In case you haven’t seen the pattern here, there’s now a new episode of “31 Questions” (the TV game show all the cool kids are ignoring) every week!
If you’re enjoying the show, it would really mean a lot to me if you could tell someone about it. If you think comedy on Australian television is fairly ordinary and you’d like to see more shows like this, all you have to do is post the video on your Facebook page or retweet @31Questions. We don’t have a huge PR department like the proper TV stations, so help me [Obi Wan Kenobi]. You’re our only hope.
Episode #3 features the gag round “Knowing Me, Knowing You” (for Alan Partridge and ABBA fans alike), where contestants are tested on their knowledge of their own personal details.
Do YOU know what colour shirt you’re wearing in your driver’s licence photo? Hey don’t cheat!
And thanks to some fabulous directing, there’s a freeze frame gag there too, which considering the video is on YouTube and you can easily pause it, means that jokes that are barely in frame still work.
There is however, a frustratingly tragic audio glitch right on the punchline of one of my favourite gags from the whole series. RIGHT ON THE MOST IMPORTANT WORD OF THE WHOLE JOKE… We didn’t discover it until it was already too late to shoot it as a pick-up shot.
We tried everything but we just couldn’t fix it. Re-recording the audio made it even more obvious. So we left it in because we figured we could just blame Channel 31 and say it was a transmission problem, which of course it isn’t. Channel 31 are fantastic.
And I only did that gag once on the show!
Damn.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
31 Questions: The TV game show where YOU get to be the…
Missed the debut episode of 31 Questions on Channel 31 Melbourne & Geelong last night? Now you can watch it again and again! And again and again and again!
I’m not quite sure how we did it, but somehow… we shot 12 episodes of 31 Questions in just six days. Not consecutively, obviously. Whoa! Don’t get me wrong!
We spread those studio dates out over six weeks…
Oh sure, that’s pretty poor by commercial TV standards. They shoot something like five “Deal or No Deals” a day. But for community TV, that is pretty spectacular.
And it’s all thanks to that great bunch of people in the photo above. We were blessed with a fantastic crew who came in week after week to work for nothing more than a sandwich and a slice of pizza.
What an incredible experience. If they had these sorts of facilities in Adelaide, I would have done a TV show years ago. But instead, I had to move to Melbourne to make this happen. But hey, can’t complain 😉
It’s given me the opportunity to work with some exceptionally talented people…
And I’ve made some new friends along the way…
The actual taping of the last two shows on May 17 went off mostly without a hitch. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There was a hitch.
During the final round of the final show, the tape malfunctioned and stopped recording. It also caused the back-up recorder to stop as well. So we lost the last segment and annoyingly had to re-shoot it.
So that being the case, you may notice a few in-jokes about deja vu towards the end of episode 13.
But these things happen. We’re lucky the guys and girls in the control room noticed it early and we didn’t lose more footage. And luckily for us, that was the only time that happened to us on the whole series.
That fear was always at the back of my mind. I could just imagine shooting two episodes back to back, only to then discover none of it had been recorded. It’s every TV-maker’s worst nightmare.
But thankfully that didn’t happen and it’s now all “in the can”, or more accurately, that little plastic case the DV tapes come in.
And before I forget, a BIG THANK YOU to the many people who made up our studio audience. Our last two nights in the studio had our biggest audiences to date. And it really made the whole experience so much better.
Fortunately also, we were able to record the important second half of the Gerard Kotlowy cardboard cutout gag. See previous blog entry.
I think cardboard cutouts are up there with boats and golf in terms of hilarious concepts. We had a lot of fun with that cardboard cutout:
Actually that video pretty much sums up the show. A few people goofing around while others freak out.
As for 2D Gerard… he seems to be developing a mind of his own…
He’s now taken his rightful place on permanent display in my apartment. I’ve set him up just inside the entrance.
The first time I arrived home after setting this up, I forgot “Cardboard Gerard” was there and upon opening the door I experienced one second of absolute terror as for some reason there was a suited screaming man in my home. I suspected that would happen. Hilarious.
However, I’m less certain how to explain this… When I arrived home the NEXT night, it was almost as if Cardboard Gerard was expecting me…
An additional side effect I’m now faced with is the prospect of finding places in my apartment for all the other props and tidbits we used on 31 Questions.
A prospect I’m very much enjoying…
So we now move on to the NEXT stage of television… the editing.
This may take a while.
In the mean time, I’m proud to announce OUR TIMESLOT!
Episodes of 31 Questions will be broadcast for the first time Saturdays 10PM on Channel 31 Melbourne & Geelong – starting 9 June – and repeated Fridays 1.30AM from 15 June.
It’s not exactly the timeslot we were expecting, but hey, we’ll take it!
I’ve done radio shows in worse timeslots. Who could forget 2007’s “Brain Damage” on Radio Adelaide 101.5FM, Wednesday nights midnight to 1AM, hilariously wedged between “The Albanian Program” and five hours of the BBC World Service?
Everyone, that’s who.
If you’re outside of Melbourne and Geelong, sit tight. We’re looking at other community TV stations around Australia. And there’s YouTube as well. So there’ll be no excuses for not watching 😉
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!
What started out as a pretty crappy year for me, really picked up about half way through, and ended on a high.
Since finishing journalism at RMIT Uni last year, I literally applied for 75 jobs between October 2010 and May 2011, to no success. It was extremely demoralising. Even more so because I’m a genius, and most people don’t seem to have the time to notice. Also, I’m terrible in job interviews.
But it just so happened I was at the right place at the right time with MTR. I started as a Melbourne Talk Radio panel operator in June. And in October I started working full time on The Steve Vizard Show. It’s turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. Great people. Lots of laughs. A few tears. And some great radio. Very much looking forward to continuing in 2012.
This is why I moved to Melbourne.
Something that’s gone a little less successfully, was my Channel 31 TV game show “31 Questions”. After actually being canceled in February, we managed to get un-canceled in May and we shot a second pilot on June 29. It went very well and certainly one of the highlights of my year:
We had a spanner thrown in the works when some clown at RMIT University decided they wanted to make it as difficult as possible for people to use their television studio. And for the last 6 months we’ve been waiting for the go ahead to present the pilot to Channel 31 (which might I add, has already been filmed. It’s sitting on a DVD ready to go). We’ve neither been approved nor rejected. And we’re hoping (yet again) we’ll get to make a 13-episode series in early 2012.
And if we get a “no”, then we’ll obviously be looking at other options, because this is what we want to do. We want to make TV. It’s incredible how many people are out there trying to tear you down. But I can assure you I will never give up. NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
I’ve made a few other TV appearances this year. To save you time, here are a selection of hilarious highlights:
It’s been a year of highs and lows. But I think the high highs make the low lows worth it. And I do believe that for the eighth year in a row, this has been the best year of my life.
Professionally. Creatively. Socially.
And I’m still loving Melbourne.
I’m now looking forward to heading back to Adelaide for Christmas and the New Year. See the family, old friends and shoot some more Too Easy!
But I’ll be back in Melbourne for 2012. I have a feeling next year is going to be something special.
So have yourselves a merry little Christmas and all that crap. See you on the other side.
