Trade Press

15th November ­ Broadcast Magazine ­ Behind the Scenes Feature by Jackie and Fiona

Olga da Polga, CBeebies

15 November 2022

Executive producer Jackie Savery explains how to bring out the comedic talents of guinea pig

Production company: Maramedia

Commissioner: Michael Towner, commissioning editor, CBeebies

Distributed by: Beyond

Length: 13 x 11 minutes

TX: Saturday and Sundays 5.35pm from 19th November on CBeebies (available from 14 November on BBC iPlayer)

Executive producers: Jackie Savery and Nigel Pope

Director: Michael Hines

Producers: Uzma Mir and Fiona Donaldson

Head of production: Jackie Dorman

Writers: Sara Daddy, Nigel Pope and Jackie Savery

2D animation and titles / VFX work: Interference patten / Doghouse tpr media consultants – January 2023

Given that the team at Glasgow-based Maramedia has a background in wildlife documentaries and children’s TV, a show featuring talking animals seemed an ideal project for them. Although as they say, working with children and animals always comes with a warning.

Adapted from the Olga da Polga books written by Michael Bond (of Paddington fame) the stories are about a very chatty and imaginative guinea pig, her animal friends and the human family with which she lives – named the ‘Sawdust Family’ by Olga herself.

The series was filmed primarily as a live-action drama with 2D animation inserts for Olga’s tall tales. During the offline edit, special effects were also added to the animal’s mouths to give them the ability to talk.

Working to a children’s drama budget, costing out and scheduling the various elements was a real challenge. But the team certainly had time to mull things over. Commissioned in 2019, the filming was postponed for two full years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The series was finally created in quite an unconventional way (with each aspect of production running separately before being assembled as a whole) and began with an extensive period of script development and writing which ended with the creation of trial animatics and storyboards. Once the scripts were locked, the narration and animal voices which form the backbone of each story were the first to be recorded.

To give each animal a really distinct character, we chose a range of regional accents for each animal from the warm and chatty Lancashire accent of Olga herself (played by Lesley Harcourt) to the aloof Edinburgh-accented Noel the cat (played by Susheel Kumar) to Brummie tortoise Graham (played by Mark McDonnell).

Filming of the series was spread across the Spring of 2022 beginning with the animal close-up filming which featured two black cats, three toads, four identical ‘Olga’ guinea pigs, plus a rescue-centre hedgehog and a pet tortoise.

It was spread across four months requiring both patience and important animal welfare considerations . A completely identical mini animal set and filming hutch was designed to give a range of different animal perspectives and camera angles whilst keeping the animals happy and secure whilst filming.

We assembled an award-winning team from Scotland to lead the drama shoot including director Michael Hines and series producer Uzma Mir. Both Uzma and Michael were undaunted by the “animals and children” tag and have a great pedigree including working on sitcoms like Still Game and CBeebies favourites like Molly and Mack, so their flair for comedy was key.

However, it’s fair to say that working with guinea pigs and tor toises means that the usual drama filming conventions required some creative thinking once you factor in the different animal behaviours and welfare.

Patience is really important and luckily our three human stars displayed that in abundance. Real-life husband and wife pair Greg Hemphill (Victor in Still Game) and Julie Wilson-Nimmo (Miss Hoolie in Balamory) gave warm and funny performances in the central human roles of Mr and Mrs Sawdust and soon bonded with eight-year-old Isla Mercer in the key central role of Karen Sawdust (a portrayal of Michael Bond’s real-life daughter).

For essential economy in the drama shoot, all locations were selected to be within 3 miles of the core garden location. In fact, more than 70% of filming was set in the garden, something of a gamble when factoring the well-known unpredictability of the Scottish weather.

Once filming was completed, the drama scenes were assembled in the edit while a second editor painstakingly assembled the very best animal shots using the pre-recorded narration as a guide. These two workflows were combined to create the full story and the ‘talking’ animal shots passed to the special effects team at Doghouse to add the mouth effects.

My tricks of the trade - Jackie Savery

Keep an open mind and be ready to adapt – there was constant modification of the creative progress as we learnt more about how all the aspects worked together.

Have a sense of humour – this was easy with this project, the stories are so funny, as were all the little nuances of animal behaviour once given a voice and the mood on set was fun and brilliantly directed.

Always remember the vision – many of the aspects had to be worked on separately so always keeping an eye on how they would combine was key.

Never forget to be inspired and enjoy the project – it was a great honour to adapt such a wellloved author’s stories. And as Olga herself says in the books: “If you really want something in this world,’ said Olga simply, ’you’ll never get it by sitting down and waiting. But if you go out and do things there’s no knowing where you’ll end up.”

Meanwhile the 2D animation scenes were created separately (working with Edinburgh-based animation company Interference Pattern) and added to the offline edit, again using the pre-recorded voices as a guide. These animations were inspired by Olga’s childlike imagination and using a range of bright ‘felt pen and crayon’ style colours for the backgrounds and characters.

With the thirteen programmes nearing completion, a score was composed for all the programmes which incorporated themes for the main characters combined with more bombastic tones for the animated sequences depicting Olga’s far-fetched and fantastical stories.

As part of the final pass, all the animal-voice actors returned to Glasgow to record pieces of dialogue which had originated from comedic opportunities in the live-action animal shots.

Graham the tortoise developed a distinctive ‘Amazing’ exclamation and Noel’s superior catty sneers were added alongside hedgehog Fangio’s humming and sniffing. Lastly all the completed talking VFX were dropped in to complete the look and the series given an extensive bright colour grade.

It was certainly a production that was a true labour of love and the entire project had some amazing serendipity to it. Unbeknown to us as the start – Michael Bond had always wanted to make Olga into a TV series himself and had written his own scripts and even begun shooting a pilot.

It wasn’t until we had laid out our vision that Karen Jankel (Michael Bond’s daughter) then showed these scripts to us and the similarity of approach was amazing. We are thrilled to bring Olga to the small screen and hope everyone will enjoy these delightful and funny stories.

Letting animals take the limelight

Fiona Donaldson, animal camera operater and producer

Filming of animals whether wild or domestic is always a challenge but specialised techniques, clever set design and patience alongside responsible animal handlers, multiple animals and model replicas were key for the Olga da Polga series, where animal welfare always came first.

When working so closely with animals and keeping their best interests at heart the team found the best approach was to sit back and allow the animals to behave completely naturally. Hours upon hours of filming was done in the comfort of the animal’s own homes with a small team of one handler, one camera operator and a camera being added into their routine.

Patience and an understanding of each species allowed us to know that with enough shootingthe animals would give us a good range of shots to fit their character narrations. We let the animals do what they do best with their charming and naturally expressive selves taking to the limelight as the camera rolled from a comfortable distance using techniques and kit from wildlife filmmaking such as long zoom lenses, usually a no-no when it comes to drama. Low angle shots of the animals and where they remained still for long enough were crucial to give the best “talking” shots to animate.

Some of the most difficult to film scenes and stories presented us with unique workarounds that resulted in a more dynamic way of telling the story. A probe lens was used to create the effect of the animal’s point of view running through the undergrowth or moving through difficult to film areas allowing us to showcase the story in the scenes without putting animals in unnatural environments.

Clever prop and set design allowing for filming within hidden set areas creates the illusion of the story without ever allowing the animal to come to any harm or stress and camera trickery created a visual that looks to be something it isn’t such as in the episode where Olga decides to explore the shrubbery.

And when our animals were not on their adventures out in the ‘wide world’, they were safely filmed using a totally purpose-built hutch to keep animals happy and secure while maximising filming opportunities as the guinea pigs went about their day-to-day lives as normal.

26th October ­ C21 Media: “CBeebies orders first TV version of Paddington creator’s Olga Da Polga books”

CBeebies orders first TV version of Paddington creator’s Olga Da Polga books

Olga

Da Polga mixes live-action, VFX and animation

UK kids’ channel CBeebies has commissioned the first TV adaptation of classic children’s book series The Tales of Olga Da Polga by Paddington creator Michael Bond.

TV series Olga Da Polga is being produced by Glasgow-based production company Maramedia subsidiary Marakids.

Maramedia usually focuses on factual wildlife series and has used its expertise in working with animals to turn the books into a series mixing live-action, VFX talking animals and animation.

The scripts, based on Bond’s novels from 1971, were developed for television by Maramedia co-founders Jackie Savery and Nigel Pope, with additional input from children’s TV writer Sara Daddy.

The 13×11’ series focuses on the adventurous and slightly hyperbolic life of Olga the guinea pig who is adopted by the Sawdust family, portrayed by husband-and-wife team Greg Hemphill (Still Game) and Julie Wilson-Nimmo (Balamory), alongside Isla Mercer in her debut role.

Olga, voiced by Lesley Harcourt, meets new friends like Fangio the hedgehog and Graham the tortoise in the Sawdust family garden and shares stories with them about her experiences.