Last Saturday I was able to attend the first ever Little Airplane Academy on Preschool Television Writing, held in downtown New York (Southstreet Seaport) at the studios of Little Airplane Productions, makers of Oobi, The Wonder Pets, 3rd & Bird, and now some new shows like the absolutely fantastic Small Potatoes, seen here. I attended one of their three-day workshops on children's television production last year, but this one-day seminar was the first devoted exclusively to writing. It was run primarily by Susan Kim, a freelance writer for dozens of shows, from Square One back in my own childhood up to modern things like Arthur, Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, and of course Little Airplane's shows. Susan ran a great workshop: the day was divided essentially into four parts: exercises and activities to help us re-access childhood, to re-understand children and their experiences; a review of screenwriting mechanics and techniques; a discussion of the business of children's television writing; and then a final session with Little Airplane founder Josh Selig about creating and selling original properties.
My main focus in going was to learn more about #3 above--the business of making it in this business--but I assumed that I would have to patiently pass through the creative portions to get there. I was very pleasantly surprised, therefore, at how useful the opening exercises actually turned out to be. When I approach a show or writing assignment I try to think holistically about the curriculum, the characters, the structure, and what would be humorous or engaging for the target age group, but I've never really taken the time to sit back and warm up by reaccessing my own childhood. Writers of novels and poems and other media warm up and keep trim with little prompts and exercises, like free-association exercises, writing quick flash fiction, journaling, etc., so why do I think that a writer of children's television can remain fresh and creative without similar exercises? Also, doing routine exercises like these show real respect for the audience. Since we as authors do not belong to our target demographic--something pretty rare (since usually mystery authors read mystery novels, romance authors read romance novels, etc., but no matter how much Nick Jr. we children's screenwriters watch we still won't ever literally be children again)--it really pays dividends to keep ourselves in touch with what it was like when we did belong to that group. And it helps us avoid cliches, talking down to kids, being pedantic, moralizing, and aping other more successful shows we've seen on the air. It makes the writing more fun.
The exercises I'm talking about were specifically things like writing what we remember about a photo taken during our childhood--who was there; tactile things like what we were wearing, doing, or smelling; how it was taken; where we'd seen it since. Another was remembering a specific object from kindergarten, another what we were afraid of in childhood, something specific that we thought was beautiful, a trip to the beach (or elsewhere), etc. In other words, it's all like an actor accessing his emotion memory through tactile and concrete details, although in our case we're trying to remember what it was like being a child, the universal things that will still apply to children today, their digital nativity notwithstanding. It's a great way to reach farther and farther back in your memory, regaining it with greater clarity, which is pretty cool whether you're a writer or not. Other exercises include trying to write a first-person story in a child's voice, brainstorm or free associate ideas for a kids' show when not working on a specific program or assignment, or anything else that gets you in the groove of respecting, thinking about, and speaking to children on their level. Great stuff.
Much of the mechanics of screenwriting were essentially what I'm familiar with already, although it was nice to follow one episode of 3rd & Bird from concept through premise to outline to script to screen, with examples on paper of all of those. That's great information and is the kind of area that could be explored in greater detail should Little Airplane decide to do a three-day writing seminar.
Concerning the business portion, Susan mentioned some resources I was unfamiliar with like Cynopsis Kids. The three-part pattern she gave for finding and keeping work was: 1) Write two to three specs (I have nine and am working on my tenth, which will hopefully be the last), 2) Locate companies and the right people at them (i.e. story editors and head writers mostly, as well as producers and show runners), and 3) Write a good cover letter and resume. I suppose I need to work on the latter as well as my general hustle of networking, although I have started on three new shows in the past month and am finding myself pretty busy (hence no blogging). Alternatively you can work your way up from a script assistant on a show, which is a job I've found it pretty difficult to get in the first place. You should also join ASCAP and/or BMI if you're ever going to write lyrics, which you probably are. Also, treat your story editor as your greatest ally and friend, and constantly keep them informed about everything you're doing (when you're working for them, that is). So not too much there I'm not in general trying to do, or things I didn't know about like a magical group policy for health insurance for freelance cartoon writers, but again it was nice to learn the new material I wasn't aware of and it still really helped focus my efforts. Oh, and we touched on agents. The best advice I've heard about agents was something I read a few weeks ago in an IFP publication: only take an agent that is really hungry to have you; a disinterested agent is worse than a bad one or none at all. Last Saturday Susan said she does have an agent but she still finds 80-90% of her work herself; she's glad she has an agent, though, for help with the contracts, etc.
I'm running out of time to finish this post, ironically, but I want to mention what Josh talked about in his hour. Hopefully it'll be the subject of a blog or article soon over at Planet Preschool on KidScreen, and I don't want to give anything away that I oughtn't, but here's the general idea. The most striking aphorism he gave us was: "The only difference between a writer and a show creator is a good lawyer." So there's no reason, really, to not become a show creator, so it's time I must start thinking of myself in those terms and not only continue preparing material for the KidScreen Summit in February, which I am, but also start talking to entertainment lawyers, which has always seemed like some far-off concept before.
Long story short about the approach Little Airplane is taking: with Wonder Pets they were still new enough they had to go to Nick and sell the thing outright; it was the only way they could have funded it, and Josh said he wouldn't have changed that because that's just where they were then. Now, however, not only is Little Airplane a more established company, but the nature of children's media has changed drastically over the past seven years. It's become more democratized and egalitarian, with power shifting away from the big broadcasters like Nick, Cartoon Network, and Disney and toward the producers of shows, folks like Little Airplane. So with Small Potatoes they've taken a very different approach that Josh is now calling the Blitz: they're raising funds through state's rights distribution and other outlets (licensing, online, merchandise, publishing, etc.) but they're retaining ownership themselves. And that can make all the difference. So CBeebies bought the UK rights for Small Potatoes (wisely, by the way, because the music video we saw--it's essentially a short-form all-music property--was the cutest and most engaging few minutes of preschool TV I've seen in a long time) and gave them something like 20% of their budget for a season. So now they're talking to everyone under the sun, from other broadcasters to stage troupes to puppet shows to, I don't know, magicians and everyone in between. Using facebook, twitter, etc. to build up buzz. The only drawback of this approach is monetizing it, because twitter doesn't exactly pay for content and no one's going to pay to download a video online. Hopefully it'll bring in enough attention, however, to eventually bring in a major player, one with cash that is, and a deal will be able to be struck with Little Airplane in a much better bargaining position than they were able to have seven years ago. Or the merchandizing takes off, or something else like that.
As a creator unaffiliated with an animation studio or anything I'm going to go ahead and try both approaches as much as I can with the various properties I have in development. I've got to get animators attached before I can go through the online, democratized route, but on the other hand I'd hate to see Nick Preschool snatch up a beautiful property, fire me, and ruin it. Well, let me qualify that, because having a property on Nick wouldn't exactly be heartbreaking, no matter the terms of the agreement, and they worked well, for instance, on the creation of Ni Hao, Kai-lan, which came from a person in a similar situation. Anyway, for those hoards of industry peeps reading this and asking what I'm working on specifically, one example is on some characters developed by the animator Annie Poon, called Puppy and Ducky. A short she made of them for younger kids won an audience choice award at the New Museum and just showed at the last Chicago festival, and we're now working on aging it up for the 6-10 crowd. Check out Puppy's blog for retailer Fred Flare here (although for some reason they only display P&D on Saturdays) and Annie's blog and website. And of course industry folks can contact me about this or my other preschool concepts. Here's a pic of Puppy with his oblivious puppy love, Miss Duck, as drawn by Annie.
But I should end by seriously thanking Susan Kim, Josh Selig, Melinda Richards, and Tone Thyne for all the work they put into the workshop. It was inspiring, focusing, and just the thing I needed to jazz me up and get me from post-MIP to KidScreen.
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