The team at Ragdoll Productions , producers of the Teletubbies and other award-winning children’s TV shows for the BBC, used CatDV to keep on top of production and post-production during some major and very successful shows. Take a look at their CatDV customer story.
The multi BAFTA award winning Ragdoll Productions creators of many Children’s Programmes including ‘Teletubbies’, ‘In The Night Garden’ and ‘The Adventures of Abney and Teal’ have been using CatDV since 2005.
Initially Square Box were approached to provide a solution for collating and organizing the thousands of hours of footage filmed during the production of ‘In the Night Garden’. During the 15 month shoot 100 HD episodes were filmed with multiple cameras from multiple locations. All this footage had to be sorted into the relevant episodes and organized in a way that made it easy for the editors and directors to find the right shots quickly.
Originally used as a post production tool CatDV’s flexible customization allowed other departments within Ragdoll to take advantage of using CatDV such as Continuity, Wardrobe, Production Design, Storyboarding, this allowed the Director and Producer to have one central point of reference for the production and any notes were added and tracked within CatDV.
Pickup shots from the edit were added to CatDV with the relevant continuity notes such as weather conditions and time of day so that these conditions could be matched and scheduled into the shooting diary. At the start of each filming day CatDV would deliver a list of shots or scenes to be covered with the relevant props and locations needed.
The success of CatDV led to its implementation throughout the whole of Ragdoll during 2009 when the BBC commissioned 30 x 10min animated show ‘The Adventures of Abney and Teal’.
‘The Adventures of Abney and Teal’ was a mix of traditional 2D animation and state of the art 3D Animation. Directors, Producers, Writers, Storyboard artists, Editors, Animators and Compositors would all communicate through CatDV. The flexible configuration within CatDV allowed specific templates to be designed that would easily show the status of shots and elements required for each show.
CatDV was at the heart of this production and became the preferred tool for communication allowing their artists to concentrate on what they do best, making fantastic programmes that engage and entertain children.