Make a family-orientated TV series that revolves around family dynamics and their social navigations in today’s society. The target demographic is a mature audience (15+ years) and the show is to be broadcasted on subscription based digital viewing platforms such as Netflix, YouTube Premium or Instagram Reels.
35 O’Dea, a modern dramedy, revolves around a mixed race family that consists of a high-spirited Haitian mother named Kolet and a true blue Aussie step-father named Neil, along with their children Dennis and Nancy. The series explores how their cultural diversity intertwines with the similarities they share with one another. The show is played out in a mockumentary setting in which these real life characters are caricatured in their slice of life events. The pilot episode begins during the commencement of COVID and introduces the main character Kolet reacting to the news reports detailing the dangers and risks of the pandemic making its home on Australian soil. Rising to her duty of care, Kolet’s motherly instincts kick in as she begins to scream and babble towards her patiently loving husband, Neil, on how they must protect themselves and their loved ones. She then begins a frantic frenzy—calling each of her friends and family members, spilling her anxieties and detailing her plan of attack on the pandemic. Their individual responses to her concerns showcase an array of personalities intrinsic to her social ecosystem. The show ends with Kolet adamant on her motherly defence skills against the wrath of COVID.
We chose to situate this dramedy during the wake of COVID-19 because it was such a big impactful time that will be remembered for the generations to come. Our hope was for the audience to also find acceptance and healing in the comedic relief represented by what unfolded during the pandemic.
Dennis, Nancy and I conjured up the protagonists through the lens of their real life parents, Kolet being of Haitian descent and Neil being Australian. The title itself, 35 O’Dea is a double entendre as it is the name of the street in which the couple live on, whilst also pertaining to the way Kolet would theatrically exclaim the catchphrase, ‘oh dear’ in her Haitian accent.
Framed as a dramedy, it comedically documents the social contrast of Kolet and her flavoursome mannerisms juxtaposed to Neil and his calm yet loving approach to her fierce personality. Although their relationship may be dramatic, it’s comedically sincere, sweet and genuine. This is on top of how their friends and family network in that crazy social concoction.
The couples’ personalities are like oil and water, they meet but don’t mix. However, because of their love and appreciation of each other’s quirks, their relationship balances out. Their dynamic shines a spotlight on ethnically diverse families that tend to be underrepresented in modern pop culture sitcoms, drawing in a broader audience with their relatability and straying away from nuclear family normality.
We were able to flesh out these dynamics by drawing on each of our own ethnic upbringings and how we communicate with friends and family to appease both ethnic and westernised cultural roots. For example, I speak Binglish—a fusion of Bengali and English, with my parents as I don’t intend to fully disperse myself in westernised culture and rather, desire to hold onto my ethnic roots. Similarly, Dennis and Nancy amalgamate Haitan and English terms in a way that both Neil and Kolet can understand the gist of their conversations.
To get an idea of the world of 35 O’Dea and its protagonists, Dennis and Nancy who are co-producers of the show, talked about their parents' personalities and how they met, building a worldview of their lifestyle and social interactions. This then led to scrolling through Instagram pages of each character and workshopping their visual personalities through these posts. Seeing the way the main cast dressed and carried themselves, I illustrated iterations of them in different art styles within TV pop culture history including The Simpsons, Rick and Morty and Charlie and Lola. To gauge what design best captured them, I added my own style and tested out facial expressions and emotions that would carry their personality and mannerisms into the narrative. We collaboratively decided that this personal spin on the characters was the most authentic choice as it bore true resemblance to the visual representation of our cast. To give voice and personality to these characters, we listened to audio tapes of their daily conversations provided by their children and later workshopped impersonations of their accents, social dynamics, personalities and tonal qualities of their relationships.
Once established, I then worked on a logo that captured the essence of the show. One of the iterations tapped into the Haitian tribal aesthetic with geometric patterns and embossing the letters with dashes. Another iteration revolved around different instances of metaphorically visualising the symbols pertaining to location such as a flag, compass, street post and a geolocation pin. The final iterations were abstract and all together we determined which were the most visually striking and legible to read. We then decided with the first iteration.
Later, we met up with Nancy’s mutual friend, Huna, a script writer who honed into the specific personality traits, genre and target audience, and built on the final envisionment of the characters. With this finalised, I drew a rough mockup of a pilot episode that my co-producers and I conceptualised along with stage direction, expression, conversation and theatrical visual representations of emotions. As the vision became clearer, we collaborated with Nicolaj who aided in refining the character design and provided test animations to help conceptualise the final product of our pilot episode. He took the concept of my final character iterations and suggested having them coloured and in a T-pose so that they could later be puppeteered through the animation software, Adobe Animate, which would simplify the mobility and time constraints on pushing out each episode.
Through the adversity of COVID and lockdown, we continue to touch base on this project and hope to bring the pilot episode to fruition one day.
