Brisbane filmmaker opens Sesame Street doors

The Brisbane filmmaker wrapped up shooting his second Sesame Street segment on Saturday at his daughter Hope’s kindergarten in Sandgate.

The popular American children’s show approached Gibson to produce a segment on recycling after being impressed with his first effort on the show – the song Five Kangaroos featuring Jessica Mauboy.

His new brief was to promote recycling.

“Sesame Street called me up and said ‘can you give us a film quickly? We need something fast and we like what you did with the Jessica Mauboy clip’,” Gibson said.

“They’re very curriculum-based – they have to be, because it’s part of their charter to do things correctly because they’re teaching kids – so we got a song together about recycling and reusing and had the idea to get little Dean Brady from Australia’s Got Talent (Brady was a finalist).

“He’s a good little singer to front up a band called ‘The Recyclables’ and Dean said yes, came down from Cairns (on Saturday) and we shot the film-clip for the song.”

Sadly, Gibson did not have the opportunity to work with any of Sesame Street’s stars.

“They will have the Muppets do their thing and then throw to our live action film,” he said.

“Generally they like to see kids in their own environment, doing their thing, learning and playing.

“So there’s no Muppets in this film – it’s a fully live action music video with Dean fronting the little band of four-year-old kids at my daughter’s kindy.”

Unlike the Five Kangaroos production, the American audience might not even pick up on the fact that The Recyclables were Australian.

“The audience won’t visually see anything to pick it – they’ll just see a multicultural western society,” he said.

“But the difference will be that I asked Dean not to sing with the American accent in this scene – I told him ‘be who you are, be proud of who you are and keep it strongly Australian’.

“Dean was really keen to do that and that will be the point of difference – people will notice the accent and it’ll get people thinking it’s Australian.”

The Recyclables assignment was a coup for Gibson, who started his new production company, Bacon Factory Films, in December.

Gibson said he hoped to continue working with Sesame Street in the future.

“I’ve been given a great opportunity and responsibility to do something that is world class and I hope that they love what we do and that more opportunities come,” he said..

“It’s the kind of brand that instantly opens doors. Everyone knows what Sesame Street is – it’s a great conversation starter.

“Everyone’s got a memory of Sesame Street.”