Make Them Laugh

November 8, 2010 World Screen

Nowadays, a good dose of humor is imperative in any successful children’s show.

 
There is no doubt children love any show that brings on a giggle, snicker or full-bellied guffaw. Whether it’s slapstick, goofy or irreverent, comedy is a must-have genre for any children’s channel. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a commissioner or buyer even considering a show that does not have a laugh-out-loud quality to it.
 
In the view of Suzanne French, the VP of children’s and family at Shaftesbury Films, comedy is simply a fundamental part of kids’ programming these days. “Everything needs to have a comedic element of some sort. Our kids lead busy, complicated little lives and it’s our job to provide some levity. The need to laugh and enjoy yourself is pretty primal so I wouldn’t pitch a show which didn’t have some element of comedy.”
 
Stephanie Betts, the VP of development at DHX Media, adds, “Comedy is a number one rated genre on television for 6- to 9-year-olds and even the 9- to 14-year-old age group. Kids are able to get their fix of action and adventure on other platforms,but they’ve come to trust broadcasters to deliver comedy that consistently delivers.”
 
This wasn’t always the case. Ten years ago, kids’ commissioners were crying out for high-concept series and dramas, recalls Ed Galton, the chief creative officer and managing director at CAKE Entertainment. “But now everybody is asking for kid-relatable comedy based on real-life situations at school or home.”
 
It’s a point echoed by 9 Story Entertainment’s co-founder, president and CEO, Vince Commisso. “The message loud and clear from the broadcasters is that they are looking for kids’ comedy with characters which are relatable to what kids do today.”
 
One big plus factor that attracts broadcasters, beyond comedy’s obvious entertainment values, is the repeatability of the genre, insists Skywriter Media & Entertainment Group’s executive producer and CEO, Kevin Gillis. “Comedy has the ability to play over and over again. If broadcasters are investing a lot of money in programming—particularly in times when commissioning budgets have to go further—the long-tail aspect to comedy is becoming more and more significant.”
 
But the fact that there has never been more demand for successful kids’ comedies hasn’t made series any easier to produce. “It’s the most elusive thing to create,” insists CAKE’s Galton.
 
The most difficult age group to please is the 9-to-14 set, according to 9 Story’s Commisso. While the viewing preferences of the preschool audience and, to some extent, of 6- to 9-year-olds, haven’t shifted much, 9- to 14-year-olds have moved on and are watching sitcoms targeted at adults, which has influenced the kind of comedy they want to watch. 9 Story’s latest series in development, Bash Boyz, a Terminator-style animation about a 16-year-old who is sent back in time to meet his 13-year-old father, explores the thorny world of teen/parent dynamics and is a clear attempt to target that increasingly hard-to-reach age group.
 
There are many different views as to what makes a successful series, but everyone can agree on one thing, it all stems from quality writing. This usually means a single creative visionary who sets the tone and best understands the characters and how they interrelate. But top-notch children’s comedy writers are few and far between. Traditional writers of children’s shows are not as sophisticated in comedy as the ones writing for adult shows are, admits Skywriter’s Gillis.
 
When looking for comedy writing talent CAKE goes to the U.S. American children’s writers are better respected, better paid and generally of a higher caliber than they are in the U.K., where it can be difficult to recruit top quality talent—particularly for shows aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds. One solution is to commission sitcom writers with a talent for children’s programming, but they can often be more expensive.
 
DHX Media’s Betts points out that the situation is similar in Canada. Kids’ writers have to serve an apprenticeship in Los Angeles in order to be recognized as showrunners back home. “It’s important that we start taking more risks on home-grown talent,” she argues. “By creating more opportunities for mentorship we’ll allow junior writers to grow and showcase their abilities, thus fostering emerging talent. It’s time we start creating our own star system in Canada and recognizing the talent in our backyard before they all head south.”
 
In the interim, one alternative is to invest in really good script editors who have the ability to pull scripts into shape.
 
 

WRITERS’ ROOM
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An increasingly useful technique, which evolved in the world of adult comedy writing, is the use of a writers’ room, where scripts are polished to perfection.
 
According to 9 Story’s Commisso, writers’ rooms are becoming more and more common in children’s comedy writing these days. “You still need an overall shepherd who understands the characters very well, but you make sure he or she has a lot of support in the form of a room of writers who can help critique the characters and hone the comedy.”
 
 “Sitcom writers have done this for years,” adds Skywriter’s Gillis. “Now we are utilizing writers’ rooms in which a live-action or animation head writer sits down with selected colleagues; they work up story lines and read them around the table. Then the other writers critique and ramp up the jokes. Writers’ rooms are as funny as hell—and are probably the best part of my job.”
 
Skywriter’s latest team-written shows include the 52-part Ren & Stimpy-style animation series called Chuckles ‘N’ Knuckles, co-produced with Jam Filled Entertainment, and the animated series, Elliott & Lucy, created by Ian James Corlett with a four-strong writers’ room.
 
 

VISUAL LANGUAGE

 

But the art of good comedy is about more than the discipline of writing, although that’s always the foundation, explains Gillis. “We are utilizing more and more adult comedy writers and joining them up with really good storyboard artists, who apply action and a sense of timing to the written creative starting point. This is in itself an important starting point for the actors and animators.”
 
Writing is only the beginning, agrees DHX Media’s Betts: “It’s absolutely crucial to assemble a great team on all fronts. In the 6-to-9 or 8-to-12 age groups, storyboard artists and directors are often overlooked, but they play an integral part in adding to the comedy. The most successful series often have a great deal of physical comedy and this tends to come from the director and board artists involved in the process. It’s important for everyone involved at each stage of the process to be asking themselves, ‘How can we make this funnier?’ as opposed to simply executing the script.”
 
Shaftesbury’s French adds that the best comedy is produced when everybody on the production team understands the tone and the ultimate goal of a series. “This way the director can communicate it to the actors—there will always be those jokes that get a great reaction on the floor that you didn’t see in the script. A lot of the comedy is found in editing and post-production, especially if you have the right editors who know how to cut [a scene] to maximize the comedy.”
 
“On Life with Derek we found every step of the way made things better,” continues French. “Well-written scripts were added to by the actors and the editors, while the composer and sound effects editor made things even funnier. It had that alchemy where the end result was so much more than the sum of the parts.”
 
Live-action comedy has the added complication of casting the right children, which is always a difficult process because few young actors are able to deliver comedy as effectively as older ones. “There are a lot of talented kids, but delivering a joke is not that easy at all,” notes CAKE’s Galton. “It’s a highly honed skill, which is one reason that kids’ comedy is so elusive.”
 
The Australian Children’s Television Foundation’s (ACTF) head of development and production, Bernadette O’Mahony, whose credits include the live-action series Round the Twist, Crash Zone and Legacy of the Silver Shadow, recommends casting children whose own personalities match the part. “We go for the kids with a spark that stands out in acting workshops.”
 
Usually the talent gap is plugged by finding actors who are several years senior to the roles they are playing, because they will have had time to acquire that extra level of comic sophistication.
 
While Shaftesbury’s French aims to cast younger in live-action comedies, she admits it’s much harder to find the star quality required in younger kids. Although it’s difficult to come up with a formula for successful casting, the approach that worked for Shaftesbury on Life with Derek was to get the anchor character right—in this case Michael Seater—and to build the rest of the casting decisions around that one central character.
 
Another key to successful casting, according to 9 Story’s Commisso, is to use instantly recognizable characters. “In live action, headline talent is becoming more and more important, particularly for comedy,” says Commisso, who has recently cast Wizards of Waverley Place’s Jennifer Stone as Harriet in his latest Harriet the Spy feature, which could become a TV series.
 
For Skywriter’s Live from Earth, Gillis enlisted the support of some of the top production talent to get the most out of the script and the actors. This included writer Robin Stein (Hannah Montana) and Dawson’s Creek director Keith Samples, who has a track record for getting the best possible performances out of teenagers.
 
 

SHARED CREATIVITY

 

While a large amount of kids’ programming is co-produced, this can pose specific challenges with comedy—particularly if a show has to work across different territories and different cultures.
 
“Co-productions [in this genre] can be a bit tricky, as comedy is so subjective and at times very regional,” observes DHX Media’s Betts. “It’s important to choose a partner with similar sensibilities to ensure the show will work for both markets. It’s also helpful if your story editor is located in one country as opposed to having story editors in both countries: this ensures the show will always have a consistent voice.”
 
Betts insists, however, that some fundamental comedic elements are universally funny. “You just have to sit in a movie theater and listen to how a young audience reacts to a character tripping, burping and running into a door for it to be clear that physical humor is universal.”
 
Universal maybe, but if comedy is to work internationally it still has to be able to fit into a range of different cultural frameworks—without sacrificing the originality that will set it apart from other work.
 
There are, for example, clear differences in the amount of slapstick and vulgarity that different cultures will tolerate. One of the big differences is between Anglo-Saxon or North American comedy and southern European comedy. Anglo-Saxon comedy could be considered ruder, where things like vomiting are considered funny. In parts of Europe, that may not be funny at all.
 
Skywriter’s Gillis notes, “In the animated series Atomic Betty we had a food fight in a school, something that happens in North America, but the French were horrified. It’s clear that in certain countries there are some behaviors parents don’t want kids imitating, and you have to respect that.”
 
Besides being sensitive to cultural differences, Gillis recommends avoiding linguistic jokes that depend on the turn of a phrase, which definitely won’t travel to Spain, France, Latin America or Germany.
 
Creating jokes and gags from characters rather than situations goes a long way to solving inter-territorial disconnects, he adds. “The comedy should come more from the characters of your show than the circumstances they find themselves in. That way you avoid the problem of comedy emanating from situations that don’t exist in other cultures.”
 
Despite all the “do’s” and “don’ts,” kids’ comedy remains a mysterious art. “If it was easy we’d all be Stephen Hillenburg!” declares DHX Media’s Betts.
 
Hillenburg’s animated creation SpongeBob SquarePants, is Nickelodeon’s most successful comedy, but as 9 Story’s Commisso points out, the Nickelodeon character had modest beginnings. “Little was expected of SpongeBob—an off-the-wall concept about the underwater adventures of a goofy sea sponge—but slowly it turned into a hit because kids really love the off-the-wall characters.”
 
Hillenburg himself told TV Kids in a previous interview, “You can’t start making a show about a sponge and think it will be a huge hit. I thought it would have a cult audience but no broad appeal.”
 
Commisso has high hopes for Almost Naked Animals, his latest SpongeBob-style high-concept animation, which is currently in development. It’s about a group of animals in their underwear running a hotel in a seaside resort. “It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever worked on, with a dozen laugh-out-loud moments in every episode,” he promises.
 
Despite the breakout success of out-of-the-box series such as SpongeBob, buyers still err on the side of caution, insisting on the mantra of kid-relatable, family-inclusive series, reports CAKE’s Galton.
 
Commissioners and buyers would be well served to show less caution. Experience has demonstrated that by taking a few risks they are more likely to find the next hit, explains Galton. “Put a high-concept idea in front of buyers and they say they don’t want it, but I’d like to see more of these kind of shows.”