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Ocean Girl, which was on Disney U.S. and many other places, so I had experience in shooting underwater and above water. [I thought], what about mermaids? Mermaids are kind of like empowered sirens. They have fun, and they’re connected to the natural world. Most of the planet is water, and we don’t know much about it. So there’s a whole secret world there. That was the original inspiration. And then we drilled down into character and it became a story of friendship, not just a fantasy. TV KIDS: How did Mako Mermaids come about? SHIFF: Looking back now, we started the careers of a lot of well-known actors. Margot Robbie, Liam Hemsworth, Phoebe Tonkin, Claire Holt, all started with me on my productions. Margot Robbie started on The Elephant Princess. Liam Hemsworth was on the same show. Phoebe Tonkin was on the original H2O. Claire Holt likewise. The girls from H2O grew up. They reached a point when they were hitting 20 and wanted to move on. They outgrew aspirational characters for the tween-age audience. The other thing was, from a regulatory point of view, [there were limits on how many episodes could receive funding assistance]. Being an ex-lawyer as well as a producer, it occurred to me that Australia hadn’t done a spin-off. So we approached the regulatory authorities and said, What if this wasn’t a story about three girls becoming mermaids, but a story about mermaids trying to be real girls? They said, That’s a spin-off, let’s do it. We were in the same universe story-wise. And Mako Mermaids was born. Also, Mako Mermaids gave me
By Mansha Daswani
It would appear that kids around the world can’t get enough of Australian mermaids. Beginning with H2O: Just Add Water and now with Mako Mermaids, Jonathan M. Shiff’s stories of these underwater creatures and their lives on land have been delighting kids and tweens across the globe. Shiff, who also created Ocean Girl and The Elephant Princess, talks to TV Kids about creating aspirational characters and story lines, the challenges of filming underwater and his long-running partnership with ZDF Enterprises, which has been distributing his shows worldwide since 2002. TV KIDS: What was the original inspiration for H2O: Just Add Water? SHIFF: For most of my career—which is heading towards 26 years—I’ve done female-skewing, positive, aspirational role models for young girls. My daughter just turned 30. When she was entering a content phase, I wanted to appeal to her. Most good content makers are either connected to a young imagination or in my case act like a child sometimes! You need to be connected to your material and inspired and enjoy it. Mine was strong female role models. I’d already done, some years prior,
more latitude as a storyteller to do more fantasy, because they were less limited than the real girls [in H2O]. TV KIDS: Tell us about the challenges of filming live action, particularly the underwater scenes. SHIFF: I seem to have a penchant for doing crazy stuff, whether it’s real elephants in The Elephant Princess or filming with girls in prosthetic tails. We have electric rods that go in the water and send out a pulse to scare off the 15- to 18-foot sharks. We also film at Sea World Australia in their aquarium—the sharks there are babies and are harmless. But in open-water situations you need an army of stuntmen and stuntwomen, your camera has to be in heavy underwater housing, you need to be able to talk below water and give instructions while the girls are swimming. The salt water tends to sting your eyes, so we have to put milk drops in the girls’ eyes sometimes. It’s quite demanding. It’s more analogous to doing an actioner. The girls have to do three months of training—core training like Pilates, because they’re kicking with the tail, but also swim training and breathing techniques.
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