Sarach Muller and Andrew Burrell from CBBC

Aside from designing my own concepts, I have always enjoyed writing out my ideas, and Sarah Muller and Andrew Burrell's visit was an extremely interesting, insightful and helpful one. There was just so much that was discussed upon that it was really hard to keep up (Because with there being so much content to share in such a short period of time, it was expected of them to rush through some slides...), and so it would probably be also better if I left most of my notes in bullet form instead of trying to write them into proper paragraphs.

Sarah Muller is the Head of CBBC, Drama Development. She is responsible for CBBC Acquisitions and Drama submissions form credited TV writers without backing from an Independent Production Company.

• Most popular thing right now with children is still Minecraft (Hey, you have to admit that building things is pretty fun)
• A good time for animation, considering what attracts the young ones these days.
• There are 34 channels dedicated to kids in the UK
• 30% CBBC
• Still not the most favourite
• Audience still prefers Youtube
• Disney lost its audience for the time being
• But will get back up there with the Frozen franchise
• CBBC is the number one kids channel in the UK for 6-12
• 196.4 million iPlayer requests for CBBC programmes over last 12 months
• Huge request for playability on mobile devices like tablets and phones, aside from TVs
• Most popular animation on CBBC: League of Super Evil, Strange Hill High (A genuinely all British animation), How to Train your Dragon, What's New Scooby Doo, Dennis the Gnasher
• New battle grounds are drawn around brands
• Scooby Doo remains pretty huge in the market
• Looking for LOL (Sort of like Disney's "XD"), to stand out, but to still fit with existing shows and get kids talking
• The subject of the paranormal is often used in most pitch ideas
• Too many people copying off Adventure Time though when it comes to their 'original' ideas, what was previously so unique is starting to become overdone.
• Kids love naughty characters, of course they wouldn't overdo it
• Strange Hill High chainsaw scene, instead of moving such scenes completely, try to find a way to still apply it properly within the show, you might come up with something pretty clever (Like the censoring joke they did with this one)
• Comically large, strange colours, approach it differently to show your intentions
• Why bring back old shows? Money

Andrew Burrell is a writer, script editor and producer for CBBC and is presenting working on Strange Hill High, Danger Mouse and Wolfblood Series 4.

• When considering some of today's most popular BBC children's characters...
• Shaun the Sheep beats out Postman Pat, Paddington Bear and Sooty and company
• All puppet shows
• Never talk down to kids, they are smarter than you think
• Cartoons, teens and tweens sitcoms
• Other Channels tend to focus on action adventure, movie tie-ins, big commercial brands, boy skewed fighty stuff really well (Star Wars - Rebels, Avengers, Ben 10, Kick Buttowski) Cartoon Network and Disney XD
• Want jokes lots of them
• Tips fo writers: premise, character, setting, stories, pace, tone and visuals
• Could this story be told in another media? why animation?
• Have your world and characters got enough about them to generate 52 episodes to
• Make characters flawed
• Love your characters, don't write them cynically
• If you don't love them, why should anyone else
• The weirder the world, the simpler the stories (Eg, Adventure Time, Spongebob Squarepants, even The Simpsons)
• Storytelling (Can refer back a little to write up on Strange Hill High panel at BAF)
• 3 Act Structure
• Character driven
• Coherent within the rules of the world
• Weirder the world the simpler the story
• Follow the character and the story without blindly pursuing the gag
• Pacing has to be quick
• 1/2 or 1 page max. is a good rule of thumb
• Eg, Modern Family and Parks and Recreation
• Smash Cuts (Family Guy)
• Tones: No guns, knives and punching in the face! No cynicism!
• Huge variety of visual styles: anthing goes, 2d, 3d, CG, puppets, mixed media, etc.
• Writing:
• From writing conferences...
• Springboards are paragraph length story ideas
• Outline/Premise - 2-3 pages, breakdown of story, whether the structure works
• Scene by scene/outline- 2/3 length of script
• Drafts - up to 6 pages but varies
• Polishes (Done by another writer, pretty much a beta reader) and shooting scripts (Between head writer and script editor)
• Script editor's job: manage relationships, be the confuit of all notes so writer has one coherent message, generate ideas
• Notes from executive producer, series producer, production manager, head writer, animation producer, do listen to them, at least properly take into account what they want from you, though of course don't blindly follow every command they give
• Good notes help, bad notes confuse, at least consider the meaning behind those notes
• You have to feel what you write
• Simple questions: Whose story? What do they want? What obstacles can we put in their way? What do they learn? Who is the audience?

BBC writers, great reference for scriptwriting:

• Scripts vs board-driven
• Depends on the individual
• If what you are basing on isn't polished enough, the rest isnt going to work out, and those issues are going to grip people
• Kinda like the Misadventures of Flapjack and Captain Knuckles, it was a gorgeous piece of animation with so much potential, but there were many times when its writing just fell flat on its face
• if the story is crap, everything else will be

Kath Shackleton

Last year I had the chance to attend a talk with animator Zane Whittingham (In a nice empty theatre with some of my classmates and with some of the other seniors from DFGA), who shared with us the variety of works he has done over the years. And this year, his lovely wife, Kath Shackleton, paid us a visit to talk about her role as a producer and project manager in this husband and wife tag team.

Whilst Zane normally stays in the studio to get the animations done, Kath is the one that heads out to submit pitches to various clients in hopes of getting their commission. She has to face the brutality of rejection most of the time, especially when these clients unsurprisingly wish to go with someone cheaper. But despite all of that, Kath just continued pushing until she got that commission!

"Fall down 7 times, get up 8 as they say."

With their office situated in the heart of Pennine Yorkshire (Hi Anna!), Fettle Animation takes commissions for all sorts of animation, from promotional films, to children's TV, to animated documentaries to animated music videos, which is no surprise considering that they have the versatile Zane Whittingham as their animation director.

"You are as good as anybody, no one is truly better than the other."

"It just happens to be price over quality, sometimes."

Fettle Animation was soon enough commissioned by BBC animate a series of poignant short films on interviews with people who experienced the horrific genocide first hand, as a way to educate the UK children on the Holocaust. Titled the "Children of the Holocaust", these shorts were created by Zane, Kath, as well as several trainees, thanks to funding from Kirkless Jobs Fund and Creative Skillset, with Paul Honey, providing the soundtrack.

It was a long process getting the commission for "Children of the Holocaust", Kath previously worked with the National Media Museum on "Fragile Stories", a series of animated documentary shorts based on interviews with members of Bradford's Polish Community, and it was from there that she caught the attention of her next client.

"TV people do not innovate, they iterate, they avoid risks and always try to stay safe."

Needless to say, it wasn't as easy as that, while the client was indeed interested, Kath still had to make sure her pitch jumped out from the first page alone before she was able to get that commission, and when that was done... that was only just the beginning. Various people still needed to be brought in, especially when it came to their finances, which most of us in this area probably dread and will panic about the most (God, I really wish I still had my Principal of Accounts textbook...) for any project.

While I had the chance to watch an unfinished preview during Zane's talk and one during the Bradford Animation Festival, Kath happily allowed us to actually watch all of them during this talk. Needless to say, most of these shorts easily pulled at my heartstrings, especially as I thought about my own family when these brave souls recounted how they had lost their own during their nightmarish ordeal.

As mentioned before, several trainees were hired to work on this series, some did good work, some did better than others, while some just thought way too highly of themselves... Needless to say, it was an experience working with these newbies, and on the bright side, most of them were hard workers that did what they were hired to do. Regardless of how talented you are and how well you did in school, don't be a douche.

For such a project, Fettle Animation had to work with people  such as Lilian Black from the Holocaust Survivor Friendship Association, whose role is to double check on the accuracy of the historical facts that would be presented in these animations. A Sales Agent was hard to find, seeing many believed that animation doesn't sell in this day and age, but they got one soon enough.

Before the talk came to an end, we were given a few tips on how we should present our pitches to potential clients in the future. I honestly wished that we had been give a copy of that sheet that she showed us instead, but hey, just take what you can get, am I right? So anyway, the first things you should most definitely consider are:

1. What's your idea?
2. Write/Draw it down
3. Who is your target audience? (Remember what these people are like)
4. Who might be interested in paying you for it? (Eg, internet, commission through different channels)
5. Who do you want to pitch it to?
6. Did you do your homework?
7. Refine that idea
8. Summarise each point into one sentence if you can.

For the pitching process, what you write is absolutely minimal, think who your commissioner is this and persuade him/her that there is an audience for this product.