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www.postmagazine.com 27 POST MAR/APR 2019 SESAME STREET TURNS 50 POSTING TELEVISION'S LONGEST-RUNNING CHILDREN'S SHOW BY LINDA ROMANELLO t started with a simple idea — to somehow use television for something more than simply entertaining viewers. In 1968, TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Corporation vice president Lloyd Morrisett, who were both disillu- sioned with the poor programming options that were available to preschool viewers, decided to create a show they felt held genuine value. They launched the Children's Television Workshop (later renamed Sesame Workshop in 2000), funded with grant money from Carnegie, the Ford Foundation and the US government. The new show, Sesame Street, was developed from a study that Cooney had conducted and aimed to better prepare pre- schoolers for the classroom by focusing on the alphabet, counting and overall good social behavior through music and entertainment. Sesame Street made its television debut on PBS in 1969. Still going strong, the show is now com- memorating its milestone 50 th anniversary with a year-long celebration that includes an upcoming primetime, star-studded TV special later this year. Not to mention, that it's already the longest-running children's show in US television history. Only a few things have changed since the show's early days. For instance, Sesame Street, which fea- tured a mix of actors and colorful characters called Muppets from visionary puppeteer Jim Henson, exploded with new creatures over the years to go beyond Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who were there from Episode 1. And, while the show's overall vibe of taking place on an inner city street, filled with brownstones and multi-racial neighbors, remains to this day, Sesame's format changed from hour-long episodes to half hour, and are more theme-focused shows. But the emphasis on ABC's and 123's through music and comedy, and learning to be "smarter, stronger, kinder" is more solid than it's ever been. Today, those same messages are reinforced with celebrity guests such as Anne Hathaway, Alicia Keys, Josh Groban and Gwen Stefani, among many others, as well as beloved Muppets, such as superstar Elmo and his BFF Abby Cadabby, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Ernie and Bert, and an ever-growing list of characters. Episodes are filled with actor/Muppet segments, full animation and CG/reality mixes. Perhaps the biggest change has been Sesame Street's address. For years, families knew to find the show on their local PBS station. However, in 2016, the series moved to HBO, where there was more funding to keep the show going. The new episodes air there first, and then several months later, make their way to PBS. On the technical side, the show more recently began recording in UHD, though is still broadcasting in HD. With a curriculum that evolves to meet the needs of each new generation, Sesame Street is now in more than 70 languages and 150 countries. "This is a remarkable milestone for kids, for educa- tion and for television," says Jeffrey D. Dunn, Sesame Workshop's CEO in an official statement noting the show's anniversary. "Sesame Street has now brought the life-changing benefits of early learning to children around the globe for 50 years. Our mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger and kinder knows no geographic boundaries. We're everywhere families are and we never stop innovating and grow- ing. That's what keeps us timeless." "We're often asked what Sesame Street's legacy will be," adds co-founder Cooney. "To me, a legacy is when something's over…and this isn't over." Indeed, Post recently had a chance to drop by the set while the team was shooting an episode for its upcoming 50 th season, which will air this fall, and speak with the post and production teams, includ- ing post production supervisor Todd E. James and supervising editor Memo Salazar, about what it takes to pull off one of television's most beloved shows. PRODUCING THE SHOW "Sesame Street has two goals: First is to meet our curriculum objective, and second to entertain," explains James. "Sometimes it is challenging to meet both requests. We walk a fine line of trying to maintain our younger viewers' attention enforcing an educational concept. Most episodes feature en- gaging songs that encourage viewer participation." Sesame Street is shot at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, NY, home of Netflix's Orange is the New Black and NBC's New Amsterdam. Each day, three Sony HDC-4300 4K cameras (a fourth handheld is sometimes used for tighter or trickier shots) handle the acquisition of nine-minute opening "street scenes" for new episodes, while the rest of the show is typically filled out with re-occurring footage, such as the familiar "Letter of the Day" and "Number of the Day" songs, the "Elmo's World" animated sequences or pre-pro- duced learning segments that typically feature children completing daily tasks, such as getting ready for school, going to bed or getting dressed. Musical performances by celebrity artists, such as Sia, Pentatonix or Bruno Mars, are often repeated in multiple episodes as well. According to James, after the episodes are shot and preserved in UHD (though still broadcast in HD), the files are exported to post. He says the proxies are in [Blackmagic DaVinci] Resolve, where colorists do the grading and editors cut the show in Adobe Premiere Pro. Self-described as a "Premiere house," James says the post team does its compos- iting in Premiere as well. Salazar agrees that editing in Premiere "makes the most sense. We do a lot of graphics and are constantly going to After Effects and Photoshop and compositing. If this were a long-form documentary, I'd say we should be on Media Composer, but for what we do, Premiere stream- lines our workflow. It's been great. It works well for going in and out of all the Adobe apps. It's worked well for sending stuff to animators who are also working in Adobe or sending to our mix- I