Cornish Language Children's TV Pilot

As part of our work following the recommendations from the Case for a Cornish Public Service Media, Screen Cornwall partnered with Cornwall Council in 2019 to commission a Cornish language children’s pilot. The grant was awarded to Golden Tree Productions and Engine House VFX to create an animated adaptation of the first Tale of Porth book GOOLAN.

As this short film is finally released online, I sat down with Will Coleman, director of Golden Tree, Executive Producer Denzil Monk, Engine House’s Craig Rothwell and Mark Trevethen of the Cornish Council Language Office, to find out more about the project.

I start by asking about the context. Denzil tells me that 'The production of Goolan marks an important and exciting step on the inexorable path towards a Cornish public service media, providing quality, fun and engaging programmes for children growing up with Cornish. As the only minoritised autochthonous language in the UK currently without such provision, it is important to prioritise funding the creation of Cornish language work'.

Golden Tree and Engine House had never worked together before, and I asked Will how they got together, ‘It was just the usual thing of networking in Cornwall. Who’s doing good stuff, who’s working from here and is at the top of their game. And as soon as we met Engine House we thought, these are the right people.’ They applied for the commission together and, against a strong field, their bid was successful.

There was a clear vision for the animation from the start. Will wanted the animation to retain the brilliant illustrations of Brian Hoskin, who had ‘created a coherent world in the books, it’s a recognisable world, one that kids always think is their local cove, and I love that coherence. With the animation I really wanted to create a world that you could enter and had a believability to it. I wanted it to be distinctly Cornish, so even the colour of the roofs had to be right.’

With such a clear idea to render, Craig tells me that it was ‘lucky that we were both based within walking distance of each other. Once every couple of weeks we would meet round a table to exchange ideas and push the project.’

I asked Craig about the production process Engine House used to create their animations. He said that they assembled ‘a core set of software and then learned a few additions to aid the process depending on what we wanted to achieve. For the characters in Goolan, 3Ds Max was used to rig and animate as it has a great set of tools for this process. Cinema 4D was then used to assemble the backgrounds and render the assets as well as 3D Coat for texturing giving the background elements a hand painted feel.’

This was Golden Tree’s first animation and I wondered what they didn’t anticipate coming up through the process. Will told me that not only was the storyline modified to fit the animation, but also it benefited the Cornish language element immensely. In the books the carrier language is English with each character having a catchphrase in Cornish, but Will realised that ‘the animation can do more of the storytelling than a written book and therefore you don’t need to have the English language to help explain the plot. We could then instead have the narrator speak Cornish, interact with the characters, and give the audience more conversational Cornish, rather than just the catchphrases.’ 

This seems to be the great success of the animation - that the Cornish language is embedded within the piece, rather than sticking out. Will agrees, telling me that he ‘wanted to foreground the enjoyability of watching it. I haven’t made a contract with a child to teach them, I’ve made a contract to entertain them. That’s the most important thing. The teaching is secondary.’ 

Will is keen to point out that not only is the language of Goolan Cornish, but its whole production has been Cornish too, from the two lead companies, voiceover actors Flo Crowe and her father Jamie Crowe, and music was performed by Cornish musicians. This experience has shown the true depth of amazing creative people and resources within Cornwall, allowing Goolan to be a truly authentic Cornish animation.

I finish by asking Craig, Will and Mark what they feel about Goolan now it is finally released into the world, and what they would like to come out of it. Craig tells me that they would love to continue to create animations based on the other Tales from Porth books. He says ‘they all have their stories to be told and now the world of Porth has had its first taste of animation, we have the building blocks to really turn this into a Cornish children’s favourite, push the visuals further and keep the language and heritage of Cornwall alive through the next generation.’

Mark says 'this short film is an example of the kind of work that Cornish media companies can produce and, along with other films coming out of Cornwall at the moment, is being used to make the case to broadcasters for further funding for Cornish digital content.'

Will thinks ‘it’s will hopefully spark a few brains into thinking what’s possible to create,’ before telling me in Cornish ‘Pur wothus on ni dh' askorra an fylm byghan teg ma, gans oll an para ow triga hag owth oberi omma yn Kernow. Wosa ow bos yn dadn naw alwedh rag termyn re hir, wortiwedh yma Goolan ow neyja yn rydh!’.

We are really proud to produce this charming little film, with all the team living and working here in Cornwall. After being under lockdown for so long at last Goolan is flying free!’