April Fool’s Day was supposed to be our regular night in the RMITV studio, but it also happened to be Easter Monday. And alas, the studio was closed. Also, people have families. So we taped our 3rd episode at the special time of Wednesday 3 April, 2013.
I felt this week went better than last week. There was a good vibe in the studio. Though because it wasn’t our regular night, a lot of our regular crew couldn’t make it, so everything took a little longer to set up and it was particularly “stop/start” for most of the taping. Anyone who’s ever been in the studio audience for a non-live TV show would know that you should always expect a “stop/start” kind of night. But 31 Questions Ep 3 was especially so.
It’s difficult to think like an editor. An editor can look at a fairly ordinary piece of raw footage and work out in his or her head how great it’ll be once you cut out all the crap bits. So with my editing goggles on, I reckon Episode 3 is the best episode we’ve done so far. Or at least, it should be, after the editing.
I was particularly happy with some of the physical gags. That’s going to be a real treat for the viewer when that finally goes to air sometime this winter.
Once again we had some great contestants. Though there was a late minute scramble for a female contestant when a miscommunication lead to two male contestants being booked for Ep 3. It’s always been my opinion it’s best to keep the gender quota balanced. Especially as it’s already skewed towards a sausage fest with me and Anthony.
Two male contestants would make it four guys, and Sophie, on the show. Call me sexist, but I want to avoid that kind of “lad’s humour” on 31 Questions (I’ve already got a show for that. It’s called Too Easy).
It doesn’t help that the majority of people banging the door down to be contestants on game shows (all game shows, not just ours), are middle aged white guys.
But like usual, it all came together at the last minute.
It’s amazing how many little jobs exists on a show like this. Sometimes you don’t even notice something’s missing until there’s a problem. A funny one happened this week. Several of our regular crew weren’t there, including contestant coordinator Lucy Downs. One of her jobs was to put name tags on the contestants. Now, you might think that doesn’t really make a big difference in the scheme of things. But the truth is, the name tags are just there for me.
Someone buzzes in, then I say the contestant’s name before they give me an answer. There’s a lot of information on the show. I’m reading questions off the cards, as well as stuff off the autocue, plus I’m making stuff up. And I have a bad memory for names already. So I really do use the name tags to remember the contestants’ names. It’s one less thing I have to remember.
The strange thing is, when we started the opening round, I managed to get to the 3rd or 4th question before I realised I wasn’t saying the contestants’ names. I was just sort of unconsciously saying “Yesssss… you!”
It’s hard to describe. I was confused and I knew something wasn’t right. But it took me a minute to work out it was just because the contestants weren’t wearing name tags. But like most of these problems that pop up, we turned it into a joke later in the show.
Another disadvantage of shooting on a Wednesday last week is that we were in direct competition with about 500 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Shows for audience members.
Understandably, we were were pretty light for audience, so Anthony and I pulled the old “go out onto Swanston Street and drag in some strangers” technique. Amazingly, we managed to convince a couple of girls. Also, we found two girls for the audience.
There was a feeling in the control room that we hadn’t quite nailed Episode 3 – a contrast from the previous week where the control room thought it went great, but it didn’t feel right for me.
As I write this blog entry, we’ve actually already taped the 4th episode. And man, we nailed that one! It was a faster turnaround with only 5 days in between studio dates, instead of our usual week. So I’ll do a proper wrap up when I’ve got the photos from Ep 4.
Unfortunately though, just before we taped Ep 4, I got the bad news that Episode 2 has been lost. There was a technical problem as simple as an incorrect setting on the master tape deck. It recorded audio. But no vision. And obviously, the best television game shows have both of these things.
But wait! Weren’t we also iso-recording on separate tapes on ALL the cameras? Unfortunately, we only had back-up tapes in 3 of the 5 cameras. So we’ve had to face the reality that Episode 2 is not recoverable.
It’s always a shame when this sort of thing happens. It’s happened to us before on a smaller scale – Losing a few vox-pops or dodgy audio here and there. But we’ve never lost a whole show. Really, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.
To be honest, it couldn’t have happened to a better episode. If it happened to the first one, we wouldn’t have been able to assess our technique for the future episodes. And if it happened to Episode 3 or 4, which I was really happy with, I’d be a lot more irritated. But Episode 2 is gone. We lost some really good gags. But there were also a lot of things that didn’t work so well, and that I’m actually glad are no longer on record.
But it’s all okay. We factored this into our plan: Shoot 8. Deliver 6. So we’re still good, so long as we don’t screw up any more. And there’s even a chance we might get to the end of our 8 shows and go back and re-record Episode 2. And do it better.
I’ve got an incredible team. And it’s finally all coming together.
This Monday 15 April, we’re taping Episode 5. You’re rapidly running out of opportunities to see 31 Questions live in studio!
Join the event on Facebook, or come on down:
8.30PM
Studio A, Level 2, Building 12
RMIT University
on Melbourne’s fabulous Swanston Street
(near the corner of Franklin Street).
Be there or you’re dead to me.
Na, you’re okay.
PS. Last night I saw “Aunty Donna and the Fax Machine Shop” at the Comedy Festival. They’re a sketch team who’ve previously appeared in a Channel 31 show called “Lost Dog TV”. I’m not easily impressed, but these guys have got “it”. They’re hilarious and I recommend you pay money to see them.
Of course, I also recommend you don’t pay money to see MY show. The 31 Questions experience is completely free of change.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
No stars.
