). The gags worked (well, most of them). The questions were just the right level of difficulty (unlike last time – way too hard!). And most importantly, it was a fun night of TV-making.

    It’s community television, so it’s virtually impossible to avoid using the term “shambles” at some point. But we embraced our shortcomings and kept on with the show.

    That’s right folks! 31 Questions. The show that keeps the mistakes the other game shows cut out!

    The day before the rehearsal, which we had the previous Wednesday, our original score-keeper and glamorous assistant, Minky Cooper, decided to quit the show (via Facebook. A sad sign of the times…). So we had less than 24 hours to find a replacement.

    Incredibly I was able to find the lovely Melanie Valentine at extremely short notice to take over the role. And considering it was her first time inside a TV studio, she did very well.

    Alasdair “Al” Tremblay-Birchcall also gave a fabulous performance as the official moderator. That guy cracks me up.

    Special thanks also to our very talented, and forgiving, contestants: Julia and Andrew. They were both an absolute pleasure to work with.

    And a big thanks to the 16 or so strong crew. Without all you we’d just be making a silent film in the dark.

    But most importantly, THIS pilot went SO, SO, SO MUCH BETTER than our first pilot back in November. Instead of 4 pages of post-show improvement notes, this time I only had 6 key points. And they were all procedural or organisational issues, not to do with the fundamental concept of the show.

    The pilot is currently being edited by the talented Anthony McCormack. We’ll soon be handing it in to the good people at RMITV Student Television and Channel 31 Melbourne for their approval.

    And hopefully they’ll let us film 12 more!

    I’ll keep you updated.

    But if you’d like more immediate updates, or you want to check out more production photos, make sure you LIKE 31 QUESTIONS ON FACEBOOK. It’s all up there. And SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE. All episodes (& some extra bonus material!), that’s where they’ll be.

    Kind regards
    David M. Green
    Mayor of TV-Land

  • 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).

  • 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.