Mikael Wahlforss

TV Kids Weekly, October 14, 2008

Producer & Managing Director

Epidem ZOT

Having roots in factual programs has given Mikael Wahlforss a great appreciation for the flexibility that fiction allows. “I really like working with original concepts, because you can invent whatever you want to,” he says. “My background is in documentaries, where you have to run around and find exactly what suits the subject. But in fiction, and especially in animated fiction, you can just decide what to show without the restriction of reality. There are no limitations but your imagination.”

Wahlforss, who founded Epidem ZOT in 1992 after a number of years of producing and directing for the Finnish company Epidem, has been putting his imagination and creativity to good use. With Epidem ZOT, he has been behind the co-development and co-production of The Hydronauts, a series about the sea environment supported by World Wildlife Fund (WWF); Spirello, animated educational music videos for kids; and Yellow Giraffe’s Animal Stories, films inspired by famous poems.

The company’s latest production is RED CAPS, about a crew of elves, Santa’s dynamic helpers, who are dedicated to protecting children all over the world. “RED CAPS is an action-adventure-comedy series, but the subject in each episode has been carefully chosen to tell something about our planet. That’s why UNICEF is supporting the series.”

Epidem ZOT sees RED CAPS as a great opportunity for a range of ancillary products and services, including an electronic game, a mobile game, a board game, books, toys, an Internet club and a theme park. There’s currently a 3-D feature film in the works, The Magic Crystal, which features Yotan, a human boy, leading a mission to help Santa. Both the series and the film are co-productions with Italian outfit Cartoon One. In preproduction are NOKSU and The Conquest of England. NOKSU is aimed at 2- to 5-year-olds, following Noksu, who is in the complicated business of growing up, as he learns something new in each story. The Conquest of England is an animated special based on the Bayeux tapestry, which provides a medieval account of how England was conquered by the Normans, culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

“Hopefully our films will give children, and their parents, insights about our society. My feeling is that commissioning editors sometimes underestimate children. Kids will be interested in global questions if they are presented in an imaginative and exciting way, with humor and suspense. Entertainment can be intelligent,” says Wahlforss.