On the road as an 8 year old. G. John Garrett, CAS Originally in DV Magazine

Over the last year or so I’ve had the great pleasure to go on the road...as an 8 year old boy. Well, a sort of bunny/boy. Actually, he’s neither; he’s an animated character. The most popular show on PBS is “Arthur,” from Marc Brown’s books. Animated aardvarks, rabbits and other assorted kids that have regular lives, go to school, complete with friends, parents, and annoying kid sisters. The next step? Spin off a live-action series with Buster Baxter, Arthur’s best friend. That’s right, a live action TV series starring an animated character. This was no “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” though; our star -shot- the live action!

This was an unique project at nearly every level. From concept to finished product, I’m willing to bet it’s the most collaborative, interwoven, interdependant television ever made.

From the beginning, “Arthur” creator Marc Brown, WGBH series producer Natatcha Estébanez and executive producer Carol Greenwald set out to extend the animated world of Arthur, Buster, DW and friends, with their “real” lives, problems and concerns, into the “real” world of documentary filmmaking.

Here’s the basic premise: Buster’s dad is a pilot who gets hired to fly a latin rock band, Los Viajeros [the travelers] on their world tour. Buster gets to ride along, sending video postcards of his adventures back to Arthur and the viewing audience. In the half-hour show about 22 minutes are live action and about 6 minutes are animated. All the live action footage is from the POV of Buster’s video camera, and takes place as first- person encounters with the people he finds and the other animated characters in the show. That’s right, Buster, an animated character, is operating the camera and interacting with the kids.

Since Buster is a well-developed character, the filmmakers know what motivates this boy. He’s bright, inquisitive, effusive, sometimes overly talkative, loves to eat and is obsessed with aliens and outer space. What 8-year-old isn’t? When he and the entourage land, he pulls out his camcorder and is not shy about turning it on and asking questions.

Preproduction

In most animation, we start with the script. The voices are recorded first, and the characters are animated to the cut, finished dialogue tracks. Music and FX are added, sometimes before the animation and sometimes after. With “Postcards,” it was done differently. Very differently.

First the researchers take about a month per episode to identify locations and find real kids who are doing interesting things. They research the locations, stories and characters that will be interesting to our audience. Sometimes the shows are location- based, like the Louisiana bayou, and sometimes story-based, like two girls who are best friends. The kids we find are usually between 6 and 12 years old. Then a producer/director is hired to go meet the community contact folks, scout a few groups of kids, to get an idea what they’re capable of, what they’re up to, and who may work out best for our style of filmmaking.

The director makes a rough assembly of the scout footage and reviews it with the senior producers, culture and language advisors and of course the writers. They develop the reasons why Buster is there, what the emotional arc of the story will be and the writers produce a shooting treatment. Its important to fit this story into Buster’s travels, how he might meet these kids, and how this story works with the established personalities of Buster, Arthur and the rest of the animated characters. It’s a fun show, but we sneak in some important learning for kids. After all, Buster is taking his audience on a world tour!

Production

When the kids/stories are decided on, more wheels begin to turn. First, the associate producer begins contacting the kids’ parents, crew and other associated parties to schedule shooting days. The story gets run through the director’s “Can these kids do this?” filter and then the director, AP, DP and sound mixer are off to the airport. We spend about 3-4 shooting days per episode and often will do two episodes in the same region.

Part of the production challenge was to have real, non-actor kids interact with Buster as a real kid, talking to him and his camera with natural, unrehearsed useable dialogue. The dialogue with the kids would often come from the director, the DP, or the sound mixer, depending on the moment, the inspiration and what was going on. So we are Buster! The Senior Director of Photography, Austin deBesche, is about 6'3" and has a lot of grey hair. I’m about 5"11" and have practically no hair, having pulled most of it out years ago on other projects. None of the other shooting teams were looking much like 8-year-old boys either. We had to come up with a way for the kids to stay focused on “Buster,” who isn’t there at all, and not look at us while carrying on a lively conversation with this imaginary friend. Our answer came in the form of a cut-out, laminated picture of Buster that we mounted on the lens shade, and a little direction before we rolled tape. The results were spectacular. We had great kids who instantly “got it,” and were able to have normal conversations with “Buster,” keeping eye contact and staying engaged with the moment.

So here we are, three or four grownups pretending to be an 8 year old boy in order to have a kid-sized conversation with real, non-actor kids. First we lay out the general idea of the scene we’re about to shoot. The kids are quite savvy and get it right away. We don’t necessarily shoot in sequence, either, so on day 2 or 3 when we explain that this is the first time Buster has seen a crab trap or heard anything about polar bears, the kids know where to go with the dialogue. Now if, say, the DP is going to play Buster and have a conversation, he/she has to know what the director and writers know, ask the right questions and lead the events to a certain conclusion. Plus light, frame, focus and move the camera! And, um, one more thing. NO DIALOGUE OVERLAPS! These kids are talking to an animated character whose lines haven’t even been written yet, let alone recorded. So we can’t be having any of our voices in the production track. This is harder than it may seem. The kids aren’t actors, neither is the person[s] playing Buster. Not only that, there’s another unique requirement. Every time Buster speaks, in every new space, we must get enough room tone to cover Buster’s dialogue. We do this so Buster has the same sonic landscape to speak into as the kids. In the sound mix, Buster’s cut dialog track is mixed with the room tone from that shot. Just like “Cast Away,” the hallway sounds different than the living room, which sounds different than the basement playroom, or foyer, etc. These two requirements, no overlaps and tone everywhere, are fairly serious challenges for an on-the-go documentary crew. Veteran producers on the show even forget how much room tone we need, and having an overlap-free two-minute unscripted discussion with a 12 year old is nearly a miracle in itself. Because we need spontaneity from the kids, limited time with them, and limited abilities from them [they’re just kids!] we can’t do a lot of retakes, so we pretty much have to get it right the first time, and every time.

Outfitting

We had all worked on children’s programming before but we knew from the outset that Postcards would be different. The kids are not actors, and we would only have a few days with them. The writers had to send us a story outline that the kids could pull off. And our cinematographers had to be “Buster-ized.” Remember, all the live footage for the show comes from the point of view of Buster Baxter, an 8 year old boy with a videocamera. So digibeta and dolly shots were completely out of the question. The material had to be technically sound, but not too slick.

We shot the entire series on Panasonic DVX100 cameras running 24p. Series producer Natatcha Estébanez liked the look it produced, with a little less detail and more cine-like gamma curve. The small MiniDV camera is also a less threatening presence for the kids. Many would ask to hold the camera and it was another fun element for them. Senior Dp Austin deBesche gave a number of reasons for liking the camera. The number one advantage to using the 100 was the large swing-out viewfinder. Since Buster is only eight, a lot of shooting was done at waist level. No other side mounted screen is nearly as large or bright. The wide zoom lens made it much easier to shoot in the small spaces we often encountered and the camera was very good in mixed lighting and in minimal lighting conditions. Our entire lighting package consisted typically of a Deva light, a 650W open face light and a 200W fresnel. We would light to raise low levels or if a touch beauty would help a scene without being overlit. We had to be careful to allow some rough edges. How much lighting is an 8 year old going to do? Austin commented that the focus was more positive than many other small cameras, the macro function was very nice and gave a lot of depth-of-field. The adjustable zebras were a plus as well. Beyond the short learning curve it operated well and was very reliable. We had no camera failures throughout production.

From my perspective, the 100 was a pretty good camera to work with. As mini DV cameras go, it has the best audio record/reproduce circuitry by far [see Jay Rose’s article comparing miniDV cams]. The XLR input connectors make for a clunky looking rig, but nobody seemed to complain. Everyone agreed that the input controls were too twitchy. The pots were easily bumped so we had to tape them down and I found myself longing for the push-to-turn pots on the 100's big brother cameras. The metering, while having no readable index, was useable enough to set a reliable reference tone at -20dBfs [Turn on the color bars, send tone to the camera, adjust your tone so the “blob- ometer” is one blob to the right of the white color patch] and you’re good to go. The 100 also does reasonably well with +4dB line levels and delivers a 2 channel return from the headphone jack. My rig consisted of an SQN 4S mixer, Lectrosonics 195 and 205 radios, and Schoeps on a boom pole. We were hard-wired to the camera at all times. There were some scenes shot with multiple cameras but I generally fed the A camera while the B [and sometimes C] camera got cutaways and wide shots. We shot a church choir once and I fed our wide, locked-off camera from the house mixer, left the camera mics running on the B camera and planted two PZMs for a stereo mix to the A camera. But most days it would be a couple of kids on radios with the Schoeps on a separate track. For the next season I’ve learned how to timecode syncrhonize multiple DVX 100s and hopefully the editors will have a better time with multicamera footage.

Postproduction

Once the story is shot, the director makes a rough cut and sends it to WGBH, beginning a twenty-nine week post production cycle. The editors refine the cut and turn it over to the writers who make a first-draft script and write lyrics for original songs that go to series composer Claudio Raggazzi. Series creator Marc Brown, the executive staff, the director, Cookie Jar Animation and the cultural and language advisors review the cut and give input to the writers. The writing staff then does a serious draft for the approximately five minutes of animation needed, plus all the animated characters’ dialouge for the 22 minute live action show. This can entail several characters both in Arthur’s world and on location with the kids. This process is repeated 3-5 times with new cuts of each draft after the review process.

When a final script is finished the last cut in this sequence is considered the offline picture lock. At this point the show goes to Cookie Jar Animation in Montreal. The studio produces animation designs for WGBH’s approval. From the designs the artists storyboard the show for the five minutes’ animation and the animation-to-live transitions. Next they schedule and record the animated voices. The picture elements to to Korea for a rough animation and then back to Montreal where Cookie Jar inserts the live action and returns a rough cut to to WGBH. The show gets reviewed and returned to Canada with revision notes. When it comes back to WGBH the music is layed in and the whole show is timecode locked. Composer Claudio Raggazzi wrote and spotted the music for the first 12 shows, then continued writing to produce a music library that senior editor Jean Dunoyer could use for later episodes. Jean sends an AIFF containing all the music to Cookie Jar who does the sound mix, spots FX and foley, and returns the result to WGBH for approval. This could take a couple of revisions, then Cookie Jar produces the online edit master. Back at WGBH the captioning center does the closed captioning and the master goes through tech evaluation before release. Rinse and repeat forty times, and you’ve got season 1 of Postcards From Buster.

Austin and I worked together most of the season and shot just over half the shows. Sometimes they would split us up to work with new producers or crews, “Busterizing” them along the way. The amount of communication through post just boggles my mind, but it was great to be able to exchange information with anyone in the production chain, from executive staff to writers and editors, whenever it was necessary. Postcards From Buster is a great example of a successful show that took, even demanded, input from everybody.