Children’s Media Conference: Day Two
The second day at Children’s Media Conference is the big one if you happen to be interested in producing content for kids (and why would you be there if you weren’t?)
There are nearly 30 talks, a keynote speech, a pizza/networking evening and a party that technically ends at 2am but that no one seems to leave until nearer 5.
My first big decision was between:
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‘Meet the Commissioners’ where I would get the chance to hear what major UK broadcasters were looking to commission over the coming season.
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‘Cracking Freemium for Kids,’ where I would see three App creators pitch ‘free’ games to “a trio of discriminating gatekeepers”.
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‘School Edutainment – in a class of it’s own,” where I would learn about combinations of education and entertainment and how they are influencing school lessons.
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A series of 3 research insights, where I would find out how children are consuming media today and predictions for the future
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Or ‘Tax doesn’t have to be taxing’ where I would learn about the animation tax-break and whether or not my company qualifies.
That’s one heck of a decision, and it’s only the first of 5 time slots throughout the day. In the end, mostly because I cannot stand the word ‘edutainment’ and couldn’t deal with another talk about tax, I went for the Research Insights.
This was made up of three talks from different companies who spend time finding out what children are doing and then predicting what they might do in the future. It was a little dry in places perhaps, and very scary if you still harbour fantasies of reading paperback books to your (currently non-existent) children. The future, it is clear, is digital, and seems to require animated content that can be enjoyed on several screens at once.
I walked out of there with 15 pages of notes and a spinning head.
My next decision was an easy one. Last year’s ‘Put your Money where your Mouth is’ was my favourite panel, and there was already a lot of buzz about this year’s edition.
4 gutsy producers pitch their series ideas to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style panel of buyers (made up of the BBC, Walker Books and two independent producers), who then decide whether or not they want to invest some money in return for an option to develop the idea further.
First up was Tony Collingwood of Collingwood and Co, who blew the audience away with his “farts vs burps in space” pitch. Having just spent several hours in the research seminar fretting about whether or not TV is dumbing down, it was good to have conclusive proof that yes, yes it is. The brilliantly named ‘Parpazoids’ was snapped up by Miles Bullough as a potential web series, and received the princely sum of £350, as well as a new record for the most fart jokes uttered in a 5 minute pitch.
3 pitches later (two successful, one less so), and it was time for: ‘Making Comedy History with Horrible Histories.’ As a big fan of the show, I was very much looking forward to this panel and to finding out more about the creative process behind it. I can now safely tell you that:
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There are 62 facts in every episode
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Since the series began, there has been a 30% rise in Museum attendance among kids
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4-5 months of historical research and 12 weeks of writing go into every series.
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Every episode from the second season onwards has had an original song
This wonderfully funny series is made on a CBBC budget, without international funding, and yet they’ve managed to attract a cast and crew at the top of their game, and made a series that is educational, entertaining (notice I didn’t say edutaining) and beloved worldwide by both children and adults alike. And it all started with a child (Richard Bradley’s son actually, who loved the books and suggested to his Dad that it might make a good show).
If you haven’t yet seen the show, may I suggest this Henry VIII’s looting of the Catholic Church/ Cash in the Attic mashup as a good place to start:
The final panel I decided to attend was ‘Top 10 tips to make ‘em laugh,’ with Connal Orton (CBBC), Steph Gauld (Egmont) and Sarah Muller (CBBC) discussing what they have learnt makes kids laugh loudest.
This consisted of the following gems:
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Casting is King. Get it wrong and no brilliant scripts or beautiful sets will redeem you
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A joke must be specific and clean to be funny. Avoid generalisations.
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Kids love irreverence and subversion
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Children make children laugh
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Slapstick humour is always a winner
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Define your characters with simple, funny traits
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Never talk down to children
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Keep the emotion real
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Farts and poo jokes can work, but are too often used lazily and without consideration.
Unfortunately, this was only 9 tips, and the audience was baying for blood, having been promised 10. I mean honestly, what do we pay our money for? Luckily, there were pictures of cats wearing people clothes, which caused much mirth and greatly reduced the tension.
By this point, I had a full notepad, a spinning head and a growling stomach, but it wasn’t pizza time just yet – Swampy Marsh, co-creator of Phineas and Ferb, was giving the Creative Keynote, and this was yet another event that I’d been looking forward to for a while.
Phineas and Ferb is one of the Disney Channel’s most popular shows, and has been hugely successful all over the world. But what’s most interesting about it (from the perspective of someone who is currently pitching a kids tv show anyway) is that it took an incredible 15 years to get it on the air.
If you look at the show; with the three interacting plots, the impossible to pronounce names and the outrageously un-cool looking main characters, it’s just about possible to see why so many people turned it down. But what’s so impressive about it is that throughout that 15 years, Swampy and his co-creator Dan Povenmire didn’t change a single thing about it. They stuck to their guns and eventually got their show made exactly as they wanted it, a mere 15 years later. It took a brave exec to commission it, but it took even braver creators to stand by their product for 15 years and say “we’ll wait until someone is ready to make the show we want to make.”
Swampy talked about his earlier career, about the ordeal of getting the show on the air in the first place and about how each episode is constructed. I was very happy to know that I would be getting a one-on-one interview with him tomorrow, which you can read here on Skwigly.
And then it was Pizza time! I didn’t do this last year, and it was made pretty darned clear to me the following day that I’d missed out – the CMC takes over two Pizza Express Restaurants, and the delegates eat until they can eat no more. Sounded perfect.
The problem I found, was that you were sort of stuck with the 3 people you happened to wind up sitting next to. I was lucky enough to sit next to some very lovely people, with whom I spent a very fun evening, but there wasn’t that chance to move around and see who else was there that might have made it more valuable as a networking opportunity.
That said, I was pretty much networked out at this point, and my back pocket was already filled with the business cards of many various people, so I can’t complain too much!
Following the pizza is the big party. Always a highlight of the event, and especially huge this year because it’s the 10th anniversary of the CMC. There was even cake.
Unfortunately, I didn’t go. My partner and I have long found that we don’t network well if we’re both at an event. We cling to one another, trying to avoid that awkward few minutes when you’re trying to find someone new to talk to but everyone is paired off and you feel like social leper and decide to stand in a corner and drink all the wine.
For this reason, and because I was interviewing Swampy Marsh at the completely ridiculous time of 9am the following day, we’d made a deal. I got the pizza, he got the party.
So I went back to the hotel and watched the tennis highlights.
COME ON MURRAY!!!