The opening titles are one of the most important elements in any TV show. They should capture the essence of what it’s about, give a glimpse of character, and hopefully be entertaining with a nice little narrative. If the opening title sequence works right it should have your audience hooked right from the start. .
The soundtrack is hugely important too and if kids hear it in another room it should have them running in to get in front of it! So why, oh why, do we always seem to leave it to the last minute and it always becomes a crazy dash to have it ready for broadcast? Probably because it always takes a few episodes before you really feel that you’ve grasped what the show is about enough to be able to nail it in 30 – 45 seconds.
So the first thing you need to do is to come up with a concept. For Olivia we settled on the idea that somehow the opening would focus around the name ‘OLIVIA’. Usually on a show like this the name might be re-versioned for different countries (for example Noddy is “Oui-Oui” in France) but in this case it was decided that the show was not going to change its name from country to country and it would be Olivia everywhere!
The other aims we had were to show Olivia’s different costumes and fantasies, and that we also introduce different characters from the show. Matthew Darragh, our animation director, took the lead on the opening titles and worked closely with Derek Horan to storyboard some different ideas. HERE are some of the early concept storyboards.
The music was directly inspired by Olivia creator Ian Falconer and his taste for jazz & ragtime music. This informed the choice of instruments for Darren Hendley, our brilliant musician on the show. Ian had made up a CD and sent it to me with some choices for music that he would like to inform the show, and this was a great help. Some of it might have been a bit sophisticated for our young audience but Ian likes to aim high! 
Here’s a first pass of the music: Olivia Version 1
After playing around with different musical styles we decided that we would like to mention Olivia’s name in the opening song. Darren and I discussed it and came up with the idea of Olivia’s name being shouted out. Darren brought in his niece Heidi ( who had been one of our voice performers on Wobblyland) and she laid down a demo track to give us an idea of what we wanted.
Heidi performing her heart out!
If you listen closely you’ll hear that she is having trouble pronouncing the ‘V’ in Olivia and actually singing ‘Olidia’!
Initially we had tried adding in Mrs. H & Julian but in the end we decided that it would be best to just include immediate family. Jean Herlihy did the animation while Richard Keane worked on the cameras to make sure everything was moving smoothly and in frame at all times, which is tougher than it sounds on so many takes.
We recorded lots of kids doing versions of the opening song. They were all great singers, very polished, excellent performers… and yet something was missing. Finally it was Chorion’s Waheed Ali himself who asked ‘Why are we trying to find trained singers to do this song when we have the perfect voice in front of us all the time?’ You can’t capture the kind of innocent exuberance that Heidi lashed out on take one for Darren. The perfect singer had been staring us in the face all along, now all we had to do was pick up those ‘V’s’ that Heidi had missed the first time around!
We got in a bunch of kids from the Dublin Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rathmines and they did a great job on the backing vocals.
Here is a video of a bunch of the kids from the school having fun at the audition:
And here are the final Olivia credits.
Enjoy!
12 comments so far
Hello People of the Brown Bag! I Marcio Perrella jr. and I am pleased and proud to help in animations of Olivia here in Brazil.
It is a great pleasure to follow the series in my country. I have many friends who already have children, I am expecting my first baby that was born soon and for sure Olivia will enjoy many things and teach my little girl!
Congratulations to all the project many people here doing this and accompanying great success in Disney Channel Brazil!
Love,
Marcio.
19 August 2009
12:50 pm
Thanks Marcio & thanks for your help on the show! Have you seen the episodes you worked on yet? Hope you were happy with the final results?
Great news on becoming a Dad. Congratulations and hopefully your little girl will become a big Olivia fan!
23 August 2009
7:41 pm
Great great work. Looks fantastic, I can feel the same lovely Olivia from the books. Wow!
30 August 2009
8:06 pm
Thanks Juan! Thats the best compliment we could ask for.
31 August 2009
1:27 pm
My 2 1/2 year old son Lucas LOVES Olivia and can’t get enough of her. In contrast to the music on most children’s shows, *I* love the music on Olivia and can’t get enough of it. I would love to get a CD of background music from the show – it’s fantastic!!!
22 February 2010
3:17 am
Thanks Peter! You & Lucas have great taste
The music was composed by Darren Hendley based very much on influences of Ian Falconer himself. No plans on Olivia CDs just yet but if we hear anything we’ll announce it on here!
22 February 2010
9:29 am
Hello to the incredible people of Brown Bag..I have recently come across this great Children’s 3D Animated Film. It is simply amazing to watch the tv series even though i am not young enough. As i study in the field of Animation, i find it cherishing to watch the animations and everything else with it. I have a simple question to ask if it can be answered!
Who had done the Rigging for the characters?
Thanks and Congratulations sent to you guys in Advance
5 April 2010
6:09 am
Thanks for the kind comments Bobak! You’re never too old to be watching Olivia!
The rigging for Olivia was a particularly difficult challenge because of her little pig like legs, which at times could look strange ( for intance when Olivia sits down) so we had to be able to change the rig in mid action without the audience noticing.
It was MARK TSANG who intially developed the rig and then EOGHAN GARVEY did a lot of the heavy lifting as we had to adapt this Pig rig to over 200 pig characters of various shapes & sizes in a very short time.
6 April 2010
9:10 am
Great work! Real nice catchy tune with cute kids voices. Smart to take just the name ‘Olivia’. This way the song is the same all over the world, really powerful. And no one will ever forget the title
Olivia is a great character in the books and on TV. In her confidence & creativity she’s a real good inspiration for kids.
Keep going on creating great work!
29 July 2010
12:47 pm
Thanks Harald! We found out pretty early on that the title OLIVIA was going to remain the same worldwide ( which is not always the case for a lot of childrens shows!) This meant we were able to get away with actually using Olivias name as a graphic element in the show as well – Such as on the side of her Airplane… We never get tired of shouting her name!
29 July 2010
1:23 pm
Hi. Funny you mentioned the them song that’s what caught my daughters and I attention. I love the theme song. My daughter who isn’t even 2 yet can name all the characters and she sits and watches the whole hour worth of shows on niskjr. Keep up the good work.
8 August 2010
3:05 am
Thanks Latoya! Keep your eyes out for some new episodes winging their way to the TV in the near future!
9 August 2010
8:46 am