David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: TV

  • 31 Questions iPilot 2.0

    Six thumbs up? Or a bunch of well-dressed criminals getting ready to surrender their fingerprints? You decide.

    Yes! The 31 Questions Re-pilot, Pilot Mach 2, or iPilot 2.0 if you will, was successfully recorded to tape on June 29, 2011.

    The evening at RMIT University’s fabulous Studio A went very well. The set looked great. Wonderful lighting. All the mics and cameras worked. The crew turned up (well, most of them). The gags worked (well, most of them). The questions were just the right level of difficulty (unlike last time – way too hard!). And most importantly, it was a fun night of TV-making.

    It’s community television, so it’s virtually impossible to avoid using the term “shambles” at some point. But we embraced our shortcomings and kept on with the show.

    That’s right folks! 31 Questions. The show that keeps the mistakes the other game shows cut out!

    The day before the rehearsal, which we had the previous Wednesday, our original score-keeper and glamorous assistant, Minky Cooper, decided to quit the show (via Facebook. A sad sign of the times…). So we had less than 24 hours to find a replacement.

    Incredibly I was able to find the lovely Melanie Valentine at extremely short notice to take over the role. And considering it was her first time inside a TV studio, she did very well.

    Alasdair “Al” Tremblay-Birchcall also gave a fabulous performance as the official moderator. That guy cracks me up.

    Special thanks also to our very talented, and forgiving, contestants: Julia and Andrew. They were both an absolute pleasure to work with.

    And a big thanks to the 16 or so strong crew. Without all you we’d just be making a silent film in the dark.

    But most importantly, THIS pilot went SO, SO, SO MUCH BETTER than our first pilot back in November. Instead of 4 pages of post-show improvement notes, this time I only had 6 key points. And they were all procedural or organisational issues, not to do with the fundamental concept of the show.

    The pilot is currently being edited by the talented Anthony McCormack. We’ll soon be handing it in to the good people at RMITV Student Television and Channel 31 Melbourne for their approval.

    And hopefully they’ll let us film 12 more!

    I’ll keep you updated.

    But if you’d like more immediate updates, or you want to check out more production photos, make sure you LIKE 31 QUESTIONS ON FACEBOOK. It’s all up there. And SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE. All episodes (& some extra bonus material!), that’s where they’ll be.

    Kind regards
    David M. Green
    Mayor of TV-Land

  • Lights, Camera, Maction! Ep #5 (TV’s “Bondi Vet”)

    Horah! It’s episode 5 of Sam Mac’s “Lights, Camera, Maction!” guest starring Dr Chris Brown (AKA The Bondi Vet – who turns out to be a pretty good actor), as well as myself and the delightful and clearly gullible Minky Cooper for another escapade into stuff girls like.

    This time we have a slumber party… Enjoy!

    And once again, cheers to Simon Eastwood behind the camera.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Gotta love that robe.

  • Everybody needs good extras, Neighbours.

    Last week I made my network television “acting” debut on the iconic Australian soap opera “Neighbours”.

    It was a fun, if not surreal experience, even if it was just a background extra in the coffee shop, which to my surprise was renamed “Harold’s Store”. Apparently this happened some years ago, long after I stopped watching semi-regularly.

    On March 23 I drove out to the studios in Melbourne’s fabulous eastern suburb of Nunawading to join the ranks of famous Australian personalities such as Kylie Minogue, Guy Pierce, Russell Crowe, and that lanky Irish guy who’s name I don’t know, who all started with minor roles and bit parts on Neighbours.

    I particularly enjoyed seeing what REALLY happens in the Neighbours’ coffee shop; the steam machine to simulate making a coffee; ads for fictional Erinsborough businesses on the community notice board; plastic fruit and cans of food that not only expired in 2006, but are also glued to the shelves.

    This wasn’t the first time I’d “acted” as an extra. I do have experience at not looking at cameras and pretending to have conversations with people without actually making any sound, having extra-ed on an episode of “McLeod’s Daughters” a few years ago (a scene that was cut), and more recently on Seven’s “Winners & Losers” (I’ll blog about that one in a few weeks!).

    Obviously TV shows take a while to edit, and I neglected to ask what episode number they were filming. So to be honest, I completely forgot about the whole thing until an old high school friend from Adelaide (who I hadn’t spoken to in about 5 years) spotted me floating around in the background on TV last week.

    Naturally I missed all of the broadcasts. But with the aid of online streaming technology, I was able to watch back last week’s shows and locate my three scenes.

    Because you’re obviously a busy man/woman, I’ll now present highlights from those scenes, showcasing my brilliant and subtle acting skills as a background extra:

    Episode 6167 – 24 May 2011

    Coincidentally, my first Neighbours appearance happened to go to air on my birthday. Cheers Ten Network!

    That’s me in the orange shirt (which is actually my shirt), pretending to shop at the cluttered single shelf at Harold’s Store. In reality I was just going through the stock and checking the expiration dates.

    It was quite a bizarre combination of perishables. Pasta sauce and wasabi peas in the same display basket? I can’t imagine a real shop organising their produce in such a higgledy piggledy fashion. Harold wouldn’t last ten minutes in the cut-throat real world of small business ownership.

    From this angle it looks like I’m leaning on Scott McGregor’s muscular shoulder:

    Episode 6169 – 26 May 2011

    Two days later I was back to steal a newspaper:

    Much to the production team’s credit, that’s not just an old copy of the Herald Sun with “Erinsborough Star” pasted on the cover. They’ve actually gone to the effort to make real newspapers, complete with fictional stories about various local characters, written in the proper hard news reverse pyramid style!

    I had a chance to read a couple of articles while we did a few takes.

    Note also two other extras have returned to Harold’s Store, having swapped tables this time:

    Episode 6170 – 27 May 2011

    The very next day, I was back at Harold’s Store! I really think the audience was starting to become familiar with my character’s newspaper-reading, coffee-drinking, general loitering in the background kinda style.

    And this time I seem to just hang out there for the whole day:

    One of the best things about being an extra in the coffee shop was the free food! They actually have a real kitchen on site, and the production team routinely brings out real food and beverages for the extras to snack on during the scene.

    In the above scene I’m drinking a latte. After an initial sip I realised they’d forgotten the sugar. I noticed there was some sugar on the table. However, when I went to tip some into my glass, the sugar remained stuck, fused to the bottom of the jar.

    One of the cast actors offered me some advice, “Uh, I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” It had obviously been there for YEARS.

    They gave me a delicious danish as well. Some of the other extras had sandwiches. One guy even had a hamburger with chips. It was a pretty sweet deal – getting paid to sit there silently and eat – especially considering I skipped breakfast that morning.

    Here I am eating a cupcake:

    These coffee shop scenes appeared throughout the episode. And I’m in every one of them. I’m guessing my character doesn’t have anywhere else to be.

    Towards the end of the episode the lighting on the other side of the front window was dimmed to indicate night time “outside”.

    I grabbed one more coffee for the road, as veteran Neighbours resident Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis) chats with Kate Ramsay (Ashleigh Brewer) in the foreground:

    And with my take away coffee, which in reality was just an empty cup, I departed Harold’s Store – and Erinsborough – probably forever.

    That’s my striped shirt on the other side of the door:

    Now to launch my singing career!

    You’ll be able to watch these episodes online in their entirety for a few more days, if you want a less static, but more drawn-out experience.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Did you hear Madge died?

  • Who’s this twit?

    Well what d’ya know? I did it again!

    Slightly less witty than my debut Q&A re-tweet on March 7:

    But a thrill all the same!

    Last night’s episode of ABC TV’s “Q&A” was broadcast live from Albury-Wodonga (obviously they weren’t in both towns. I forget which one they were in. But it was certainly one of them).

    The main theme of the evening was rural Australia. Not having much to contribute to that discussion, it was more a coincidence that my love of high speed rail would also be beneficial to “rural folk”.

    There’s also the possibility someone at the ABC “Twitter Desk” has their own high speed rail agenda, with fellow RMIT journalism student Emma Buckley Lennox having her fast locomotion-themed tweet broadcast as well:

    I am jealous her tweet appeared beneath Tony Windsor. I do love that man.

    I didn’t get much response after my tweet this time. I’m guessing that’s because Osama Bin Laden was providing a distraction from regular current affairs viewers, and probably also because the theme of last night’s Q&A was “rural Australia”, which, let’s face it, probably doesn’t rate high on the typical Australian’s care meter.

    No doubt these two factors contributed to below average TV ratings. I also noticed the “#qanda” hash-tag wasn’t “trending” last night either. Case closed!

    Until next time.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Resident twit.

  • The Twitter Holy Grail: Retweeted by Q&A!

    I couldn’t believe it.

    Last night was the first time I’d twittered along to ABC TV’s political discussion programme “Q&A” and my second ever use of the #qanda hash-tag was put on TV!

    They were talking about the Tea Party movement in the United States, and whether that sort of movement would ever happen in Australia.

    My first tweet was: “I think someone needs a tea bag”. But then I thought of a better pun I had a feeling would be right up the ABC’s alley…

    I’m not entirely sure how they decide which tweets to put on TV. I figure there’s probably one guy who scans the twitter feed and somehow transfers the relevant/funny ones. I’ve heard the show gets tens of thousands of tweets during the hour, so I was quite surprised and very honoured to have achieved the Twitter “Holy Grail” of every comedian and journalist alike, especially on what was essentially my first attempt.

    Within seconds I had about 10 replies on Facebook and Twitter, including one from The Sydney Morning Herald’s Glenda Kwek:

    curious_scribe yes, @david_m_green, a #greenteaparty sounds good. Healthy bowels for all! #qanda

    And I liked this one too from my Internet friend in Townsville:

    Pantomime_Horse Perhaps they’ll hire Hugh Jackman to do the advertisements for a Green Tea Party. #qanda RT @David_M_Green How about a Green Tea Party?

    Several of my friends in Melbourne and Adelaide inform me they gasped in amazement when they saw my name on TV, as did my cousin Laura in Canberra, who apparently nearly fell of her chair. Even one of my RMIT journalism lecturers, Alex Wake, who was watching from the Solomon Islands, allegedly “laughed and laughed”.

    Hehehehe… *sigh*… Can I have a job now?

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    As seen beneath Gail Kelly