Live From the Studio

Nev told me about his experience being part of the studio audience for some game show, I think it was Have You Been Paying Attention? and it sounded really fun. He said it was interesting seeing how things work behind the scenes, though he did say it ruined some of the magic of the show. I was keen to go because I wanted to see how the professionals film things.

So.

If you like to watch The Yearly / Weekly With Charlie Pickering, and you don't want the magic spoiled, stop reading now.

A few more words.

And more.

Just.

So.

That.

Someone doesn't accidentally read something.

This should be enough.

I managed to get a ticket for the studio audience for this year's The Yearly with Charlie Pickering. It seems the ABC studio has moved from Elsternwick to Southbank, which is much more convenient for me - especially as we were asked to be at the studio at 4pm. My boss was kind enough to let me leave early for the day.

It nearly ended in disaster, as they were checking bags, and asked if we had any glass bottles. I had my glass container for lunch. They asked if I had a knife, but fortunately, I only had a spoon (stealth knifey-spoony game, how Australian). They let me keep my glass container and my spoon. We were also given a raffle ticket.

I have to admit, I've never seen this show in my life, and I had no idea who Charlie Pickering even was. Let me just say though, his Wikipedia page lists his age as 40, and he does not look 40. I was going to guess 30. I thought he was younger than me. Anyway, I figured the show was a recap of the year, given the description on Eventbrite:

The Yearly: can such a big year in news be covered in an hour of television? The team from The Weekly are joined by surprise guests as they relive the biggest and silliest stories of 2017 and try to work out what the heck just happened.

It seems that there's a lot of set-up that's required. There was a guy named Danny whose job seemed to be entertaining the audience while things were happening in the background. He told us that we had to laugh at everything we found funny, even if it was only slightly funny. And we had to laugh out loud, because the microphones couldn't hear us laughing internally. He also said we should expect to have to clap for longer than is comfortable. We went through a brief safety talk.

While everything was being set-up, Charlie arrived, and it seemed to be a mini-IAmA. Of course, the first question was, "What happened to Red Symons?" His reply was that it was still a mystery to them, and he seemed genuine, but it's hard to tell. The next question, from Danny, was, "When they fired him, did they just give him the gong?" There were a spattering of other questions, and Charlie was really funny while answering them. Then the stage manager signalled that they were ready to go and the filming started.

Side note: Though the picture in the background shows the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it's not actually a picture of Sydney, since you can also see Flinders St Station (twice), the bell tower (?) from Perth, and I don't remember where the other bridge comes from. Apparently they get that question a lot. I tried my best, but here is my "enhanced" zoom of the background image in question:

Here's where the magic disappeared. I originally thought shows like this were off-the-cuff, with comedians just shooting the breeze, while being funny. The entire show was scripted. There were a few teleprompters around the place (I really need to get myself one of those for my next movies so people aren't looking down at scripts). The second part that broke the magic was that he had a few takes. The editors do a great job at making the entire show seem seamless. But the re-takes meant we had to try and clap and laugh as genuinely as we did the first time we heard all the jokes - something that's pretty easy for me, as MrFodder always makes fun of how I can't stop laughing at the same jokes over and over again. The last thing that I learned was that the "teleconference" bit was all pre-recorded. Charlie was wearing the same clothes he was wearing in the video, and his hair was done the same way. I wonder if he always wears the same clothes to make it possible to re-use shots?

There seemed to be a continuity person, as there was a gag that Charlie did where he messed around with some stuff on the table, and they had to re-shoot it. He was going to do it from a certain part, but someone pointed out that the position of the stuff on the table would be inconsistent. There was also another part where he gets up from his chair and they had to re-shoot that from the top as well because the chair was at a different angle. It seems like such a fun job, like spot the difference on steroids.

Even though it was scripted, it was really funny. I didn't have to force myself to laugh once. Oh! And the best part is that Danny likes KFC. The second best part is that they mentioned Adam West. All the guests seemed genuinely funny. I guess it's scripted so that they can all stay on track and film the show within a reasonable amount of time without the need to touch-up jokes as they go. There was only one case where they had a joke, but came up with something better on the spot.

Overall, it took about 2.5 hours to film everything, including the promo shots, i.e. the commercials. We were also the "studio audience" for the commercial asking people to be in the studio audience for Hard Quiz with Tom Gleeson. That's on the 14th of  Feb 2018, and tickets are on Eventbrite if you're interested. Between watching Charlie, we also got to see the news clips that they would insert into the show. Obviously, Trump was mentioned a lot. I didn't know about Kellyanne Conway, but wow. I'm sure they just cherry-picked all the stupid sounding stuff she said, but some of it was pretty stupid. And this is on national television, where surely someone had scripted what she was going to say. I wonder if her script-writer is secretly anti-Trump and is purposely setting her up to look bad.

Side note #2: today I discovered a word that relates to me so much - apophenia:

Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to attribute meaning to perceived connections or patterns between seemingly unrelated things.

I won't spoil the entire show, but since it's just a recap of the big news events of the year, there's not that much to spoil. I feel that if I kept a closer tab on Australian politics, I would have gotten a lot more out of the show. There were a few moments where I didn't understand the audience reaction.

Speaking of, I'm so curious how they're going to edit the laughter and clapping. There were a lot of moments where the audience was clapping and laughing while someone was talking, and I couldn't hear them at all. I'm looking forward to seeing the final product, and comparing it to what we saw as audience members. I don't know if it'll make it into the final cut, but one of the special guests was wearing 3/4 pants and runners, because he said he only gets filmed from the waist upwards, so it doesn't matter what he wears below that. A man after my own heart.

I had a great time, but I never found out what the raffle ticket was for, and it's really bugging me now. My guess would be that it's for the people who arrived early enough to get a seat.