ZDF Studios’ Katharina Pietzsch Talks Live-Action Appeal

Katharina Pietzsch, director in ZDF Studios’ junior department, highlighted the strengths of the company’s live-action slate for tweens and teens at the TV Kids Summer Festival today.

In the session, which you can view here, Pietzsch spoke with TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski about how ZDF Studios has become a go-to supplier of live-action shows for kids between the ages of 8 and 13.

“We have a long history of co-producing, commissioning and distributing kids’ and family programs and started investing into international live-action programs more than 20 years ago,” Pietzsch said. “We have shot live-action series in Australia, the U.K., France and all over the rest of Europe. And we have worked with all major European broadcasters and now the big international players like Amazon, Disney, Netflix and Nickelodeon.”

While the pandemic caused production delays, Pietzsch noted that ZDF Studios was able to deliver three new live-action series shot in the last two years: Jonathan M. Shiff Productions’ The Bureau of Magical Things, Theodosia with Cottonwood Media and Surviving Summer for Netflix.

“Most of our live action is in the teen and tween space,” Pietzsch said. “This probably has a lot to do with identification, representation and relatability. At that age, kids are trying to find themselves. There are a lot of questions like, Who am I? Where do I belong? Am I normal? What do I want to be? Seeing real kids going through life and facing those same questions and situations helps kids to have a sense they’re not alone. But also there’s pure escapism. A lot of our live-action series have some magical, fantastical or even supernatural themes. So the programs transport kids to far away magical worlds. It’s real kids and fantastical places, so the audience can imagine themselves to be there as well.”

ZDF Studios has largely had success with English-language live-action series, but Pietzsch noted that some local-language shows have traveled well, such as the Belgian series #LikeMe. “We see in the grown-up space where local originals produced in German or Spanish or Korean are suddenly working for lots of stations internationally. So maybe this will be something that we will see happening more and more in the kids’ space in the future.”

To boost the international appeal of these shows, ZDF Studios has invested in making high-quality dubbed versions available for its clients around the world. “We truly believe that the availability of a large number of language versions is a key advantage to getting your content to travel. We believe in it so much that we invested considerably into expanding our portfolio and have now built a huge catalog of available languages for our programs. We can deliver most of our programs in multiple languages. We work with dubbing studios all over the world. Through the investment in the language portfolio, we expand our possibilities of exploiting programming further and for longer. It helps in giving our programs a second and third life to work well for years and for all our partners all over the world.”

Pietzsch stressed the enduring appeal of many of these shows. “A lot of our longest-running and best-selling series ever are live-action,” Pietzsch said, citing as an example H2O: Just Add Water, first produced some 17 years ago. “We’re selling it all over the world to broadcasters, to streamers. We have it on our own channels. It’s quite an unbelievable success story, and it’s not the only one. We now have loads of language versions available. For H2O, for example, we have more than 20 languages. The same goes for The Worst Witch, Mako Mermaids and The Bureau of Magical Things.”

ZDF Studios largely uses co-production and co-commissioning models to get these shows financed, Pietzsch stated. “A mix of one or two commissioning broadcasters, maybe some prebuys, a distribution advance and some equity investment. And if we’re lucky, and depending on where we are producing, some kind of funding—regional, national or pan-national. Full commissioning is also possible, but we don’t have a lot of that. The key is to bring together the right partners to make it a worldwide success.”

Pietzsch also highlighted the complete package of assets ZDF Studios can offer its clients. “We have multiple languages available. We can deliver subtitles, dubbed titles and voiceovers, including local artwork, right away, and according to our high ZDF Studios standards. The first advantages for the local client are availability and speed; it’s there, it’s ready, and it can be delivered right away. The second advantage is quality. If we do not produce these languages ourselves but access them from a local partner, we ensure the quality is great. So the right titles, the right credits and the right run time.”

The keynote wrapped with a sizzle reel of new content from ZDF Studios.