Speaker 1: Say hi to Arrows so he knows he has you.
Speaker 2: Hi, hell Loo and good morning. How are you guys
doing today? How are you fantastic? And I'm very excited
to share a conversation with you because I gotta tell you,
I can't be the only adult that's telling you this
morning that you make me feel like a kid again,
because I'm so drawn into these characters that it's just
and I don't know if it's it just reminds me
of my childhood, but there's just something here that really
triggers something very positive in my life.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a wonderful to hear.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I think we feel the same way working all this
stuff every day.
Speaker 1: It's great to hear from you.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you put focus on is relationship,
you know, working together, creating together. And I gotta tell you,
I really like Dak Dak in the way that you know,
Daniel was so inspired that he likes to read. And
I'm going, oh my god, thank you so much for
saying that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was The special in general, was a great
opportunity for all of our characters to introduce what's unique
about them and to really use that to get to
know each other better and make friends, which is a
really great lesson to offer kids, I think, going into
back to school when they're about to meet probably lots
of new kids in their new classrooms.
Speaker 2: You guys waste absolutely no time when it comes to
building up that relationship with Hody, and because I mean,
everything starts happening so quickly. But the thing is, I
like it that way because I want to get into
the storyline and make my way through that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I think that first.
Speaker 3: Song especially, you know, Donkey's excited that a new friend's
coming to the neighborhood. She doesn't know who, and then
Daniel and Dad Tiger come in on Trolley and Trolley
is a friend too. Trolie is someone Donkey knows well.
So she's just so excited to meet Daniel, and we
know Daniel's excited to meet her too, And yeah, Gramby
and Dad Tiger kind of go off to fix their
clock and Daniel and Donkey can just get right into
it and get to.
Speaker 1: Know each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was really important for us to make this
episode feel special in lots of different ways, he said.
Speaker 4: Right away, and get right into it and have Donkey
and Daniel meat and it feels really natural and hopefully
viewers at home enjoy seeing that.
Speaker 1: And that scene is something that you know, we talked
a lot about the.
Speaker 4: Entire episode, but we really wanted to get that scene
just right because it's like the first time that they're meeting.
Speaker 1: We wanted to feel special, like you said, and also for.
Speaker 3: The viewers, you know, we might be have Daniel viewers
watching this episode who don't ordinarily watch Donkey Donkey viewers
who don't ordinarily watch Daniel, so it actually serves as
a lovely moment for our audience to get to know
both characters better too.
Speaker 2: There's forward motion in the storyline. In other words, they're
going someplace. The anticipation is there, and then when you
add trolley into the storyline, all of a sudden, now
we know how we're going to get there. I mean,
there's such a great I'm a writer, so therefore, you know,
it's always about that forward motion and you guys have
nailed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Good to hear.
Speaker 3: Metaphorical and literal, Yeah, Charlie, we knew that they were
going to go on an adventure because an adventure is
typical pretty key to Donkey's tony storytelling, and we wanted
them to be on an adventure that was like safe
and within the bounds of how Daniel would be on
Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. So we knew that Trolley is their
trusted companion on this search for the rambow ball would
be the perfect the perfect thing to drive this story
literally as you said.
Speaker 1: And then it also gave Daniel an.
Speaker 3: Opportunity to introduce Donkey to things about himself, like his
ride along.
Speaker 5: Song right, talk to Donkey, I love about too, giving
them time to know each other on their own, which
is something that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Necessarily happen a lot on Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. It's often
and grown up or a parent around.
Speaker 4: But in Donkey Hoty, we do things a little bit
differently and have Daniel be with Donkey through the whole
story and to spend that time on the two of them.
Speaker 2: Please do not move. There's more with Kristin and Chris
coming up next. We're talking Donkey Hoty and Daniel Tiger.
We're back with Kristin and Chris Loggins. I got to
tell you something that really got me and made me
chuckle like a child, and that is my very first
guitar that I bought as a teenager was a flying
V guitar. And guess what you've got feature in this show.
I saw that flying be it was like, you bet
they got a flying V in there because they're cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll find a lot of ins in the Donkey
good set and prop design, like the production design of
our series overall, a lot of it is very nostalgic,
like Panda has a big boombox, Donkey has that flying
being guitar. Yeah, and I have to credit our team
at Stiphy and our production designer Justin who really has
that sensibility for bringing childhood memories into the set, production
design and Donkey.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you this question. It's the old
what came first, the chicken or the egg? Does the
song come first and you build a story around it,
or do you build the story and then you have
to include the music into it.
Speaker 3: It's very natural, it's both at the same time. The
way that we script stories is we do start with
the story, of course, and we work with extremely talented
writers who are very accustomed to how music can drive storytelling,
and music driving storytelling is very important to book tigers.
Speaker 1: Neighborhood and Donkey Hoodie. So as we work with the writers.
Speaker 3: To develop the script, we are making sure that those
songs are woman in very naturally, just like the learning
messages are woman in very naturally.
Speaker 1: It's not one or the other. It's how this all
comes together. It gets all together at the same time.
Speaker 5: But for this episode, we made a conscious creative decision
to have a talented writer named Jill Kusa Turner, who's
the head writer on Dakan Tiger's Neighborhood also written many
Donkey Hote episodes, be.
Speaker 1: The writer of this episode, so she knows both of
the world.
Speaker 4: Very well and now is a great place to be
starting from is to have part working with us on
the script, and I think it turned out very well.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what you guys are going to be
doing with the next level of these these two coming together,
because I mean, the marketing has got to be absolutely incredible.
The door wide open what you can do for t
shirts as well as creating a music soundtrack. I like
the songs. They are sharp and to the point. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we're thinking about all those things and in
terms of the composition of those songs.
Speaker 3: I want to give a shout out to our music
director Bill Sherman, who works to compose a lot of
the music, including the reimagined versions of the Fred Rogers
songs like Look and Listen, which is featured in this story.
That's a Fred Rogers original song that we reimagined in
this episode.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I want to give it a ton of
credit to Bill.
Speaker 3: And there is Donkey Hoody music available to stream, not
from this specially yet, but I'm sure it'll be out soon.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'll tell you bring up Fred's name And I
was thinking while while I was watching the episode, I
couldn't help but think of Fred Rogers going. He would
he would accept this, Yeah, yeah, he would be there,
he would he would love this. And did you feel
his presence with the creation of this?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we feel like we are building
on the legacy every day and everything we do so
because ding both Daniel Tigers Neighborhood and Donkey Hoody are
reimagined future. We reimagined worlds and characters from mister Rogers.
That is built into our every day creatively, and yeah,
I think in terms of us creatively, the teams that
we work with the writers in the case of Donkey,
Whody or crew on set in Chicago, everybody takes it
very seriously and is very honored to be, you know,
working in with these characters and getting to realize this
world of Gus.
Speaker 5: I think you can't help but think about Fred when
you're working on both of these programs.
Speaker 1: You know, as Christin said, we're always thinking about.
Speaker 4: The legacy and his approach to making call intellivision for
children and families. But I'll also just add, you know,
as somebody who's coming in from the outside onto the
Donkey set, I could just feel from the cast and
crew how special they thought this episode was, and that
everybody wanted to bring their best work and the best
care to making this not only to honor Brad Rogers
at mister Ron's neighborhood, but also beating a Tiger's neighborhood
to bring us into their world.
Speaker 1: So that was something that we really appreciated.
Speaker 2: Wow, you guys have got to come back to this
show anytime in the future. The door is always going
to be open for you.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much. Being love to be back.
Speaker 2: You guys be brilliant today.
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you so much. Ro appreciate it. Thank you,