Alan Brough joins me on the latest episode of David M. Green and Other Famous People. You can download the podcast from iTunes or listen below for Alan Brough’s circa 2007 thoughts on fridges, acting, comedy, Spicks and Specks, Kevin Rudd vs. Julia Gillard and early 90s New Zealand butter commercials.
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New episode of my other podcast The Good Show coming very soon.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
In pod form.
A wise man once told me breakfast time last Friday that the 6th episode is usually when a TV show hits its stride. He was proved right once again with OUR 6th episode, which was laid down on tape Monday, 22 April 2013.
We were honoured to have veteran TV and radio performer JOHN BLACKMAN in the studio, who I fondly remember from a childhood spent watching “Hey, Hey It’s Saturday!” and my teenage years listening to the breakfast show on Adelaide’s Triple M (on the rare occasion I woke up before 9am).
DMG Fun Fact! I did actually have my clock radio defaulted to Triple M circa 2002 (when chart music started not doing it for me any more) until 2007 when “Get This” was taken off the air. Except for that period in 2003/04 during that weird format switch with SAFM. But that’s another rant.
John popped up several times throughout the episode. He also brought Dicky Knee and I got to do some schtick with him! It’s quite bizarre being on the OTHER SIDE of Dicky Knee. I have a whole new level of respect and sympathy for Daryl Somers, who really was just at the mercy of John Blackman.
We also had a huge studio audience turnout this week. Maybe 30 people (including my sister Hannah all the way from Adelaide!). And a couple of dozen people in that little RMITV studio makes for a great atmosphere.
John Blackman, what a pro. And what an absolute pleasure to work with. We had his segments roughly scripted, but there was room to ad lib and go with the flow. He added a bunch of extra gags on the fly. Just wonderful. The way television should be.
Have I thanked Antonio for setting this one up? I haven’t? Does the question count as a thank you? Urgh… Big thanks to our fabulous director and media industry player Antonio Cafasso for arranging for Mr Blackman’s 31Q cameo!
And, unbelievably, John Blackman had such a great time on 31 Questions he actually called 3AW on his drive home and gave us a plug! He even called me a “honey”.
At least I think that’s what he said…
Hear for yourself, audio courtesy of 3AW:
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Bruce Mansfield on 31 Questions next… what do you think?
Aside from Mr Blackman, the rest of the show went splendidly. Two more upstanding contestants. Great crowd. Great crew. Gags aplenty. Flushing things down the toilet (literally). You know, the usual.
That’s most of the team down there. Best in community television.
Reminder, you can join us in the studio this Monday 29 April for our next taping!
Join the event on Facebook, or materialise 8.30PM:
Studio A, Level 2, Building 12
RMIT University
on Melbourne’s fabulous Swanston Street
(near the corner of Franklin Street)
See you there, then and who!
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Honey to work with.
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 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.
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