David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: studio audience

  • I am a media machine

    Ahoy hoy!

    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.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    How good is this?

  • 31 Questions Eps 4 & 5 taping

    Last Thursday April 19 was our third day in the studio, making low budget TV history. We successfully shot episodes 4 and 5 of the game show all the cool kids are ignoring: 31 Questions.

    This time we had the ability to play VTs (video tapes, for the uninitiated) and the crew had a few flying hours together so technically speaking, things were running smoothly. But the slight problem this time round was the embarrassing reality that virtually no one came to see it!

    Not including contestants and crew, the studio audience for the second show of the evening consisted of two people… TWO!

    This is one of the things stopping me from doing a REAL show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival; How the hell am I supposed to get people to pay $15 to come see me do stand up, when I can’t even get them to come see something far more interesting FOR FREE?

    I don’t know how those real comedians do it? Maybe they’re just really funny… Nah. That’s crazy talk.

    Still, it didn’t stop us from putting on a show. Two shows, actually.

    It’s a great atmosphere. There’s a lot of laughter in that studio when the 31Q gang is in town, but everyone knows they’ve also got a job to do. Though too often I find myself worrying about things – like whether the guys in the control room are getting all the gags and Jesus I hope they didn’t forget to press record on the tape – instead of throwing caution to the wind and just enjoying it.

    Ahh, when the burdens of producing fall upon the talent… but then of course if it were any other way, it wouldn’t be my show. I’d be hosting someone else’s TV show.

    But luckily I have the very talented Riyana Kasmawan sitting beside me in the producers’ chair. There’s no actual chair. But she is worth her weight in gold and we couldn’t do this thing without her pulling the strings off camera. Thank you thank you thank you!

    And I know I’ve said this already, but we really do have an outstanding crew working on this show.

    This is the biggest single creative project I’ve ever undertaken. In many ways it would have been much easier and simpler to do another single camera comedy show, something like my webseries Too Easy but for television, all shot on location with just a couple of people.

    But I’ve done that. And I’ll do it again. But here was an opportunity to make a REAL television show, using a real television studio with four cameras; equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you can’t do it with just a couple of people. You need a big crew. You simply cannot get around it. And as such, you have to delegate. But them’s the breaks. So why the hell not?

    Of course, as impressive as all this is, this is NOTHING compared to any run-of-the-mill TV show on one of the commercial networks, or even the “under-funded” ABC.

    The first thing I noticed when I walked into the ABC studios in Elsternwick, the home of “Letters & Numbers” and “In Gordon Street Tonight” amongst others, was the ceiling. Take a look at the number of lights in the above studio photo there. Times that by about 12 and that’s roughly how many lights the ABC has in just the ONE studio!

    But if the alternative is sitting in the rent-free east wing of my parents’ resplendent house in Adelaide, working some dead end customer service job and lamenting the lack of progress with my television career, which is very much what I was doing in late 2009 before I moved to Melbourne… I’ll take this any day.

    So seriously, you’re running out of chances! Come join our studio audience. It’s quite likely after this, they’ll never let us make another TV show again.

    We’re back in there taping episodes 6 and 7 tomorrow, Thursday April 26. 7pm to 10pm. Studio A Level 2 Building 12 RMIT University, Swanston Street, Melbourne. Free lollies!

    Oh, and one last thing…

    If you thought being a TV game show host was going to greatly enhance my sex life… guess again…

    Exert from a recent conversation on Oasis Active:

    daisy909 says:
    Haha where are you performing?
    superdude87 says:
    I’m making a game show for Channel 31
    daisy909 says:
    Ohhhh really
    daisy909 has removed you from their contacts. You can no longer send any messages to this member.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    31 Questions: The greatest TV game show this side of Swanston Street and still technically within the Hoddle Grid of the Melbourne Central Business District… What an achievement!

  • 31 Questions Eps 2 & 3 taping

    Last Thursday April 12, the 31 Questions team once again gathered at the television studios at RMIT University on fabulous Swanston Street, Melbourne for the taping of episodes 2 and 3 of our 13-show first season.

    It’s a mistake to think nothing will go wrong. I really should stop setting myself up for disappointment.

    This time we had corrupted video files. But that didn’t matter so much, because there was a problem with the VT (video tape) machine, which meant we couldn’t play the clips anyway.

    This mainly affected the “Word on the Street” segment, where we play contestants vox pop footage of people on the street talking about a particular topic, without saying the name of that topic. The contestants then need to identify what the folks are talking about.

    Of course, without the ability to PLAY the footage, the segment doesn’t really work. However, we found an ingenious stop gap solution…

    I threw to the footage as usual, then my trusty sidekick Anthony McCormack simply read a transcript of the vox-pops. We’ll just insert the vox-pop footage in during editing and no one’s the wiser!

    This is community TV.

    I recall Rove McManus’s first appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno in 2007. He mentioned one occasion in the mid 90s when he was hosting “The Loft Live” on Channel 31 – which was a LIVE show and broadcast from the very same studio – where they were forced to go to air with no audio. So he was at the desk writing things on a piece of card and holding it up to the camera so he could communicate with the viewers!

    This is community TV.

    Thank God we’re pre-recorded.

    And that wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. There were problems with the electronics that controlled the buzzers, lights kept blowing out, crew called in sick, there was no audience warm-up person and there were various breakdowns in communication.

    But we’re so lucky to have a damn good bunch of people working on this show. There’s a few who stand out immediately and I know they’ll have illustrious careers in television.

    Now what is really remarkable is that we somehow overcame all of the problems, kept our cool, pulled together and shot two complete episodes, which I have a feeling should come out of the editing process pretty damn well.

    To be honest, yesterday when we put the studio tape in the machine and watched it back for the first time, I was so relieved there was any recorded footage AT ALL, it could have been 45 minutes of a goat licking a sugar cube and I would have been happy.

    They mystery of how such goat footage made it onto the tape would be another matter.

    It was a small studio audience. Probably only 10 people or so. But we actually managed to get some pretty big laughs out of them. In a way it was lucky we started with a small crowd, because it didn’t matter so much we were still ironing out the bugs.

    We’ve also established a new convention on the show. If neither contestant knows the answer to a question, I’ll throw it open to the audience. There’s a great atmosphere in that studio. It really is a very powerful format: the TV game show.

    And our four contestants were great. Good general knowledge and best of all, they played along with our silly gags! And they seemed genuinely amazed they walked away with ACTUAL PRIZES! Granted, they’re just things with my face on them, but still… turns out these props are pretty expensive to get printed up… so they’re worth at least the cost of the materials.

    We’ve still got 10 shows left to go and we’ve got some pretty hilarious things planned, so if you can’t wait til June to see it on TV, come on down and join our studio audience this Thursday evening. Seats still available!

    And don’t forget to subscribe to 31 Questions on YouTube (We’ll have some sneak peak behind the scenes footage up there for you soon!).

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    31 Questions: The TV game show where YOU get to be the viewer!