Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610353
74 P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5 visually interesting and most of all, different from the programming that was currently available in the genre. The ambitious script was crafted with a lot of heart, a bit of Goonies-esque action and camaraderie, and most importantly, it featured child heroes who were kind, creative and perceptive. The first-time writer was partnered with an Academy Award ® -winning director, Luke Matheny, who helped focus a unique voice and vision for the show. Gortimer would become a throwback to single-camera storytelling for the family genre, part magical realism, part sentimental nostalgia, and part homage to the classic films and series of the 1980s. Each episode ends with a reflective coda, narrated by Gortimer Created by David Anaxagoras, a first-time writer who worked as a preschool teacher, the pilot for Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street was found through Amazon's open submission policy. The charming script centers around Gortimer (a young Jimmy Stewart-like everyman) and his two best friends, Ranger and Mel, growing up and learning about life and themselves as they discover that their seemingly ordinary world is not so ordinary at all. In early summer 2013, I received a call from producers I had worked alongside many times. They were now the head of production and production manager for the newly formed Amazon Studios, and this would be their first live-action family pilot, a classic single-camera show that was quirky, as he looks back with insight and wit on the lessons learned and life moments experienced on the show. The pilot episode takes place during a scorching hot drought, brought on (so we discover) by one very disgruntled frog. Producer Richard King had a connection to a Craftsman house on a tree-lined street in Pasadena, which worked perfectly as idyllic Normal Street with "a lake at one end and a forest of shady trees at the other," as Gortimer's voice-over describes. It was pure Americana, with kids rocking on porch swings while their Popsicles melted in the unending summer heat. Lemonade stands and sunflowers gave a small-town- anywhere-USA feel to Normal Street. Below: Gortimer gets hosed down outside his house exterior on "Normal Street" in Pasadena. Bottom: Ms. Andrews' Keynote inspiration board for the Gibbon living/ dining room set, added in mid-season.