BBC: Visiting Professionals

CBBC - Sarah Muller

Gift of the Gab - need good words to present work, you need to be enthusiastic, show your passion for your work.

Minecraft has the most popular and biggest children audience - competing with online games - Lego is another example - Youtube is more popular compared to CBBC. British Animation - finally getting extra money to make production - Now is the time to get your ideas out there!

Back in the day - had to have a lot of money to broadcast - idea - hand painting the animation which took a lot of time and money. You will be able to get your idea seen by someone - downside being the lack of openings for the adult based animations. Where is anyone going to gave money to make these animations? These openings are not very big - Adult Swim, show all these and begin to trickle to our audience.

There are 34 channels dedicated to kids in the uk - CBBC get the most of these views, the closest being CITV - people now say that Youtube is their favourite channel. Think about how your content would be suitable for different devices - eg phones - tablets - iplayer - watch in different rooms, whilst traveling etc.

There is less loyalty to watching content, it is now all about brands - Cartoon Network dont want CBBC to have the Scooby Doo Show - Warner Brothers want them too as they get more views. Strange Hill High - British comedy writers - a move in children's animation in which voice actors are dubbed over with high pitched voices for comedy - they don't like that. All the animation so far is old, this will change in the next year - No one has tried to use puppets for stop motion in a tv series before.

Horror based content - adult comedy writers again - emphasis on doing something differently. They are looking for laugh out loud animations, that is character driven eg Spongebob Squarepants - Preferably for 6-9 year olds - understanding the characters and how they relate to each other before even making the animation. 11 minute episodes around tea time - CBBC schedule, in an hour block - it has to stand out, not a lot of room to add anything else.

Pace for animation has gotten faster, pace, pace , pace - eats a lot of the story -  Tone needs to be suitable! Use common sense!

Visual style - experiment - advancement in technology allows you to do so, need to work in harmony. Needs to work with your story.

Spring Boards - Premise - scene by scene, the script. Drafts - writing your scripts then a polish adding jokes/gags - what could be improved. Story writing ain't rocket science, it's much much much harder. Emotional connection - whose story is it? what do they want? what do they learn? what obstacles can we put in their way? Audience? Simple questions to bear in mind.

Final Draft Software - If writing seriously you will need to use this software. Board driven - no script at all - fast posed visual humour was all the rage a couple years ago but they dont agree - goes down to one individual. STORY IS VITAL!

I really enjoyed this talk, it was very informative and gave us a taste of what it is like in the industry, the reality of what you need to do, and that your ideas will not always be accepted the first time. I was quite intrigued with how they personally wanted something like Family Guy, Futurama and The Simpsons, due to the adult based humour in them all. The Simpsons can get away with a few adult based jokes as the show is aimed at children however Futurama which I prefer over The Simpsons, has a quite mature humour that would go over the young audience's head. However having said that both my younger siblings at a young age watched Futurama and loved it, even though the some of the gags were not understood. I would like to start making a script for a series in which I would love to make a teaser trailer for next year for the extended practice, and I think I would like to aim it at a young audience that would watch Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and CBBC. This talk has really helped me with the thinking process for the premise and character connections.