Mama's Musings

Adina's Deck - Good Morals are in the Cards

While everyone else in my family was stuffing themselves with turkey stateside, I was attending a public relations conference in Munich.  The topic was the role Web-based audio and video PR will play in the future. I didn't learn anything new, but I did realize we are all on a path of no return. The World Wide Web, and all its technical wizardry, is here to stay.

I'm a wee bit of a technophobe. It's not entirely true, but I tend to view gadgetry as an ersatz for truly living. So whenever someone approaches me with anything that can only be enjoyed with a plug or batteries, I falter and resist.

Life for our children looks a lot different than it did for us as we grew up. They have to learn how to deal with computers one way or the other.

Enter Adina's Deck, a Nancy Drew meets Ghostwriter teenage foursome who solve cyber-mysteries at school. Whether it's online dating, plagarism or cyber-bullying, this series addresses some real-life issues like no other show I've seen.

Director and producer Debbie Heimowitz sent me the first three in her series (the others are pending financing). Even my son, who tends to grow impatient with 'real-life' programming, as opposed to cartoons, loved it. My daughter, who is taking a short three-hour course about how to use the Internet tomorrow, enjoyed the themes throughout the series, too. It makes her feel grown up to type on a keyboard, like her mom. She has grown so fond of my old laptop that I've promised to give it to her if she keeps up her grades this year.

Thankfully, we have insightful directors such as Debbie to lean on when our children's minds seem filled with online chatter. A group of positive role models, the clan in Adina's Deck fosters honesty, integrity, and the type of problem-solving lacking in most television programming today. Recommended for children ages 8 to 13, this award-winning series promises to help us parents unlock the mysteries of today's tweens with a nice dose of ethics tossed in!

Unhappiness and TV linked

We all want our kids to grow up to be happy individuals. Yet, everytime I tell them "No, you can't watch TV for another consecutive hour. Get up, go to the door, and discover the oxygen outside this house," they balk. Like breathe fresh air, people, and stop begging me to fulfill your digital addiction (slight hypocrasy aside - I mean I live from my computer work, ok?)

Thanks be to John P. Robinson and sociologist pal Steven Martin. No joke. After culling through 34 years of time-diary data, they discovered what we moms already know.

Unhappy people watch more TV.

Now, that's not to say that TV makes you unhappy. I've been known to hunker down once a week to watch my reality show about young singing talents behind the scenes. TV consumption just has no lasting benefits (and if you've ever indulged in too many chips while watching the playoffs, you'll know which lasting effects that can have on you...).

So I'm back to my point about limiting my kids' TV viewing. It doesn't make you happy. And neither do the false advertising promises fulfill their long-term vision of what happy people look like.

Amen John P. and company. Glad to know you're on our side.

My Chat with 'Land Before Time' Producer Ellen Cockrill

Occasionally I meet incredibly inspiring people who are willing to talk with me about their amazing lives.

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Ellen Cockrill, Senior Vice President of Animation for Universal Studios Family Productions. Her job is to oversee the development and production of television and Universal DVD Originals™ animated fare for the studio. In addition to overseeing the wildly popular PBS KIDS series CURIOUS GEORGE, she has also been shepherding the production of The Land Before Time television series for Cartoon Network, which is based on the most successful feature-length children’s home entertainment franchises of all time. As of September 4, it is now running at 9:30 am on the Cartoon Network.

The newest Land Before Time movie, The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends, will be released on December 4, 2007. It stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Sandra Oh (you know, the woman you love to hate on Grey’s Anatomy. Yeah, that one!).

Prior to joining Universal, Ms. Cockrill spent nearly five years at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, most recently as Executive Director of Development, developing and producing projects including the Oscar®-nominated animated short film The Chicken from Outer Space, which served as pilot to the Cartoon Network’s Courage the Cowardly Dog series, and the Annie Award-nominated Johnny Bravo pilot, also for Cartoon Network.

Before joining Hanna-Barbera, Ms. Cockrill worked at the Samuel Goldwyn Company as a story editor in their feature film department. She began her development career at Walt Disney Television working on family television movies. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from the University of Washington.

Needless to say, she blew my socks off. Here’s a snippet of our conversation you folks might enjoy.

CLH: The Land Before Time has been around for quite some time.

EC: We’ve been making these movies since 1988, when Steven Spielburg and George Lucas made the first theatrical feature The Land Before Time. 19 years later we have 13 films. All the rest of them have been made as direct to video movies. In March 2007 we went on the Cartoon Network with a television series of 26 half-hour shows. We also have books, apparel, games and other consumer products.

CLH: Did George and Steven do the other films, too?

EC: They just launched the first one for Universal. My predecessors here said the movie was so wonderful, they’d love to make more of them as direct to video. That’s how it has continued ever since.

CLH: What was the secret ingredient to the success of these films? Nineteen years is a full generation. Do you think the first generation is motivating the second to watch these films? It is a long time to sustain viewers’ interest.

EC: It helps that moms are familiar with them. At the end of the day, this has been a real crown jewel for Universal. It has been hugely important to them and their love shines through all the Land Before Time movies they have produced. There has been a lot of care going into every movie. The original movie gave us a lot of great material and characters to work with such as Little Foot, the curious, sensitive long neck; Cera, the proud headstrong three-horn; Ducky, the innocent compassionate swimmer; Petrie, the panicky flyer; Spike, the gentle giant; and two more recent characters sweet-natured Chomper and thoughtful Ruby.