LOL!

NEW YORK: An inside look at what it takes to make hit comedies for kids.

It’s not always easy to make kids laugh. While for some, all it takes is a silly face, a wacky voice or a fart noise to make them crack up, others are much less generous with their giggles. It’s up to today’s producers and distributors of children’s comedy programming to determine what little ones get a kick out of, even those whose funny bones are more elusive. This is not a simple task, but somebody’s got to do it—kids need to laugh in today’s complicated world.

“There is always an appetite for comedy,” says Joan Lambur, the executive VP of family entertainment and executive producer at Breakthrough Entertainment, which reps comedy hits like the animated Rocket Monkeys and the live-action series Zerby Derby and Max & Shred. “Comedy is just never going to go away.”

MAKE ME LAUGH!
“I think there’s always been a demand for good comedy and it’s very hard to do,” says Tom van Waveren, the CEO and creative director of CAKE. “There’s been less of an interest or an open search for action/adventure shows, so I think by default if you want fewer action shows, you end up with more comedy. But through the years, there’s always [been] an interest in finding new comedy formats, because you can never have too many of them.” CAKE distributes the hit animated comedy Angelo Rules, with the animated shows My Knight and Me and the book-based Bottersnikes and Gumbles currently in production.

Housed within the DHX Media catalogue is the upcoming animated comedy Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Series (based on the film franchise), as well as Looped, the recently launched Supernoobs and the new iteration of Inspector Gadget.

“Ultimately, there’s always been a need for it,” states Ken Faier, the senior VP and general manager of DHX Studios, the production arm of DHX Media, about the market for kids’ comedies. “Kids love to laugh after a stressful day at school and dealing with all the anxieties they have. A solid comedy is good for co-views, good to relax to—something that networks always need a healthy dose of. It’s [also] very repeatable, much more than drama or serialized content.”

Dave Beatty, the studio creative head at Portfolio Entertainment, which produces and distributes such upcoming animated comedies as Freaktown and Invasion of the MooFaLoo!, argues that kids’ comedy is an evergreen genre.

“Comedy is the one thing that never goes away,” he says. “You’ll have other genres of shows that will come into vogue for a while and then kind of disappear—action/adventure is a big one, fantasy is another—whereas there is always a demand for comedy. Kids [will] always want to laugh.”

There are many elements that go into making a successful comedy for kids, but it all starts with the writing. “It has to begin with a funny script,” says Natalie Dumoulin, the VP of creative affairs at producer and distributor 9 Story Media Group, which boasts such animated comedies as Camp Lakebottom, Numb Chucks, Almost Naked Animals and Nature Cat.

“A very dedicated combination of comedy and emotion” is key to making a successful comedy for kids, according to Marc du Pontavice, the CEO of Xilam Animation, which produces and distributes the non-verbal slapstick animated comedies Oggy and the Cockroaches and Zig & Sharko. “It’s not all about the gag; kids must also relate to the character. When you have the combination of those two feelings, it’s very powerful.”

“I think what works the best is non-verbal comedy—everything that is linked to the characters and their expressions,” says Morgann Favennec, the deputy managing director of international sales and acquisitions at Superights, which distributes such comedic animated fare as Boyster and the three-parter The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales. “Then you go deeper into the dialogue.” Favennec urges writers to always remember who their primary audience is, and to avoid incorporating specific jokes into a show simply because it’s amusing to them as adults. “It may be funny to write, but you have to think about the people who are going to watch and those people are children,” she says.

GETTING PHYSICAL
As with programming for other demos, there are certain elements in kids’ comedies that may be extremely successful in one country, but much less likely to resonate in another. One surefire way to create a funny children’s show that can travel is to foreground physical comedy.

“Physical comedy works universally,” says Portfolio’s Beatty. “What is harder is wordplay; [that’s] harder to translate into different languages and for different cultures. But slipping on a banana peel, that’s kind of funny no matter where you go.”

SLAPSTICK SELLS
“Physical comedy tends to travel well,” agrees Natalie Osborne, the managing director of 9 Story Media Group. “The show has to communicate the joke visually. Puns, on the other hand, do not typically work well on a global scale.”

It is necessary for writers to be thoughtful about how they incorporate physical comedy into a story line. “There are countries where inflicting physical pain onto a main character in the show is completely acceptable if it’s funny; there are a lot of other territories where that is seen as an outrage,” says CAKE’s van Waveren. “You don’t want to take a concept like that because you know you’re actually going to get closed doors in quite a few territories.”

Another important aspect of making sure a kids’ comedy has the potential to sell abroad is to stay away from references that are culturally specific. This can be achieved by having little or no dialogue. “Comedies that are more dialogue-based are more difficult to translate because usually they are very culturally grounded,” says Xilam’s du Pontavice.

DHX’s Faier concurs: “Dialogue-heavy is a challenge. You want to have great dialogue, but you don’t want to rely on puns in terms of translatability for the global market…. You want it to be smart without being too talky.”

Avoiding cultural references is especially important when it comes to kids’ comedy co-productions. “Local sitcoms are hard to export and find co-producers for, except perhaps with your really close neighbors,” says Superights’s Favennec. “With slapstick and non-verbal, generally speaking, you speak the same language, so you can have partners from the other side of the world. It doesn’t matter where you’re from; the language is the same, so you can easily work together for co-production and then your programs will travel.”

GROWING PAINS
Besides making content that can reach beyond borders, kids’ comedy creators have to cater their jokes to the specific demographic they are trying to reach. Preschoolers, for example, are accustomed to simple physical comedy, while older children require humor that is slightly more mature, yet still silly enough to be kids’ entertainment—DHX’s Faier refers to this as “sophisticated ridiculousness.”

“Each demographic has a different idea of what it finds funny,” says 9 Story’s Dumoulin. “A preschool audience loves it when things are flipped around—for example, when there’s a rabbit’s head on an elephant’s body. A preschool audience also tends to appreciate physical comedy, although you have to make sure it is safe if imitated. Sometimes gender will play a role as well—fart jokes, for example, remain a classic with boys, while girls tend to favor witty repartee.”

“[With] younger kids, it really is all about physical comedy because word jokes don’t play with them,” says Portfolio’s Beatty. “They haven’t developed enough; they’re still trying to figure out what funny is. And so that kind of humor has to stay primarily either in the appearance—how a character is dressed, how a character behaves, how a character sounds—or the physical: running into a door, slipping on a banana peel. It’s less sophisticated humor. As they get older, you can start introducing more wordplay and more situations and humor based on social networks and environments. You can joke about friends, whereas [that] doesn’t play to a preschool audience.”

According to Breakthrough’s Lambur, it’s particularly difficult to find projects to work on for the 7-to-11 and 8-to-12 demos. “It’s super challenging because you’ve got to find that sweet spot where you’re not hammering them over the head with comedy that’s insulting to them,” she says. “You have to have an intelligence to go along with it.”

For the older set, CAKE’s van Waveren says producers must speed up the pacing of a series to match the prime-time content that more mature kids are likely already consuming on various platforms. “For an age 12 demo, if you want to really connect with them, your pacing needs to be very close to that of a prime-time show.”

Live action tends to work better with older kids’ demos, but animation offers greater freedom when it comes to comedy. “In live action you are limited to the situation; you’re limited to what you can physically afford to shoot,” says Portfolio’s Beatty. “So for instance, if I’m doing a live-action show, I may not be able to have an episode that takes place in outer space, whereas if I’m doing an animated show, it can take place anywhere.”

9 Story’s Dumoulin echoes Beatty’s sentiment: “There are so few restrictions within animation compared to live action—we can make an animated character do just about anything! Animation, as a general rule, also travels more easily than live action, so you have a greater chance of taking your show global.”

One of the reasons that animated comedy often travels better than live action is because the latter tends to have a more local feel to it, which kids in other countries may not relate to as well. “The worlds in animation are often recognizable but they’re not exact, so they will translate to different cultures more easily,” says Beatty, who adds that animation is also “more forgiving in its lip sync when you dub it into a different language.”

ANIMATED ANTICS
Animation also leaves more room for improvement during the editing process, whereas with live action, once an episode wraps, there’s not as much that can be done to raise the level of comedy. “With animation, you can always just tweak, add a wink or an eyebrow move or a reaction shot, and you’re plussing it up all along the way,” says DHX’s Faier. “In live action, you have to catch it then and there.”

In some countries, live-action kids’ comedies are more difficult to make simply because of a lack of funding. “In France, there is no obligation to finance from the broadcasters, contrary to animation, where they all have an obligation of investing part of their turnover,” says Superights’s Favennec.

Another challenge posed by live action is the fact that young actors tend to physically mature faster than their characters, which may give the show a less authentic feel and a limited life span. But one advantage that live action does have over animation is that it takes less time to make. “In live action the turnaround time in production is much quicker,” says Portfolio’s Beatty. “You can produce a series in nine months, whereas in animation, [it’s] usually a year and a half to two years before the series is on the air.”

Above all, the success of a children’s comedy comes down to the writing. Of course that is not the only ingredient for success—for instance, the actors must also have the comedic chops to make kids laugh—but if the writing isn’t funny, the show is doomed to fail.

“Finding good writers is really hard,” says Breakthrough’s Lambur. “I think people assume that writing for children in many ways would be easier [but] it presents so many of its own challenges that it can’t be underestimated.”

“You will always find writers, but good ones who would be ready to leave their comfort zone and be ready to forget about duplicating or copying and pasting the previous stories they’ve written and apply them to the new series they’re involved in—I think that’s the most challenging part of all,” says Superights’s Favennec.

At Xilam, du Pontavice notes, “We have actually asked a lot of our storyboarders to start writing because the kind of comedy we do is very much driven by the visual and they have a sense of directing animated characters. So there are more and more writers in our staff who are coming from directing and storyboarding.”

Sometimes talented kids’ writers migrate over from adult comedies, but DHX’s Faier points out that this type of transition typically means a step down in pay. “The budgets in kids’ TV are a lot lower than in prime time,” he says. “So they have to really love it and want to do it.”

“I think as an industry, we should continue to make children smile,” says CAKE’s van Waveren. “If we’re successful at that, we can be proud.”