The brief from the agency was pretty simple. We’re going to ask a bunch of kids what they want to be when they grow up. We’d like you to capture them telling us this story in front of a green screen then bring their imagination to life using 2D animation for a TV campaign. They also wanted us to produce a range of images that could be used in Print, Digital and Out Of Home to compliment the campaign over the active period of the back to school sales.

Monkeystack planned and carried out the video shoot, and while we had the green screen set up in the enormous sound stage at the South Australian Film Corporation Adelaide Studios (where we are located), we followed up with a stills photo shoot for each child individually in the same day. Post production saw us taking the green screen footage and bringing their imagination to life with our team of illustrators and animators.

The History of Space in Australia takes audiences from the early days of Woomera in 1947 through to our current contributions to space exploration and the global Deep Space Network. Working with archives, libraries, museums, historians, agencies, personal collections and cultural leaders in Australia and internationally to produce the animation which is what we believe the most accurate, animation and video depiction of the topic from an Australian perspective in existence. We commissioned South Australian composer Chris Larkin to create the moving score.

This 9 minute video had its first official premiere at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington D.C. in October 2019.

The first episode aired on ABC ME in June 2020 and has gone on to win an AEAF Special Merit Award and was awarded the Professional Jury’s 2nd Prize – Best Live Action TV at the 37th Chicago International Children’s Film Festival for the episode “Cameleers- The Original ‘Ghan’ Trains”. This award makes the show eligible for the Oscars!

You can watch the series on ABC iView or purchase episodes from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.