Acclaimed Australian producer Jonathan M. Shiff provided insights on making compelling live-action tween content in his TV Kids Festival creative keynote.<\/p>\n
Shiff was interviewed by Anna Carugati, group editorial director of World Screen<\/em> and TV Kids<\/em>, for a TV Kids Festival session today. He has created and exec produced numerous series, including H2O: Just Add Water<\/em>, Mako Mermaids<\/em> and, most recently, The Bureau of Magical Things<\/em>. Carugati began the session by asking Shiff what attracted him to producing live-action shows for tween and teen audiences.<\/p>\n \u201cThe programming I do tends to be stories I\u2019m passionate about and engaged with. I often think the 12-year-old Jonathan might have got the bug and started this process! I relate very much to that preteen age myself, when I had a vivid imagination and was full of stories or engaged with going to the movies. It\u2019s an age of engagement. You\u2019re on the verge of being an adult. For live action, tweens engage because it\u2019s aspirational. We can reach down to 7-, 8-, 9-year-olds. They want to see, what\u2019s it like when I have an argument with one of my girlfriends? What\u2019s it like to face real danger? Teens are watching because they are hopefully engaged in the story and because I think they sometimes relate to the cast. I often think that a lot of the kids watching, particularly the teens, are siblings, co-viewing because it\u2019s kind of cool to watch superhero teenagers battling things.\u201d<\/p>\n As for his creative inspiration, Shiff noted, \u201cIt has to come from within, and if you don\u2019t have a connection with your story, it\u2019s very hard to expect the audience to go on that journey. You\u2019ve got to have a personal connection with the story to make it real, make it valid, and bring your passion to the story. There are so many influences. You look at what\u2019s going on with the world we\u2019re in. I look for inspiration in genre, in what sort of show I\u2019d like to make: would it be a period show, would it be a contemporary show, would it be a sci-fi show. Fantasy plays a huge part in what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no formula to the art of storytelling, Shiff added. \u201cSometimes, you get one piece of the jigsaw, but you can\u2019t just put it on a table and make the rest of the jigsaw work as a straight pattern. Stories evolve and change. I often think that the jigsaw is in the air and I\u2019ve got to build it, but it keeps moving. In other words, the piece that I got the first time might now be behind me and not in front of me. The story keeps moving and evolving and you\u2019ve just got to go with it. You\u2019ve got to let the story take you somewhere, even though it isn\u2019t what you originally intended. Sometimes you get fragmented with character, sometimes you get inspiration from an emotion, you sometimes have a deep resonance for the plot, but then later realize we need to find the story, not just the plot. It\u2019s very organic and a little bit scary at times.\u201d<\/p>\n On the global appeal of his shows\u2014which are distributed by ZDF Enterprises\u2014Shiff noted: \u201cThere are nearly 200 countries that watch our stories. You want to reach out to the humanity of the story\u2014the universal picture of the story. At the same time, you\u2019re dealing with high production values, high budgets. You\u2019re going to need an international audience to even bring the story to life. It is very difficult to tell a story for just a handful of people. I want to tell a story that is epic in scale. So epic, it doesn\u2019t matter where you live.\u201d<\/p>\n Production recently wrapped on season two of The Bureau of Magical Things<\/em>. On managing production amid COVID-19 restrictions, Shiff noted, \u201cWe had to, first, revisit all the stories that I\u2019d spent a year and a bit writing and falling in love with. That sort of dynamic is part of normal filmmaking. Being a creator and being a producer sometimes is in conflict. You\u2019ve got to find the synergy and the pathway, and I found I had to approach it the same way. We need to move this forward and do the best story we can do. We had to rewrite scenes, move interiors to exteriors to be safer, strip out cast that were not critical to the scene to be sensible about it. We had to reduce the number of extras. We had to reimagine sets. It\u2019s very counterintuitive to everything I learned in 30 years of filmmaking. We had to take the ceiling off sets. Sets that were designed to be small and intimate had to be opened up a bit. Sets that were very open and expansive had to be made smaller for less cast. There was a lot of work on that.\u201d<\/p>\n Shiff continued, \u201cThere was a certain elevation of focus that you get out of working in a pandemic. When you\u2019re at war with a virus that can hurt you and your family, you come in focused on doing the very best you can and more because you\u2019ve given up a lot or you\u2019re risking a lot to be [there]. And I think, possibly, The Bureau of Magical Things<\/em> season two might be my best work. I, personally, feel it was the most challenging and probably the best job.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about managing the increased costs around filming during COVID, Shiff said, \u201cSome of it was covered internally. A lot of it was covered by Australian government subsidies, which we were very blessed to receive, and Screen Australia and Screen Queensland elevated their investments. We were very blessed to be working in concert with ZDF and ZDF Enterprises and so on. And Nickelodeon. But largely, it was, frankly, the Australian government assistance that helped us muddle through and without that, I think it would\u2019ve been quite difficult to conquer it.\u201d<\/p>\n Shiff\u2019s productions have served as launch platforms for many local talents, including Phoebe Tonkin, Jeffrey Walker, Liam Hemsworth and Margot Robbie. On the challenges and opportunities involved in working with young actors, Shiff said: \u201cThey\u2019re engaged, they\u2019re motivated and they bring a creative energy that\u2019s irreplaceable. There are challenges, too, because sometimes I feel like I\u2019m a high school principal. Cell phones created a whole new challenge, as did social media. Handled right, it\u2019s wonderful and engaging in its connectivity. We\u2019ve got tens of millions of fans, and that connectivity is precious. Doing behind-the-scenes clips and engaging the fans, what I call deconstruct the media. It is very healthy that teens or tweens basically see that it\u2019s a job, and it\u2019s fun and it\u2019s possibly a future career pathway, and so they engage critically with the media. But it also can be distracting from the craft, so finding that balance of when to allow phones on set and engage with social media, that\u2019s a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the opportunities presented by streaming platforms to creators and producers today, Shiff said, \u201cThey\u2019ve offered us the world, and that\u2019s our audience. The engagement with the world is direct; it\u2019s immediate. They\u2019ve also completely freed us from the shackles of any form of constraint in storytelling. Your narrative can be sideways, forwards or backwards. Your length of program can be short or long. It\u2019s an explosion of the potential of the business. It\u2019s very exciting and I think it\u2019s just the beginning. This connectivity, this globalization of broadcast directly to a world audience is a wonderful thing when you\u2019re producing for a global audience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Acclaimed Australian producer Jonathan M. Shiff provided insights on making compelling live-action tween content in his TV Kids Festival creative keynote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":20080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1863,5723],"class_list":["post-20078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-jonathan-m-shiff","tag-tv-kids-festival","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n