Post by Holly Colvin (s3832107) and Max Coloretti (s3900188)
Title: Peel or No Peel
Producers: Max Coloretti and Holly Colvin
Synopsis:
Welcome to Peel or No Peel, the game show where the points mean fuckall and we somewhat give a damn about the real world issues surrounding us. Peel or No Peel bares some resemblance to Deal Or No Deal and other cliché game shows minus the hot babes and cash rewards. Instead Peel or No Peel takes a deep dive (well actually it’s quite shallow) into how the COVID19 Pandemic has impacted the fruit farming industry. As a result of COVID travel restrictions, Australian fruit farmers have experienced a significant labour shortage in fruit pickers and in-turn, catastrophically low financial returns. What used to be a popular seasonal job for working holiday makers and students is now inaccessible. Citrus Australia CEO Nathan Hancock stated that “There is not enough scheduled [workers] to come in with the seasonal worker program…and there are certainly not enough working holiday makers or students around to make up the shortfall.” This has had a detrimental impact on our farmers leaving them with an abundance of fruit that no amount of local hands could pick. Peel or No Peel explores and interrogates this issue, with little insights to offer. In fact, you won’t learn much from watching the show but you’ll have a damn, good time!
Co-hosts of the show, Holly Colvin and Max Coloretti, poll 3 contestants to hear their thoughts on the matter whilst additionally quizzing them on all things fruity. These contestants compete head to head (to head) for the chance to win the most dissatisfying prize any game show has offered. Seriously, it’s an abomination…
So buckle up and prepare yourselves for a fruitful 7 minutes of reimagined game segments, awful fruit puns and interviews from Australia’s D grade farming experts.
It’s Process and What We Got Out of It:
This was incredibly fun to create! We were tasked together to bring the idea of Peel or No Peel the Game Show to life. We assigned each other certain roles throughout production to make the process easier and divide the tasks equally. Holly was tasked with some of the script writing, researching, co-hosting and presenting the show, finding contestants and all communication with contestants, along with some administrative tasks. Max took on the role of co-writing/co-hosting the show whilst editing the piece as well.
Throughout this process we learned a lot regarding the overall production of comedy news shows and game shows. We learned an immense amount about the preparation that needs to go into the production and all the behind-the-scenes work that’s involved in productions like these. Furthermore, we learned a lot about what’s involved in comedy news and some of its key concerns and focal points. The show that we have produced includes elements of parody and discursive integration. Discursive integration was a concept we had both never heard of prior to studying this subject.
The definition of discursive integration provided by Geoffrey Baym an assistant professor of Media studies explains discursive integration as a way of speaking about, understanding, and acting within the world defined by the permeability of form and the fluidity of content (Baym, 2005, p. 262). We believe that we discursively integrated and blended together comedy and humour, news, political conversation and additionally we parodied the conventions of a game show. We constructed a creative blend of the conventions of regular news and fiction.
To summarise, we learned a lot this semester. We were able to put total trust and faith in each other, we have learned some key concerns of the studio and were able to apply them in our work and we both had so much fun being involved in a virtual game show!
References
Geoffrey Baym (2005) The Daily Show: Discursive Integration andthe Reinvention of Political Journalism, Political Communication, 22:3, 259-276