Sylvia Brindis and Shane Snow join ScreenMDM Talks to discuss how Fluff Piece, the first kids’ original for Wonder Project, merges Unreal Engine, puppetry, a well-crafted music strategy, dancers and actors—including Brindis herself—to help young ones develop the media literacy skills needed to become good citizens.
Emerging from their needs as parents to tackle the challenges of teaching kids about fake news, Fluff Piece lands on the Wonder Project tomorrow (July 9).
Brindis and Snow easily fall into the multihyphenate category. Snow is an accomplished journalist, speaker, author, and producer; Brindis is an actor, producer, and writer. The power couple has collaborated on projects before but Fluff Piece is arguably their most personal yet, tapping into their own fascination with fake news and their desire, as parents, to bring their child a show that would go beyond traditional educational curricula and prepare the next generation for an onslaught of manipulated AI content.
You can watch the interview on YouTube or Spotify, or keep reading below.
The couple had long been interested in media literacy, having previously collaborated on a journalism project about the role of fake news in the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in the ’50s, says Brindis, who was born in the Central American nation. “This idea of collective truth stayed with us—it was something that we always wanted to explore with our son.”
That desire became reality out of necessity when another project that was about to begin production fell through. “We had prepaid for soundstages, rented equipment, hired a bunch of production designers and department heads, and a key part of the financing fell through,” Snow says.
Rather than abandon everything, the couple remained resilient and shifted course, quickly devising Fluff Piece. “We wrote it and did all of preproduction in six weeks,” Brindis says.
“Our kid at the time was one; we knew he would grow up in a world where fake news is everywhere, advertisements are everywhere,” Snow adds.
In the process of quickly pulling Fluff Piece together, Brindis and Snow discovered one of the many joys of working in family entertainment: people in and around it are driven by passion and care for the audience. “It’s easier to get people behind you when you’re mission-driven and when it is for children,” Brindis says.
The duo tapped into their multiformat production expertise, having founded a virtual production company. “It was a natural fit for this show that enabled us to give it a really unique, whimsical look,” Brindis says. “We were able to design it the way that we wanted it to look—soft pastels and magical realism.”
Snow adds, “Virtual production gives you this opportunity to go places. It’s really hard to make things look real. It’s easy to make things look magical. We built this magical town where the characters are all quirky and colorful, and there are a million different places.”
Puppets are also key to the production, operated by “hilarious and very talented, musically inclined adults,” Snow adds.
At the heart of the show are Brindis as Fiona and the animated character Fluff, created with Unreal Engine.
“We took it on ourselves to create this new pipeline for an animated character,” Brindis explains. “It’s something that will allow us to move forward in a way that is quick and cost-effective. The investment up front to create Fluff was a lot; it was a lot of time, it was a lot of coding, and it was crazy, but now we have Fluff, where one actor plays his face, essentially his face and voice. We capture all of his reactions and voice on set. I’m acting with him in real time, and then another person is controlling his body and his blocking with video game controls.”
Music underpins the entire production—each episode includes an original song composed by Chicago musician Devin Delaney of Noisefloor, with Xavier Núñez of The Joffrey Ballet choreographing the show’s dance numbers.
The writing—led by Brindis—music and dance numbers are all in service of the show’s ultimate goal of promoting media literacy in a fun and engaging way, for both kids and adults. That co-viewing element was important for Brindis and Snow, and for the Wonder Project, the subscription service distributed on Prime Video that is focused on high-quality, family-friendly, and values-driven entertainment. Fluff Piece has already been renewed for a second season.
“We needed it to be funny for adults, because we sit there with our kid,” Snow says. “Being able to have layered humor was a good part of it; it’s also in the music itself. We said, we want a song that will work as a Halloween song, right next to “Monster Mash,” and Devin came back to us and said, I want to make something that sounds like Depeche Mode. A certain generation of parents and grandparents is going to love that, even if it’s a song for kids. Layering in the Easter eggs or the nods for adults” was a key part of the strategy.
The pair are hoping that Fluff Piece grows into more than just a multi-season show, with work already underway on a preschool spinoff, Let’s Investigate.
“We got a lot of really good advice from people along the way: think franchise big,” Snow says. “Design the show so that there can be a music tour, so that each character can have their own thing, which maybe is another series, or songs, or just a social media profile. We’re thinking at the franchise level. Our hope is that this Fluff cinematic universe teaches kids and the adults in their lives media literacy and critical thinking, but that we can expand the scope of that.”
