Hi-5 and Bananas in Pyjamas creator Helena Harris reveals the secrets to her success
IN her first interview for a decade, the brains behind Bananas in Pyjamas and Hi-5 reveals the secrets behind creating two of the most-loved TV shows.
HAVING a second baby led to Helena Harris inventing one of Australia’s most iconic children’s programs.
Are you thinking what I am thinking?
Yes, Ms Harris of the northern beaches is the brains behind Bananas in Pyjamas. She also went on to create Hi-5 which was translated into 118 languages with more than 500 episodes.
It was having a second child so very different from her first that prompted the former ABC film editor and director to explore child development and switch from television drama to children’s TV.
While there she attended a Play School concert and was convinced there was spin-off potential for the bananas.
“In Play School they were one of the few characters that had personality, they chased teddy bears and I was sure we could make them younger, less ugly and the children would love them,” Ms Harris said.
The very first storyline for Bananas in Pyjamas was an argument between B1 and B2 over a pink mug — based on her own preschoolers Amy and Morgan.
In fact, she went on to name the teddy bears in the series after her son and daughter who are now adults.
“You have four minutes and 20 seconds to tell a story that needs to be positive, has a beginning, middle and an end and deals with the dramas that are real for a preschooler,” she said.
The everyday lives of Morgan and Amy were regularly mined for material Bananas in Pyjamas and Ms Harris made a point of employing working mothers with young children so they understood better the world of the preschooler.
Ms Harris is the nation’s leading authority in children’s television. She has won three Logies for outstanding children’s television as well as the prestigious Helpmann Award for the best children’s stage show of 2002.
In the 1990s while watching the then-popular Spice Girls sing and dance she observed the choreography.
“And I thought “a three-year-old could do that!,” she said.
She then worked with the idea of kinaesthetic movement for children who learn through their muscles.
“Oral and visual is easy on television,” Ms Harris said.
“But kinaesthetic is also needed,” she said.
The pilot for Hi-5 was so successful a department store placed $1.2 million worth of clothing based on the program and suddenly Ms Harris had another hit on her hands.
Now retired for the past seven years Mrs Harris and her partner have been living in Church Point surrounded by lyrebirds, owls and wallabies, a deliberate retreat from the life of long meetings and international travel.
Having been nurtured and relaxed by Pittwater the couple are now keen to travel and are selling their large five-bedroom property with water views, wet-edge pool and bushland surroundings.
* Read all about their McCarrs Creek property here.
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