Yo! I’m back fulfilling the dream on the writing team for the 4th series of Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell! So if you haven’t already been enjoying some damn fine Australian news-based television comedy, make sure you tune in at one or all of these times:
By the way, hope you’re enjoying these sequel title gags. Got a bit tricky to find titles after 7…
Anyway… 31 Questions! We’re done!
And the ratings are IN. We broke all previous records this season with the Channel 31 Ratings Machine indicating 46,000 people in Melbourne & Geelong tuned in to our 4th episode on June 28. Beats the hell out of our previous best of 37,800 for our Season 2 finale last year. These days with all the competition from the plethora of digital channels, YouTube, PacMan and hula hoops, that some damn good figures.
I assume.
Personally, I reckon the best episodes of Season 3 are 1, 6 and the finale. And what a way to go out. Highlights of Ep 8 include the contractually required “Sophie’s Choice” segment, in which contestants Aaron and Naomi sing for points; Sophie and Anthony’s all-French exchange and one very special cameo.
If you missed the season finale when it aired on C31 Melbourne & Geelong on July 26, or you haven’t watched it on YouTube yet, look away now as I ruin the surprise.
A wonderful moment and by far the biggest round of applause we ever received of all the episodes.
31 Questions: the little game show that could, has come a long way since that first pilot 4 years ago. So many people have helped make the show possible. A nice way to illustrate is to take a look at the crew photos, starting with our 2nd pilot shoot in 2011.
Also note, I’m holding a pot plant above Simon Eastwood’s head:
Season 1, 2012:
Season 2, 2013:
Season 3, 2014:
Just by these 4 photos, you can also see how the whole thing has evolved: The set, logo, lighting, the number of people involved and just the general level of organisation too.
Funnily enough, I didn’t begin with the crew photo from our 1st pilot because our level of organisation in those early days was not sufficient to organise a group photo.
This is the closest I’ve got from our disastrous first shoot in 2010:
Side note, get a load of the Question Mk #1 jacket:
I believe that was a rush job the night before… Where was I?
So my point is literally hundreds of hands and thousands of fingers have worked on 31 Questions. 99 per cent of them for no money. And it’s the little touches you don’t even think about that bring out the best in a big project like this. People solved problems and did things on this show I don’t even know about. You could even say we got this far thanks to “the wisdom of friends”.
I probably wouldn’t, but I mean you COULD say that, if you wanted.
Any way you look at it, it was teamwork made this show. It wasn’t perfect, but we had far more hits than misses. It’s just about the best community television can be.
It’s 31 Questions SEASON THREE EPISODE THREE! Contestants Josh & Zhanna put aside old Cold War rivalries to compete in the casual competition of question-answering. How many questions can YOU answer?
This week’s special segments: “Round Moon” and “Out of Order”.
Produced by RMITV Student Television for C31 Melbourne & Geelong. Originally broadcast 21 June 2014.
Oh, and get a load of THIS! Lawrence Mooney and Shaun Micallef on ABC2’s Dirty Laundry Live last Thursday night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urlzaLDEaI0
Wow.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Can you spot the Ep 3 pick-up shots? I’ll bet you can’t!
I’ve just come out the other side of the busiest 3 months of my life. Hence the void of blog.
So let me fill you in (not sexually)…
Season 3 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed my time writing for the show and it was an incredible experience to work with some very talented people, the best of the best, and who until now I’d only known as some names in the credits of TV shows I used to watch when I was 16-years-old.
Several of my scripts made it to air. “Bum Tree” was my favourite. That was my first desk piece and sitting in the studio audience watching that unfold was, and I don’t use this word very often, awesome.
I also feel I’m a better writer than I was three months ago. Previously I’ve tended to avoid topical comedy due to the usual very long gap between recording and broadcasting whatever it is that I’m creating. But working on Mad As Hell put some of my RMIT journalism skills to practical use, and more than anything taught me to respect “the joke”.
Every script needs jokes. That seems obvious, but often I can write what I think is a joke, only to look at it a little more closely after lunch and realise that it’s not actually a joke at all. Comedy scripts need jokes. Only the jokes in a script make an audience laugh. And after all, that’s the whole purpose of comedy. So my personal bar is now set a little higher.
In addition to writing for the show, I also fulfilled another childhood dream and appeared in a sketch. See if you can spot me in the closing song on the season finale. And by the way, I couldn’t have chosen a better song (and I can assure you, it wasn’t me!)…
Meanwhile, while all that “madness” was going on, I was also making my own show. You know that other show I do? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before… Anyway, it’s called “31 Questions”. And Season 3 of THAT show wrapped up production last week too.
Jeeze, 3 seasons? Who’d have thought, aye? AYE!?!
It’s gone from an idea for a pilot in mid-2010, which was approved, then rejected, then cancelled, to a 6-month battle with RMITV to make a second pilot, which was finally approved, then to waiting around for 9 months while some managerial politics played out, after which we were finally given the green light for a season in 2012.
The goal of the first season was to make a game show that was funny. For no money. I didn’t spent much time worrying about the technical aspects of the show, so long as they fulfilled the bare basic practical requirements. I wanted things to be as simple as possible. Need a scoreboard? A whiteboard will do. It works.
When I look back at Season 1 now, it looks like a skeleton. Hey, don’t get me wrong. Skeletons are funny. They have a certain boney charm. But it is what it is: community television. With all the splendor of a person with no skin.
Then we met Hugh Johnson. He told us we should make a second season, work on the “game” side of the show, develop our “characters” and tailor the comedy around the boundaries of “the game show”. So we did. Again, for no money. And season 2 in 2013 was a step in the right direction. We applied many lessons from the first season. The DMG, Anthony and Sophie characters were more refined. More thought was put into the questions and selecting the contestants. We shot more material than we needed so we could edit out the stuff that didn’t work so well.
But with a more complex production, combined with less time in the studio, we got caught out too many times with lighting and audio issues, and running out of time and having to make do with a rushed job. It was good. But it wasn’t good enough. Imagine a skeleton with some rotting flesh hanging off it. Funny? Yes. Entertaining? Sure. But would the other TV stations invite it to their swanky skin parties? I doubt it.
So we went back to Hugh. He told us we needed to make a third season. And REALLY do it right. He even offered to be series producer. This was the big one. No holding back. Season 3 would be about making sure every single aspect of this program was the absolute BEST it can be.
And by Jove, I think we’ve done it. A skeleton with a system of mighty organs, with flesh and clothes and everything.
It takes a team of people to make a television show. But it takes a GREAT team of skeletons with functioning digestive and respiratory systems to make a GREAT television show. And 31 Questions Season 3 had, without a doubt, the best symbiont skeleton people crew we’ve ever had. And probably the best in Australian community television.
There are some real stars in that photo and I reckon I’ll still be working with quite a few of them many years from now.
It was also incredible to have Joe Murray on board as the senior director. He directed “The Late Show” on the ABC back in the early 90s, among a plethora of other shows. The wisdom and experience he brought to Season 3 has been a godsend and it was a real honour to work with him.
So we’re now well into post-production. Expect 31 Questions to return to your screens of varying sizes sometime in June. I’ll get back to you when I have specific dates and times and cities.
I am completely biased, of course, but we’ve got 8 GREAT episodes coming up. There’s something like 15 new segments, plus the old favourites, interesting trivia and fun facts, cool contestants, a swathe of gags and a few more surprises. It’s not just a great “community” television show. It’s a great television show.
We haven’t even finished editing yet, but we’ve already had one glowing review. Prolific comedy blogger Katherine Phelps was in the studio audience for our Season 3 finale. Read her thoughts here.
But aside from basking in the laughter and the applause, maybe the most satisfying moment came the other week when 31 Questions was labelled “a flagship show” in an official email from RMITV – the same organisation that said in February 2011 that 31 Questions was “not viable for RMITV”.
So what have I learned from all this?
1. A mistake is only a bad thing if you don’t learn from it.
2. Consistent competence leads to greatness, and
3. People are attracted to success.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Next stop Adelaide, I think.
With 31 Questions Season 3, writing for Mad As Hell and panelling the footy for Crocmedia, I’ll be a media machine for the next couple of months. Let me give you the low down…
31 Questions Season 3 starts taping from February 27, and will tape a new episode every Thursday night until April 17. If you’re in Melbourne, or want to drop in, I’d love to see you in the studio audience. There’s been bigger demand this season, so we’ve actually got TICKETS now! So get your FREE ticket(s) by emailing: 31qaudience@gmail.com
In addition to the free laffs, there’ll also be fabulous merchandise available for low, low, crazily low prices.
And if you’re coming all the way to Melbourne to see a taping of 31 Questions, you may as well come to an episode of Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. You just might see me lurking in the halls. Studio audience details available here.
“Italian-style hand gesture where the fingers explode forth from the mouth”
But if comedy isn’t your thing, I’m not sure why you’re on my website. But as the AFL season approaches, and eventually gets here, you’ll be able to listen in to Crocmedia’s “AFL Live” on radio stations around Australia, as well as online via the AFL website and iPhone app. The inside scoop is Rex Hunt will be returning. And who knows what else? I’m thrilled to be back at the panel for my third year!
And in other news, Too Easy (that webseries I sometimes do with Alex Williamson) has been selected to screen at the 2014 LA WebFest in Los Angeles! Check it out:
Fern leaves and everything!
So if you’re in LA between March 26-30, drop by the Radisson LAX Hotel and tell ’em I sent you. Or just pretend to be me. Unfortunately, I can’t be there because I’m a media machine. Kind like this:
If you haven’t already, form some sort of connection with me on Facebook and Twitter. I’ll probably be hangin’ round those parts of the Internet with everything going on over the next couple of months.
