Collingwood O’Hare Entertainment: A Studio Profile
Skwigly
Tony Collingwood takes Skwigly around the studio of the BAFTA award winning Collingwood O’Hare Entertainment to talk about their latest project, ‘The Secret Show’ (by Keith Miles)
Possibly the first thing you notice about the studio of Collingwood O’Hare is the most impressive array of BAFTA awards discretely but proudly lined on a shelf as you go in. As Lloyd Grossman would might say ‘this is clearly the home of someone who means business’ (unless of course the home was that of Su Pollard from the classic 1970s sitcom ‘Hi-de-Hi’). However above the row of BAFTAs (there are 4 in case anyone is counting), there are a further array of Cuckoo clocks which are set to times in London, Paris and Acton! As no doubt Lloyd would go on to say,’ this is a place where they know how to have fun’.
Reassuringly, as the clocks near 12 and I wait for animators to run for proverbial cover, I am told by the Über efficient and glamorous receptionist that all the cuckoos themselves have long been granted their freedom.
Having just completed Gordon The Gnome for the BBC, I am delighted to talk to co founder Tony Collingwood (TC) and Head of Development Helen Stroud (HS), who has been with the studio longer than she cares to mention. The team are girding their proverbial animated loins for the onslaught of their new project The Secret Show.
Tell me a little bit of the history of Collingwood O’Hare…
TC – I met Chris O’Hare at the National Film School. He was doing a course as a Producer and I was doing animation making ‘Rarg’ which was a half hour film, as my graduation film. It was in the days of Nick Park and Mark Baker and we all assumed we could make these half hour films, taking years doing these films when we could have just made five minute films. There was a history going back to ‘Max Bezza and the City in the Sky’ by Phil Austin and Derek Hayes and they made a half hour film in the late 1970’s. So we thought “that’s what you do” and we went there to make half hour films. Nick carried on making his, which became ‘A Grand Day Out’ and I carried on making ‘Rarg’ for years and Mark Baker carried on making ‘Hill Farm’ for years and we all spent years but then a very simple sum showed that we wouldn’t be leaving until 2008!. So we thought we’d better stop.
So with Chris as Producer, we finished the film and realised that for a commercial version we needed another five minutes and in 1988 formed a company purely to make it to the half hour. Chris got Jim Henson interested and we raised the money. I hired a floor at Bob Godfreys and completed ‘Rarg’, by default we had started a company together. By that time we had also written a show called ‘Dream Patrol’ and we got the money from Scottish Television to make that in LA in 1991. ’Oscars Orchestra’ and ‘Denis the Menace’ followed and before you know it we have done 17 or 18 years of TV.
In all that though we have maintained a kind of film school mentality as filmmakers who happen to make TV series. There was never a need to grow into a large company making 2 or 3 TV shows at any time. It has always been the case that I get off on writing and directing, whereas Chris has enjoyed producing. When we bought this building (Collingwood O’Hare are in a rather beautiful converted Salvation Army building in the unlikely creative setting of Acton – sorry Acton!) we thought, we don’t want to make more than one show at a time. The size of the building defined what we want to be.
This ethos helps when we go out and pitch a show, people know that this is the one that we really want to make. It was never,’ well you don’t like that one, what about this one’. That is also why, when we have material that excites us, we make a first episode off our own back. This is to say firstly, this is exactly what it is going to look like and we stand by the quality of that work, but also that we are going to make this and we are committed to it as a project. Also creatively it is an exciting way to learn about a show, by work shopping it into a first episode. You can come up with a show that you actually couldn’t have put on paper. For example with ‘Yoko’, I couldn’t have sold that as a verbal picture,’ it’s about three animals, all of whom can only say each others names, who just leg it off into the wilderness…and that’s it’.
I just couldn’t have sold it so we just had to make the first episode so they could get what we were about. The biggest risk has been ‘The Secret Show’ as there is essentially nothing new at all about it. It is two agents going off and saving the world against daft baddies, there is nothing new about it’s format. However what it does have for a slightly older children’s age group is the ‘attitude’ and this is something that you can’t infuse into a script or a bible or a treatment. It is an adult show that has been pressure cookered down for the older child rather than a kid’s show that had been aged up. It is therefore very fast paced, witty and avoids a kooky funny comedy that is ‘kid by day – ghost by night, kid by day – scientist by night and so on. The thinking has been that kids will not watch a funny show unless there are kooky kids in it that they can relate to. Alternatively if you are doing a serious action show they have to be adults. What you couldn’t do was mix the two and have a funny adult show because the kids won’t understand it because there a no kids in it. I had seen these edicts from the press and from the channels and so I decided to do exactly what they said we shouldn’t. That was the bizarre thinking behind ‘The Secret Show’ we just had to make an episode to prove it could work.
We also hope to have the best of England and the best of America. It has American pacing, with good English animators.
I understand you have interesting voice over artists for ‘The Secret Show’
HS – We particularly chose people with good animation voiceover experience, people with good comedy timing. There is a perception that to do animation voiceover it is necessary to put on lots of silly voices, the traditional Disney style. What we need are people that can act and deliver a lot of truth in a character. We wanted them to do there own voices in the ‘Secret Show’ rather than try to assume a kids animation character.
The only one with a cartoony voice is the mad German Professor.
We will also have guest villains. On the pilot we were fortunate enough to have Stephen Fry, who obviously has great comic timing.
TC – We have some great new characters in development, including Santa Claus who of course is the only person who can gain unforced entry into any home in the world. So they use him in summer as part of the SWAT team, that’s his summer job. There is an old timer agent who comes out of retirement to solve crime.
Has it been a tall order to fill 52, 13 minute episodes?
TC – The format for a TV series is the bedrock of the thing. The pilot episode had the format really. When kids like a show they pretty much want to see the same thing again, they want to be surprised in exactly the same way. Everything that is intrinsic to the show happens every week. The granny at the start of each episode will always get trashed and the kids will wait to see how this part of the show is destroyed. There is a lot of stuff that keeps recurring.
The only add on to the pilot, which has two main heroes in Anita and Victor Victor is a villain called Doctor Doctor. He is the nemesis of Professor Professor, they both went to the school for the chronically gifted but he chose the dark side (the goodies in the series work for UZZ, whereas the baddies line up with THEM – in due course there will be a Secret Show website where children can sign up to either side. That should give parents a nice early clue as to the path their children might take!!).
HS – We wanted to create a framework where there was clearly our guys working against them. It could become a little predictable if there was one villain in Doctor Doctor pitched against Professor Professor.
TC – The writing is the bedrock. You can’t save a bad script but you can plus a good one. So we spend months and months on every single script
HS – We started at the beginning of January and we are only now starting to get the first few script completed.
The strength of the pilot is the humour, you must need to spend time to keep that level up…
HS – We wanted to keep the pace up, definitely. Keep the sweetness that kids are used to from American cartoons but have more of a British quirky comedy rather than just beating each other over the head slapstick.
TC – We also wanted to keep a British bizarre twist on life. For example there is an entire race of people who hide in the ‘blind spot’. Victor has his blind spots removed and suddenly he can see them. The tribe are being used by Freddy Friendly who is standing against the World Leader in the World Leader elections to steal all the worlds’ spoons. So there ensues an incredible spoon crisis
HS – it is very Pythonesque and a comedy underused in kids shows which are mostly very slapstick or action without any humour. We wanted to make sure there was a marriage between the two.
TC – We want laugh out loud humour. We have an episode where the world leader eats bogeys so the villains make exploding bogeys her head will blow off
That will work for the kids!
HS – Everything that we have done has not been wacky for wacky sake. There has always been a logic. It might be a slightly warped logic… but logic nonetheless. In one story the pilot light has been turned off on the sun with a remote control so they have to go to the sun and relight it. Of course this is not scientifically logical but kids will understand that you turn things on and off with a remote control.
TC – We found that people had given up on kid’s series. There is an industry of pre-school writers there is no industry of sharp comedic writers for animation. They mostly moved into live action. Nothing is going into children’s TV like The Simpson’s, who knows what the budget is on that but it is prime time TV in America. Nobody is putting that kind of money into children’s TV, nor will they ever. What we have to do is find writers on the way up who are funny or, as has been described with pre-school writers it is like getting them to sharpen a cushion to write this kind of stuff.
Has it been hard to avoid adult references in pitching the series at the 7-11 age group?
TC – That is an easy trap, to write for your peers as opposed to your audience. We have tried to slap down writers who make reference to movies in their childhood. Even the puns in titles need to be avoided. The kids must get it. On the first page of the writer’s bible it says that this is not a parody or pastiche of spy shows. We don’t want James Bond references even though there is a retro look to it.
HS– We should be delivering children intelligent comedy. They are a lot smarter these days.
TC -Ten years ago we did Denis the Menace, for 8-10 year olds but now you would say that was for 5, 6, 7 year olds. The 10 year olds have absolutely gone. We are trying to pull them back by saying we really have written something for you. The BBC have been very supportive when we have said that we want to push the boundaries on this show. The rules have to change because the kids have changed.
As I leave Tony and Helen to contemplate the next couple of action packed years, it is clear that along with Andrea Tan (the co producer on this and the creative force behind their hit pre-school series Yoko Toko Jakamoto) and the rest of the talented team there is a very real air of expectation surrounding ‘The Secret Show’. This project has been a long time brewing and if it is only half as good as the indications suggest, only half as good as the enthusiasm for the series then we are all in for a hell of a treat. Set your cuckoo clocks for 2007 kids!