Creative Keynote: Drew & Jonathan Scott

Lifestyle TV personalities Drew and Jonathan Scott spoke to TV Kids Summer Festival viewers today about their new animated series Builder Brothers Dream Factory.

The twin brothers are the co-founders of Scott Brothers Global, which is working with Sinking Ship Entertainment on Builder Brothers Dream Factory, inspired by their own children’s books. You can see their conversation with TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski here.

The twins have been making their hit show Property Brothers since 2011. “There are so many people who started watching our show as kids, teenagers, and now they’re grown-ups and they’re actually buying a house and they’re settling down,” Jonathan said. “Even today, we’ll have 5-year-olds that stop us at the mall—it’s the Property Brothers! We thought, how cool would it be if we could inspire a whole new generation of kids? I know our kids are very tactile. They love anything that they can get their hands on to build.” The animated series, he noted, “felt like a natural progression.”

“It’s pretty cool to see how many creative ideas come out of these kids,” Drew added. “We’ll do a meet and greet and families will bring their kids and they’ll bring floorplans that they’ve done that are actually really good designs.”

In comparison to their extensive slate of lifestyle shows, animation “is a long process,” Jonathan said.

“We thought renovations were long for each episode of Property Brothers,” Drew added.

“When we did our book series originally, that was sort of our first dip in the pool just to see what the process would be like,” Jonathan continued. “We then took all of the feedback that we had, listened to the audience and what the audiences were looking for. People know our shows for technology, that 3D technology where you see things flying in and out. We decided to bring a whole new type of 3D technology to the animation, which you usually would only see in feature films, not in regular animated series. It took a good two and a half years to finally see it come to fruition. But it was worth it because it’s unlike anything people have ever seen in the TV space.”

Drew added: “Our shows are a co-viewing experience. With the animated series, we still wanted it to be something enjoyable for the parents as well as the kids. Working with a child psychologist and educators and parents as well, and us being parents ourselves, there are a lot of elements that go into making this fun, educational and make them laugh while they have a little takeaway.”

Making the show fun was crucial, Jonathan added, while “also bringing in that positive messaging. We worked with several child psychologists to make sure that we’re getting the right approach to some of these real problems that kids have and being relatable and enjoyable for them. We were like the go-to kids in the neighborhood; whenever any of the other kids would have a problem, they would come to us and we would figure out a solution. We literally went and built a doghouse for one neighbor. We took that with a little creative embellishment and worked it into the series.”

Collaboration is a key theme of the series, Drew said. “This project was a collaboration too,” he added. “Nelvana is our global distributor. We have Sinking Ship; they’re just an amazing animation studio. For us to come together with our experiences from what we did as kids and then coming together with them and what they do so well and what they know in the kids’ space.”

Sinking Ship produced Builder Brothers Dream Factory in full 3D animation. “We worked with incredible partners to figure out a way to do it so that we can bring that top-tier quality for the animation, but get enough content that we’re going to do it as a regular series,” Jonathan said. “We found that secret recipe and we pulled it off. It also helps take you out of this animation realm and make it even more believable. Kids want to believe that anything they put their minds to, they can accomplish. We actually did this. We had big imaginations and we had even bigger determination to get it done.”

“Innovation is always important to us, with everything we do,” Drew added. “We’re one of the larger lifestyle, unscripted producers in North America. This is an original 3D preschool series. To be able to have 40 episodes launching with this full 3D feel is pretty amazing.”

As to their involvement in the writing and creative process, Jonathan noted, “We did say [to the writers]: This doesn’t have to all be authentic to our childhood. We can come up with great stories with these characters. And they were like, Yeah, but first we want to know everything. That was the process. We were just going through our childhood.”

Drew added, “It was funny to relive all those moments from when we were kids and all the little antics and things we got up to. After we were babbling for hours about all these old stories, the next week we got together to see some outlines for episodes and they made our childhoods so epic and amazing with the stories they came together with.”