I’m off at the Cartoon Forum this week, preparing to present Millie and Mr Fluff on Friday morning (see the image above). But while I’m away, here is a thought on taking a story to screen:

Hit those key story points hard. Really hard.

As a writer, I would tell you that everything in a script is important. But as a director/producer/editor/consultant/casual viewer I can tell you that not everything is equally important.

In a short television story, there are likely around three absolutely essential story points. These are points that, if a kid missed, the story would cease to have any impact. So in a very generic yet common and perfectly valid example, the key points might be these:

1 – Character has a problem.
2 – Character through some action or event realises there is a solution.
3 – Character fixes problem.

Now there are other parts that will help this story. If I saw a script that was just this, I would recommend that we need to see some failed attempts in there too. But when it comes down to it, if you remove one of these three points you’ve got a major problem. Remove number 1 and your audience doesn’t know what the aim is and so the other points have no impact. Remove 2 and the end will feel nonsensical, pointless or too easy. Remove 3 and your whole resolution is gone.

But when you write a script or your writer hands in the script, there is going to be a lot more in it than just these three things. We hope for lovely character moments, jokes, ups and downs. And they’re all in there together. Rarely does a writer put the absolutely essential points in CAPS (probably would be frowned upon but actually I think there would be some merit to the idea) so it is now up to the rest of the team, director et al, to tell that story in the best way possible. If that team just goes through a script and gives everything equal importance, it could just end up being a bunch of stuff that happens and the key points could be missed. That doesn’t make it a bad script – the script hands you the elements but the storytelling work never ends there, nor should it.

You have got to make absolutely certain that the story will be clear and have maximum effect on the audience. For that to happen, you have to hit those key story points hard. They are essential. They take priority and so, by definition, everything else becomes secondary. So in boarding, animatics, recording, animation, always make certain that those points get the space, timing and emphasis they need. Your episode depends on it.

Hit those key story points hard. Really hard.

The Cartoon Forum 2014 is next week and we at Mooshku will be there presenting our new children’s show Millie and Mr Fluff – a comedy about a little zookeeper and her tiger friend, full of fun, disguises and mischievous monkeys. We have lots of animated scenes to show, some great funny moments and a fantastic soundtrack (you’re going to LOVE the music). So I’m really looking forward to the presentation.

There is something special about showing your work to the world, especially in a presentation/pitch scenario where you get to reveal in a way that can offer up the odd little surprise. Presenting is fun. It wasn’t always that way for me. I have pitched many times and the early days were tough. Speaking in front of a room full of people can be a tough thing to ask of even a high-functioning introvert and, truth be told, my early presentations left a lot to be desired. But I learned from experience, watching other presentations and also learning from my own – where they went right and where they didn’t.

People have their own methods of course but for me one simple thing changed presenting from being a nerve-wracking horror to being a rush: more preparation. Preparation firstly in making absolutely sure your concept is ready (I wrote a post on that once) and then actual pitch preparation. Writing it, rewriting it, saying it (because writing is not the same as talking), knowing it. You hit a point where you know your material well enough that you can veer off or answer a question when required and not trip up. You can ad lib and tell a story of something that happened that morning because you know the key points and the material rather than just learning words. At that stage, you’re not reciting. You’re in communication with your audience.

And like a show itself, communication is what it’s all about.

If you can communicate your show well, you’re giving it the best chance. You have to have a great show of course but even the best shows need to be presented well. There will still be hiccups. I still get nervous. I may stumble over a word or two. A video might not play when it supposed to. I might realise I’m still in my dressing gown and slippers. Having written this post about enjoying presenting, I have pretty much guaranteed something will go horribly wrong to make me regret that. But if I’m really prepared, I can pull it together and keep going.

So what about Millie and Mr Fluff? Well it’s a lovely funny show for young kids with a strong hook (I’ll tell you more about that some other time!). We’ve had a fantastic response so far and did some testing early on and refined it and the reaction from kids and their parents has been amazing. We’re excited about bringing it to the Forum and getting to show it off and we have some really entertaining clips to show.

If you’re coming to the Cartoon Forum, I hope we’ll see you in our room: Friday the 26th at 9.45am in the Pink Room.

And if you’re presenting there yourself, enjoy it. Go prepared, have fun and good luck.

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the muck-flinging going on in gaming over the last few weeks. I’d forgive you for steering clear of it. The short version is that a small group of gamers jumped on an opportunity for sexism and harassment and a large group of gamers enabled it. I wasn’t remotely surprised by the small group but I must admit to being pretty taken aback by the larger group – the enablers. I have been aware of these issues of course and have written many times on gender role models but this seemed worse than even I was expecting.

I couldn’t help but think of Scott Benson’s short film ‘But I’m A Nice Guy’ (watch here).

It made me sad.

And then, like any stimulus to the creators among us, it motivated me. I asked myself “how can I make things better?” This is one of the wonderful things I see in other creators and there are so many of us. Instead of just tearing things down or criticising or arguing, we get constructive. We learn. We make. We contribute.

So what can we do?

Well in preschool media we start early and this, in my opinion, is the best place to start. In preschool, things are actually pretty good. Some of the biggest hitters (Dora, Peppa, Doc McStuffins) work across genders and don’t rely on gender stereotyping that might widen the divide or build perception that men and women are entirely different beings. Female role models are in a much better place in preschool than they were some years ago and this is working well for everyone. And many broadcasters and producers are working even harder and actively looking for varied, interesting and positive characters with a better gender balance. This all has a positive effect among both girls and boys.

So let’s keep that up. Watch your male/female character ratio, make sure characters of both genders are actual characters rather than their personalities being their gender and watch for lazy gender signifiers (this happens so often without even realising it and I’ve been guilty of it in the past).

One problem is that, for all the great work we’re doing and improvements we’re getting in actual preschool content, we seem to be seeing an equal and opposite effect in marketing. I see more gender divides than ever in commercials and products. What can we do about that? Well as parents we can try to reject it and as creators we can aim to make our content as gender-inclusive as possible. How can that help? Well what I’m finding in preschool is that the better the actual content, the more it exposes the worst of the commercials around it as archaic and wrong. I’m sensing a much greater awareness of these issues among parents and the better things get, the more the anomalies will stand out. There have been great campaigns to make children’s books more gender-inclusive, for example. And now those big ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’ titles begin to look weird in that landscape.

So let’s keep improving the content landscape.

Can we do more? Sure. We can always do more. For me, creating content for children that would enrich and contribute is part of our core mission statement at Mooshku and these recent events have pushed gender issues right up to the top of our list. So some things that were simmering in the background will be shifted to the foreground as soon as we can. If we get it right, we can help children, boys and girls, come out of their preschool years as confident as possible, as well-rounded as possible and as open and accepting as possible.

And then after the preschool years? Well that’s where I’ll challenge those making content for older children to do better. There is a problem. So let’s see what difference you can make.

I play games and I love handheld systems in particular. You remember the Gameboy Advance, right? Mine came with me everywhere. There were other handheld systems over the years: the Game Gear, the Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket and so on, but the Gameboy dominated and outlasted them all.

Then one year Sony announced they were entering the handheld market with the PSP.

Sony had come from nowhere with the original Playstation and they completely took over that market, leading to the once-mighty Sega leaving hardware behind. So you can be sure Nintendo took notice when the PSP was announced, especially as it seemed years ahead of the Gameboy Advance in terms of technology.

In what was less than a couple of months later, Nintendo announced a brand new handheld: the Nintendo DS. Conventional wisdom would have said that, to compete with the PSP, Nintendo would need to deliver a machine with more power, better graphics. But this thing didn’t seem to have the power of the PSP. Not even close. And what it did have, to be perfectly honest, looked a little insane. It had two screens. One touch screen with a stylus. And a microphone. Everything their success with the Gameboy had shown they didn’t need.

It didn’t help that it wasn’t the prettiest looking machine either.

Well I’ll probably never know what their thinking was but, to me, it seemed like Nintendo had gone into a complete panic due to the PSP announcement and just threw together this mishmash of a machine that hadn’t even been fully designed yet. It reeked of panic. And I remember reading message  boards at the time and seeing the DS slated continuously for just being a collection of gimmicks.

Even Nintendo themselves didn’t seem to be all that convinced. They spoke of the machine as a ‘third pillar’, as they would continue the Gameboy brand along side the DS.

Well you know the end of the story, right?

The Nintendo DS was released. And it sold. It sold millions. And it wasn’t even down to some amazing software – oh, that came, albeit a little later. The Nintendo DS sold as hardware. The machine itself became the selling point. With it, they captured whole new markets while gamers looked at Nintendogs and thought, what? It’s not even a game!

The Nintendo DS dominated.

Nintendo dropped the Gameboy, never mentioned pillars again and redesigned the DS to look much, much prettier.

They had a hit on their hands.

Nintendo may well tell you differently but it looked to me like they had no idea what they had when they announced the DS. The rest of the world certainly didn’t. But they didn’t have to know. By throwing all these crazy features in and seeing what would stick, by taking that risk, they ensured another generation of handheld gamers would think Nintendo first.

So what’s the point of all this on a blog about making content for preschoolers? How does this relate to creating great concepts for children? Simply this: you don’t always have to know exactly what you’re doing and you won’t always predict correctly what will work or what won’t work. Try it anyway.