Over the years, our work for Kentucky Educational Television has developed into a wonderful collaboration. Their commitment to, and talent for, creating unique and fun educational content is truly inspiring. We recently got some feedback from them about their experiences working with us on an 18-part series of videos for early learners. In a nutshell, they were ecstatic!

What were the goals of the project, and were they met?

The goal for Everyday Learning in general, and for the Planet Nutshell animations in particular, is to create engaging, short videos that connect to early childhood learning standards and to children’s experience of the world around them.

For teachers and parents, the videos are designed to be used as starting points for discussion and exploration. This is why each video ends with a question.

Planet Nutshell’s beautiful and imaginative animations made meeting the goal of engagement effortless. Their thoughtful approach to the content ensures that the videos are also educational.

In short, we believe that our project goals were more than met in all 18 videos created by Planet Nutshell.

The adorable child voice actors really stood out in these videos. Can you tell us a little about them, and what it was like to work with children?

We initially chose child voice actors because we wanted our viewers to feel like they were hearing from a peer. When we started the Everyday Learning project we didn’t have a budget, so out of necessity we used employees’ children instead of hiring actors.

Even though we’ve gotten grants to expand the project since those early days, we’ve stuck with kids that aren’t actors. We like that authenticity that everyday kids give the videos. The kids don’t sound TOO polished. They could easily be a preschooler’s older brother or sister.

It’s so much fun to work with these kids. Since they’re not professionals, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Recording studios can be scary! We’ve learned not to panic if a kid isn’t feeling it. Some of our kids are great readers, and some don’t read yet at all. Oftentimes we’ll say a line and then have the child mimic us. This often helps to loosen up the readers too. It’s amazing how well most children do in this situation, even the very young.

What was your overall experience like working with Planet Nutshell?

From the beginning, the KET collaboration with Planet Nutshell has been a positive experience. From a business standpoint, working with them on contracts was easy and efficient. Once the project began, they always met their deadlines and in some cases even helped keep KET on schedule and task.

The creative, collaborative process was highly productive. For this project, KET wrote each script, and then Planet Nutshell’s producers would create storyboards and suggest changes. Infallibly those changes improved the content and clarity of the videos. If KET had any suggested changes at this stage, Planet Nutshell was always responsive to our concerns.

By the time that Planet Nutshell created the rough-cuts of the videos, the concept and spirit of each animation was so perfectly captured that changes, if any, were minimal. When we received each from rough-cut from Planet Nutshell our day was instantly brightened. Each animation was full of unexpected surprises, because Planet Nutshell’s attention to detail is so extraordinary. It’s also fun to see what you’ve written come to life, thanks to such talented animators.

KET unequivocally would recommend Planet Nutshell to our public media partners, or anyone else who is seeking an animation firm.

We worked with our friends at WNET Education to produce an animated interpretation of an interview with Gloria Steinem. In the interview, which was produced by the PBS series American Masters, Steinem discusses her early perceptions of Marilyn Monroe and how those perceptions changed over time. This video is also available on PBS LearningMedia with additional support materials for teachers.