Stu’s Web Wednesday: Written by a Kid

You know I love Geek & Sundry's programming. From The Flog to Tabletop to the whole freaking line up, I think Geek & Sundry is doing more for weekly entertainment than anything on traditional TV, no matter where you get it (this includes Hulu). The concepts they bring up, while being a niche for being "Geeky", are done in such a fantastic way that it does more to open up these venues to the "mainstream" than any film or television adaptation of whatever part of the culture you could find. It doesn't just introduce these things, but shows how passionate we are to them and, most importantly, why we're passionate. Out of everything mentioned during the initial preview in March , the one that seemed out of place was Written by a Kid. It didn't seem bad, just sandwiched between stuff like Dark Horse Motion Comics and Sword and Laser, it was on it's own little island, probably would be the least receptive of all the shows on the network, and I honestly didn't know how well the show would be received. Boy, I was proven wrong with today's premier episode.

The whole premise is two producers have kids aged four to nine sit down and tell them a complete story. The record the kid telling the story, and even during the process the producers ask questions to poke into the holes in the story to both help flesh it out and get what their answers would be. After the whole process, they then take the story and give it to top animators, producers, and actors to act out the story in whole and create an entire short film, using the kid's idea and script word for word. Even if the word is said incorrectly, like in episode one with the S.Q.U.A.T team. And that's the only way it could be done. If it was corrected in any way, with the filter of an adults eyes, the show would seem false. These short films are a literal production of the child's vision. I know if I was a kid, I'd be off the wall hyped to see this happen to whatever story I came up with. In the terms of production, there are even special features, including Making Of documentaries, after the fact to see how they took the kid's story and made a movie.

Written by a Kid is produced by the Geek & Sundry YouTube Network, which in itself is produced by Felicia Day and Kim Evey. You can follow all of Geek & Sundry's new announcements and community on their Twitter and Facebook pages. Also, they just recently started their own Forums, IRC Chat, and Ventrilo server (which is an cool, if not mildly frightening idea) on their own official site as well, so if you're a fan of their work as much as I am, go and join up. Yes, I have a screen name there, but I haven't posted much. So with Written by a Kid released, one question remains: What is Learning Town and what glorious madness will Paul & Storm unleash upon the Interwebs?