The Mouse on Tape

This translation was generated automatically.

Our listener Andreas pointed me to this one-hour behind-the-scenes special about German children’s programme “Die Sendung mit der Maus”:

How do they make “Die Sendung mit der Maus”?

The programme has a special place in my heart. When I was little, we only had a black-and-white TV, but for “Die Sendung mit der Maus” I was allowed to go to the neighbours and watch it on their colour television. I think Janosch’s Dream Hour was part of it too, though the dates on Wikipedia don’t quite fit.

I find the production process fascinating. They do produce digitally now, but only superficially. The composer faxes his sheet music to the digital producer. A wild mix of tapes, DVDs, and broadcast tapes delivered on disc is carried between editorial, production, post-production, finishing, and the broadcaster.

“You can make a copy [of the broadcast tape] for the sign-language version and subtitles” is a remarkable sentence today, when they could just have a server for that.

The only thing that seems to exist in genuinely digital form is the Mouse animation.

Almost every computer shown is a Mac, some of considerable age: chunky 2010 iMacs, 2008 Mac Pros, a row of chunky MacBook Pros, and one lonely 2013 Mac Pro with the sound engineer, who no longer knows why he bought it. And, naturally, Final Cut 7 runs forever on them.

None of this is really surprising, but it’s fascinating to watch. What would the making-of have looked like in 1985? Not much different, just with more actual tapes.