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BRIEF BACKGROUNDER:
Martyn Green started working in feature films as an assistant editor
involved in war films like "633 Squadron", and "Operation Crossbow",
a comedy, "A Shot In The Dark", and Hammer Films' "Dracula, Prince
of Darkness". Then, in his early 20's he became a combat
cameraman in South Vietnam for NBC News. While studying
anthropology in California in the early 70's, in the summer holidays
he worked as a cameraman for ABC-affiliate TV stations.
Moving back to Asia in the mid-70's, he went on to become a
freelance cameraman-producer for the BBC and WTN (now APTN), as well
as for German Television, and ATV in Hong Kong.
He has lived in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, and now, simply
"based in Asia", he provides coverage for television news
and continues to shoot video productions while
writing for a number of international magazines, as well as
professional and consumer video, audio or broadcast magazines in
Britain, Australia, and America. In addition, he writes a
monthly column for AnalogZone, the professional electronics
engineers' on-line e-zine.
MARTYN K. E. GREEN
-- Born in London, England
-- B.A. degree in Anthropology, Magna Cum Laude, (California State
University)
-- Cert. TESOL diploma (Trinity College, London)
PRINT, FILM, TELEVISION AND RADIO EXPERIENCE:
It was when he was employed in the British feature film industry,
and at the BBC in London, that Martyn Green first started writing
professionally -- about the exciting world of film and TV
production.
His first paid-for article, written when he was just 20 years old,
was an analysis of the editing techniques used in the film '633
Squadron' -- on which he had been an assistant editor. The
same year, he wrote some additional dialogue for the film, 'A Shot
In The Dark'and a year later wrote a whole additional scene for
'Dracula -- Prince of Darkness' when it appeared that the film would
be under-length.
Then, at the age of 22, Martyn Green set out on a three-and-a-half
year working tour around the world. Travelling mostly alone,
he toured nearly 50 countries, including 16 months in South Vietnam,
before arriving in the United States, to take up studies in
California State University, Fresno.
During the VIETNAM War, after working initially as a freelance
photographer and war correspondent for the AP and UPI news agencies,
Martyn became a combat cameraman for NBC News, Saigon. He
filmed and wrote his own stories, all over South Vietnam -- from the
Delta to the DMZ. (A story of his experiences there has been
published no less than seven times in various magazines, including
Asia Pacific Broadcasting, and America's Video Systems.)
In university in CALIFORNIA, and at Columbia University, New York,
Martyn was able to put his writing skills to good use, academically,
writing many term papers and reports, which helped him achieve a GPA
of 3.54 (more A's than B's). He later edited some of his term
papers and sold them to magazines as articles. One of them,
about inter-racial relationships, went on to be published six times,
in different countries.
Employment while studying in the United States included working as a
part-time photographer and media assistant in the university's
Instructional Media Centre; a news cameraman and film editor for a
local television station in Fresno, California; a cameraman for
ABC-affiliated stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco; and later,
in New York, as a location sound recordist/audio tape editor; and an
assistant film editor for NBC Television News in New York City.
Shortly before he was due to graduate from Columbia University (June
'74), he was sent to IRAN as a United Nations Volunteer (Media
Specialist) for a year.
Arriving in HONG KONG in the mid-70's, Martyn Green soon got a job
at the government radio station, Radio Hong Kong (later Radio TV
Hong Kong). He was a radio interviewer, confronting many
interesting personalities for news and current affairs programmes,
editing the recorded tapes himself, and writing the cue list and
introductions for the on-air presenter, along with suggesting
appropriate music.
Martyn went on to become a news sub-editor at Commercial Radio, in
1976-77, and within three months was made solely responsible for the
overnight news shift, re-writing all the incoming wire service news
reports for broadcast on the AM channel. He also read the news
in the early morning broadcasts.
He joined Asian Sources Media as assistant editor in 1977, and for
18 months helped edit an electronics magazine, which entailed
a large amount of re- writing of non-native speaker's
English-language reports. This is where he gained invaluable
experience in the revising of nominally "English" reports, as some
of them required a great deal of re-writing to put them into good
order.
Not surprisingly then, in 1978, he set up his own company and became
a Hong Kong-based freelance writer-photographer, writing for travel
magazines, women's magazines, airline, lifestyle, computer, and
broadcast magazines all over the world.
TAIWAN (1983-88)
Following his seven years in Hong Kong, in TAIWAN, Martyn Green
spent the first two months studying Mandarin Chinese in Taipei,
before becoming the editor of an electronics magazine -- generating
many of the stories, and even writing some of the ads. Later,
he became the editor of an electronics and computer magazine.
Also in Taiwan, Martyn had his own half-hour recorded
English-language radio interview programme on ICRT, "Town & Around"
-- which he researched, interviewed, edited, scripted, mixed and
presented, entirely on his own.
Later, he became the Taipei Correspondent for the London Daily
Telegraph newspaper, and a cameraman-producer for London's Worldwide
Television News (WTN, now APTN), doing news reports and public
affairs documentaries for Roving Report. At the same time he
was also the Taiwan Correspondent for Commercial Radio, Hong Kong,
and RTHK.
While he had been a student at California State University, Martyn
Green had taught a course in film production. He later had a film
production class at Hong Kong's Baptist University, and in Taiwan he
also taught film and video production to a class drawn from local
government film units.
SINGAPORE (1989-94)
Moving to Singapore, Martyn set up a new company, and worked as a
freelance writer-photographer, writing for a large number of
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, U.K. and U.S. magazines about a
variety of subjects, although increasingly concentrating on the
subject of computers, and television broadcasting.
He also worked as a cameraman-producer, and did several government
and industrial video programmes, plus filming for WTN in Vietnam,
and for the BBC in Vietnam, and Cambodia.
He travelled to the Seychelles, and to Papua New Guinea, to do
stories, and his article about filming in Papua New Guinea was
published several times in professional broadcast or video
magazines, like Britain's "Image Technology".
HONG KONG FROM MID-90's
In HONG KONG again, initially Martyn worked once more for Worldwide
Television News, (now APTN) as an independent cameraman-producer,
along with Video News International in America, while continuing to
write for a large number of local and international technology
publications -- such as South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Business
magazine, International Broadcasting Asia, Asia-Pacific
Broadcasting, Computimes, Computrade -- etc.
As an independant writer and photographer, Martyn Green has
travelled extensively, particularly in Southeast Asia. He has
been published in at least eight different languages -- English,
French, German, Polish, Greek, Estonian, Malay, and Chinese.
His articles have appeared in publications on the China mainland,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines,
Brunei, Australia, America, Britain -- and several other countries.
As an established writer, as well as articles in professional and
trade magazines, Martyn has produced columns for consumer magazines
in Great Britain, and Australia. He currently writes a regular
monthly column for a professional electronics engineers' e-zine,
AnalogZone.
IN CONCLUSION
Martyn Green has a very wide range of experience, and interests,
particularly travel and other cultures. He has travelled in no
less than 76 countries, including Western and Eastern Europe, the
former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Central America, Australia,
South and Southeast Asia, and China. He has worked in ten of
them -- the U.K., Germany, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the U.S.
Having worked many times on his own -- his biggest (six-months)
project was to take the world's first portable computer, and 100 kgs
of hi-tech equipment, to the summit of the highest mountain in
Southeast Asia, East Malaysia's 4,101 metre Mt Kinabalu, in 1989 --
Martyn believes he is better equipped than most, to take on
virtually any new challenge.
There are a number of recommendations from media organisations
like RTHK, Asia Television, German TV, and various others, and some
of these exist as scanned-in JPG files that are either elsewhere on
this website, or can be forwarded to you by email.
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