BAF10 - Strange Hill High

Strange Hill High is an animated TVseries for cbbc.

The first one to talk was Mark Oswin.

Mark Oswin is one of the screenwriters for Strange Hill High. SHH is a collection of sci fi short stories in a city school with three main characters with different personalities that complement each other. Oswin illustrated this description of "sci fi short stories" as Twilight zone in a high school".

He first talked about the development:

• One line pitches
• Writers room
• 1 page outline
• SXS
• 1st draft script
• Redrafts
• Polish

They start the production of an episode by thinking of funny oneliners that can lead into an idea for a full episode. After choosing a oneliner they see fit, the gather round in the writers room, to discuss it and develop the storyline that fits the oneliner. Then they create the one page outline which is a description of how the episode is going to develop. Next is scene by scene writing where the episode gets written down in full detail, next is the first draft script, redrafts and finally polishing up the script, ready for recording.

Creating this series they use a three act structure (actually, it's more like 4, but whatever)

Act 1:

- Set up

- Inciting incident

Act 2 (I):

- Playing with fire

- Midpoint

Act 2 (II):

- Down Hill

- Lowest Point

Act 3:

- Fight back and fail

- Out of the bag

This all seemed pretty clear to me. It's a familiar style of creating stories, especially for children. It's one of the structures which have been discussed in a script writing workshop I attended last year in the Netherlands. He illustrated and explained the 3-act structure using an existing episode as an example.

Tips for writing:

- Write what makes you laugh. (Use sophisticated humour though for kids shows. This is actually quite a good thing because you can't fall back on jokes based on sex, violence or swearing)

- Plot/comedy/character balance is important

- Big visual comedy is necessary for TV

- No text! Gags and jokes based on text don't translate well. 

- Movie moments

Also. Don't patronise kids. They'll know.

Second to Talk was tim Jones, he is the lead puppeteer for the show. (Of which the puppets are visualised by Ian Mackinnon) They use two puppeteers for each puppet, one to control the main body and the head and one to control the hands. They animate live to storyboards and the recordings made before and they "animate in reverse". (I noted this down but I don't really remember what he meant by that, Danique, bad notes!)

The controls for the puppets consist of three rods. One main rod that basically goes up his bum. Like a muppet! This rod has flicky thingy controls for moving the head like turning it around. The other two rods are connected to the hands with hinges in the wrist, so they twist nicely around when moving the rod.

Because they need two puppeteers per puppet, when they shoot the main scenes, it's quite crowded beneath the set, for there are six people standing really close together, trying to get everything done.

For the animation of the mouth they use 3D animation and through compositing it's placed over the heads of the puppets. A lovely detail to the puppets is that the costumes aren't just really tiny, everything is small to scale. Tiny stitches were used to make the details look gorgeous and to make it feel and look natural.

I enjoyed the talk itself for they both were short and to the point. They both managed to keep my attention the whole time, for I dozed off a bit during the discussion and Q&A. I felt it was all a bit too  long and a lot got repeated as well. I might look this series up one time. I'm really interested in it now for I think it might be my humour!