David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: RMITV

31 Questions: Laying Ep 5 down on tape

We’re on the home stretch! On Monday 15 April 2013, we magnetically transferred 31 Questions Season 2, Episode 5 to marvelous standard definition video tape.

It went well, but I didn’t quite have the “best show ever” feeling that I had after the previous week’s show. We started off strong, but technical issues and other delays made us run quite late. And to top it off, we had a TIED GAME, which had never happened before and for which we had no contingency plan.

We decided I’d ask a straight forward sudden death general knowledge question (we always have a few spares). But I had to ask four questions before either of the contestants buzzed in. Eventually, we had a winner but by the end of the night, most of us were pretty exhausted.

But as they say: we’ll get it in editing.

Our special guest for Episode 5 was TV’s Dan Ilic, who took a break from performing his show “Legally Ambiguous” at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (very funny, by the way) to come dance with Sophie Loughran in the RMITV studio!

Naturally, Sophie was leading.

Have I mentioned the great crew?

We have a very great crew.

And speaking of which, here are some more great photos from photographer James Sablinskis, who’s been present at every taping to document our journey through the dog-eat-dog world of community television game show production:

AHH! Oh… it’s James.

And a special thanks also to Antonio’s Mum for bringing in the coveted Cafasso family hatstand, which we used as a prop for one of our movie quotes. Reckon YOU know the name of the movie? (Our contestants didn’t!)

I’m really enjoying the movie quote round. I’m not in a lot of the scenes because I wanted to take a bit of a break. Plus because Sophie and Anthony are so great together. Sophie can really emote. And the last couple of episodes Anthony has been doing some very convincing impersonations. Just a joy to watch.

Come see the next ones for yourself LIVE!

Join the 31 Questions STUDIO AUDIENCE for Season 2, Episode 7 event on Facebook, or simply rock up 8.30PM this Monday 29 April to:

Studio A, Level 2, Building 12
RMIT University
on Melbourne’s fabulous Swanston Street
(near the corner of Franklin Street)

We had a HUGE audience for Episode 6 this week (I’ll blog about that when I get the photos… JAMES?!?). Would be great to see as many of you as possible crammed into that RMITV studio for the remaining shows.

There are lollies.

Kind regards,
David M. Green
That’s right. Lollies.

April 24, 2013
31 Questions Season 2 Ep 4: Best Show Yet

For the first time since Season 2 began, I finally felt like we really nailed an episode.

On Monday April 8, we were back in the studio to tape Episode 4. It was one of those magical nights where everything just came together. Great crowd. Scripted gags landed. Spontaneous laughs. Insightful contestants. We ran to schedule. And most importantly of all, we got it all on tape!

Special guest Alex Williamson also popped in to record a cameo, providing a considerable amount of censoring work for the editor. Amazing how time flies. Back in 2008, Alex was a guest on my show “Pow-Wow” on Radio Adelaide. 5 years and 800km later, he’s a guest on my TV show. I still have trouble believing all this is actually happening.

Shooting during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is tough. There’s strong competition for audiences. It’s rough out there, I tell ya!

I think people just get desensitised to the constant Facebook and Twitter updates from comedians saying: “Come to my show! Come to my show!” Not to mention those invasive ads. Whoops. I just mentioned them.

The 31 Questions experience is completely free – as are most TV studio audience experiences. We’re competing against comedy festival shows that charge $20-30 a ticket. It’s true that having a price of admission adds a sense of legitimacy to a show, and maybe the very fact we don’t charge is actually discouraging show-goers. But ultimately, we’re making a community TV show. We’d never charge people to see 31 Questions. I just want as many people as possible to see it, whether that be in studio or on TV or YouTube and damn the fact that as I’m writing this, I have $38.41 in the bank.

Personally, I love free things. In fact, I try to avoid paying for things. At all costs.

Doesn’t always work out, financially speaking.

Once again, hats, jackets and pants off to our great crew.

They just get better and better every week.

It was such a great feeling walking out of that studio at the end of the night knowing the show is finally where I want it to be. When it’s good, it’s so, so good.

Best feeling in the world.

The next opportunity for you to be a part of it is this Monday 22 April for the taping of EPISODE SIX.

8.30PM
Studio A, Level 2, Building 12
RMIT University
on Melbourne’s fabulous Swanston Street
(near the corner of Franklin Street).

Join the event on Facebook.

And a big thanks to the king of Australian TV audience warm up Michael Pope for sharing the event on Facebook. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being warmed up by him, as I was when I saw “Mad As Hell” the other week, you’ll know he’s one of the best in the business.

I must let you know though he won’t be at our taping. But it looks like we’ll be continuing our recent trend of special guest appearances with another popular character…

I’ll see you on Monday. And until then (or until I get the photos from Ep 5 and blog about that), here’s some recently uploaded outtake footage from last year.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnQt03x2E7U

Kind regards,
David M. Green
Leave you legless. That really is a horrible joke when you think about it.

April 18, 2013
31 Questions Season 2, Taping 3: The third taping (of the second season)

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.

April 12, 2013
31 Questions – The Taping of Season 2 Episode 2

We returned on Monday 25 March to the RMITV studio for this year’s second 31 Questions taping.

I’m told from the people upstairs in the control room, behind the cameras and in the studio audience that it went very well. Though I couldn’t help feeling a bit weird the whole night.

It started when we neglected to rehearse our opening gags. So naturally I completely forgot what I had planned to do with Anthony and Sophie when I walked out from behind the scoreboard. We had to stop and redo the opening sequence somewhere between 3 and 5 times (I lost count). And from that moment on, I had it in my head we were off to a bad night. Chalk that one up for next time: Rehearse the damn opening!

Though upon reflection, I can recall several moderately large laughs so it’s probably fine. The contestants were much better behaved this week. No talking over the top of other people (those lapel microphones pick up everything).

Something we’re doing differently this time around is actually taking a look at the footage before the next week’s taping. We weren’t able to do that last year for logistical reasons. That, combined with me not having a studio monitor while I was on camera, meant that the only way I could access the show and my performance was based on the audience’s reaction and how I felt at the time.

For some reason I had it in my head that all the gold was captured perfectly by the cameras. It wasn’t until weeks later when the episodes were being edited that we realised there were a lot of problems (the result of poor directing), which we had to disguise with clever editing. And some of those problems, we were just stuck with.

This time round, I’m exchanging long emails with the cast and director, full of notes of things to do or not do. It’s a lot to be thinking about while I’m supposed to be having fun.

I’m reminded of something Shaun Micallef said on the audio commentary of “Micallef Tonight” – that as he was also a producer, he was often distracted during the interviews about what was coming up later in the show, instead of just being in the moment and enjoying his interview with Barry Humphries.

I’m going to make a conscious effort not to think about a lot of that stuff and just enjoy myself. I have faith in Antonio in the director’s chair. He actually reads the scripts, which is a refreshing change. From here on out, I’m having fun.

In other news, I took at look at the ABC’s newest low budget panel game show “Tractor Monkeys” during the week, and I must say… excuse me while I drag out my soapbox… what a half-arsed attempt at a TV show.

The ABC keeps trying to re-create the success they had with “Spicks and Specks”. I enjoyed Spicks and Specks. But Tractor Monkeys, just like “Randling”, is no Spicks and Specks.

Firstly, it’s the same tired middle-aged comedians they wheel out for all these shows, all vying for punchlines. And with Tractor Monkeys, more so than the others, there’s really been no attempt at all to establish some sort of point of the “game”. The two teams are given out arbitrary points, culminating in a “fast-paced” final round (that’s the same speed as the rest of the show), and then the winners are announced and… Goodnight!

So Dave O’Neil’s team won. So what? They don’t win anything. There are absolutely no consequences for winning or not winning. Even a silly meaningless trophy would make it more interesting.

And could they have made the show look any cheaper? I’m not talking about lovably cheap. I mean slick, sterile cheap. A high school student could have made better segment graphics. They’re all just a pink screen with white text. The graphics for SEASON ONE of 31 Questions are better! (By the way, wait til you see our Season TWO graphics – just *Italian-style exploding fingers from my mouth hand gesture*)

To tell you the truth, I’m actually insulted a show like Tractor Monkeys would be broadcast nationally on the ABC. They should be doing much, much better.

I reckon I could make a better game show than that 😉

Come see for yourself tomorrow night.

Kind regards,
David M. Green
I’ve never liked monkeys.

April 2, 2013
31 Questions Season 2 Episode 1 Taping

We were back in the studio on Monday 18 March for the first taping of 31 Questions Season 2.

It was the first time since 17 May last year that we entered the studio with the intent of actually taping an episode, so I was a little rusty. And with some new faces on the team and a few changes to the format, it was a bit of a bumpy start.

Last year, we were fortunate enough to have the studio for 8 hours at a time, which meant we could shoot 2 episodes in one go. This year however, the fabulous RMIT University studio is in high demand, so we’re only able to get 5 hours. And that’s just not enough time to set everything up, pack everything away AND shoot two episodes. For starters, you wouldn’t do it in that order. Obviously you’d leave the packing up til the end. But my point is we’re forced to shoot just the one episode per week.

But this has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Although it’s going to take us more weeks to finish our 8-episode schedule, we can focus more attention on each episode. There were a few times this week where something didn’t quite work as well as I thought it could, and we actually had time to go back and do it better. There were many times during season 1 where we were in a similar situation, but we had to push on because we just didn’t have the time.

It’s amazing, show business. You wait for months to find out whether it’s all going ahead. You spend weeks preparing everything and waiting to do it. Then it all happens at once and it’s all over in a flash of lights. But it’s all worth it.

Once again we’ve got an outstanding crew who are all working for free. We’ve also got a new director, Antonio Cafasso, and under his direction we’re making much better use of the studio.

We’re now using five cameras, up from just four last year. And best of all we’ve got a crane shot this season. From what I’ve seen on the monitors, it looks sensational. I don’t think there are too many opportunities in Australia, let alone the world, to have free reign in a television studio with such amazing equipment. But hey, that’s RMITV and it’s why I moved to Melbourne.

Antonio has also worked out how to “iso-record” on the important cameras, which last year we were told was “impossible”. So if crucial vision is missed during the taping due to the switcher (also Antonio, by the way) taking an alternate camera feed, we still have a back-up on a separate tape.

TV production, folks. Fascinating!

As for the content of the show, it’s mostly the same. But in a nutshell, there’s more of the stuff that worked. And less of the stuff that didn’t. We’re putting the focus on the “game” aspect of the show. And building our comedy around that. There were some things we needed to get out of our system (eg. man wearing a dress, guy getting a pie in the face, etc.) and that’s what a first season is for. But now we’ve got the rare opportunity to shoot a second season. So it’s time to step it up a notch.

We’ve changed the opening sequence. Established new running gags and jokes around the set. Expanded Sophie’s role on the show, because she’s damn talented. The scoreboard looks like a scoreboard now, instead of a whiteboard. We’ve got two new producers who are working on important things behind the scenes. New graphics (Also Antonio. Also amazing). And new theme music (which is fantastic, by the way).

We’ve also altered the rules in some of the segments. In “Word on the Street”, contestants can now buzz in anytime, rather than having to wait until the vox-pop video finishes playing. This is how this segment should be run. The only reason we did it the other way last season was because we were told (by someone no longer with the show) there was a technical reason preventing us from doing it. Antonio found a way.

With the movie quote round, renamed to “The One Where They Quote The Movies”, Anthony, Sophie and I are now acting out three group scenes, instead of three individual quotes and one group scene. Like I said, more of the stuff that worked. Less of the stuff that didn’t.

But I can assure you, it’s still the same old 31 Questions 😉

We’re also putting a greater emphasis on quality control. If there’s one thing I hate about community TV, it’s people who say: “Oh well, it’s just community TV” as if that’s an excuse for the show being crap.

I don’t believe you need a lot of money to make a good TV show or a funny TV show. Sure, money helps in the sense you can use it to hire the best people and use the best equipment. And it means you can work on the show without having to worry about how you’re going to pay your bills. But if you throw a hundred thousand dollars at a crap idea, it’s still going to be crap.

This season, I’ve allowed more back and forth with the team of writers and more rounds of drafts. I have the unique privilege of being host, head-writer AND producer. This is generally unheard of in Australian television. It basically means I have final say over what’s in the script, what I say on the show and how the show works. So I’m not wasting this power (because I may never get this opportunity again). I’m using it to make sure the show is the best, the funniest it can be.

We’ve had more production meetings and a proper table read, which we didn’t do last year. And we are going to be brutal in the editing room. Firstly, we’re hoping to shoot eight episodes but only air the best six on TV. So the weakest two shows won’t be broadcast. And the other six are going to have every aspect questioned: “Does this need to be in the show?”

I want 31 Questions to be the show RMITV is remembered for.

Thanks also to our wonderful studio audience who came down to see our first Season 2 taping. It was great to see my old friend from Adelaide, Voice-Over’s Tim Wray in the audience, as well as a few people who don’t know anyone involved with the show – just fans. That’s great. It’s a reminder the show is actually beamed “out there” where anyone can see it. The next studio audience opportunity is tomorrow night for Ep 2.

8.15PM, Level 2, Building 12 of RMIT University on fabulous Swanston Street, Melbourne. RSVP to the event of Facebook if you’d like to join us. It’s free! Oh come on, have a laugh.

Surplus David M. Green & Moderator Mugs are also available for $20.

See ya round like a record.

Kind regards,
David M. Green
Beats watching Q&A

March 24, 2013