Christopher Skala

TV Kids
Weekly, July 1, 2008

Senior VP,
Programming and Production

HIT
Entertainment

Bob the
Builder, Thomas
& Friends and Angelina
Ballerina are all
well-established brands on the preschool block, each with a longstanding
presence on networks around the world. In an effort to maintain the shows’
popularity with kids into the years ahead, HIT Entertainment recently announced
plans to take all three into CGI. “It really was about trying to engage with
the audience in a more direct and dynamic way,” says Christopher Skala, the
senior VP of programming and production at HIT.

Preproduction
has begun on the Bob
CGI series, which is slated to launch in late 2009 on CBeebies in the U.K. and on PBS KIDS in the
U.S. The new look Thomas & Friends is scheduled for a late 2009 delivery to
Five’s Milkshake! and PBS KIDS. Angelina, meanwhile, is getting an entirely new
series with Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps, following the 8 year old in the next
stage of her life, as a student at the Camembert Academy. It premieres fall
2009 on PBS KIDS and on Nick Jr. in the U.K.

The move
follows extensive research by HIT, and reflects a new openness on the part of
preschool broadcasters to accept series in CGI. Skala notes that there used to
be “strong resistance” to using this animation style for younger viewers. With
that in mind, he prepared a “very structured presentation” for his broadcast
partners. “By the time I showed them the CGI tests, I had already won them
over. When they saw the tests, the reaction, universally, was, I never imagined
it could look that good!”

Skala says he
embarked on the research almost two years ago, in an effort to get a better
understanding of how kids were interacting with the series. In the case of
Thomas, the focus groups revealed the limitations of using live action to bring
the popular train character to life. “There’s a very limited range of emotions
that you can communicate with fixed faces. We showed a test where the faces
moved and spoke and that was such a revelation for the focus group.”

Bob, meanwhile, is making the move to CGI
from stop-frame animation, a technique that had its own set of restrictions. “In
stop-frame animation, you can’t really go in for close-ups, at the right ‘oh
no!’ moments in the script when you want your audience to go, ‘oh no!’ In close
up with stop-frame, you’re going to start seeing the stitching. Secondly, we
couldn’t lip sync with the vehicles.”

Skala says the
testing on Bob also
showed that for young viewers, “the grasp of the overall world and the
characters was much stronger” in the CGI version. In addition, he says the look
of current series “was skewing very young, [while] the stories were skewing
very old. With the stories we were telling and the way that we were telling
them, we were losing our two year olds, our three year olds and our early
fours. Our five and six year olds were saying, yes, we get the story but we’re
never going to watch the show because it looks too young.”

In the case of
Angelina Ballerina,
meanwhile, migrating to CGI from 2-D was key to communicating the themes of
music and dance in the new series.

While the
three CGI series are at the top of HIT’s production slate, the company is also
in active development on a number of new properties, Among them is 5 Speed 5, a
co-production with the Korean company Cocaban, aimed at boys aged 6 to 8. The
show revolves around a collection of household pets who form the T5 Team,
racing in tournaments broadcast to pets worldwide via PTVN, the Pets Television
Network, while their owners are out. “I think of it as Wacky Races for the 21 st century,” Skala quips. “We
did a preview at MIP and the response was extraordinarily good.”

There are
other shows in the works, and Skala says he meets with his team regularly to
explore new ideas. A former live-action comedy producer, Skala is relishing the
opportunity of creating new content for kids. It was while he was developing
some animated projects for Disney in 2001 that he realized he “loved children’s
television more than I loved anything else.” He joined HIT in November 2004
and, he notes, “I’ve never looked back.”

—By
Mansha Daswani