Magnus Scheving has just turned 40. He's Icelandic, a world-class athlete, an entrepreneur, a carpenter and father of two.
And he's on a mission to motivate children with a concept he has created, called LazyTown. Magnus has been honing and testing
LazyTown for eleven years in his home market. In January he went into production with the first LazyTown television series,
which is now airing daily on Nick Jr. in the US. One Nickelodeon mum e-mailed the show saying her kids loved the 'LazyTown
Movement'; an unwittingly apt description of this concept, which is so much more than a TV series. We met Magnus Scheving,
the high-energy creator, producer and star of this brave new show.
The LazyTown studio sits in a field of inhospitable, craggy black lava. About 130 people work on the show, a quarter of them
from overseas. Like many highly persuasive people, Magnus has gathered around him old friends, colleagues and people who understand
him in order to achieve the impossible. In November 2003 the building was an empty shell. Six weeks later the studio was built
and filming had started, a 'can do' possible only in Iceland, Magnus suggests. As well as the world-leading technical facilities
in-house there are teams of puppeteers, wardrobe fixers, designers, marketers and the most stylish staff common room you could
hope to encounter. Called The Hudson Room, it's based on the Hudson Hotel in New York and has a pink felted billiard table,
animal-skin cushions and oversized clocks. The attention to detail is consistent with everything at LazyTown and everything
about Magnus Scheving. Having 130 employees doesn't stop him overseeing every detail of the production. But life in-house
isn't at all tense or puritanical. There is even ice cream in the restaurant on Fridays.
LazyTown Synopsis
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We talk in the evening after a full day's filming, a shareholder meeting and other engagements are over. Magnus rarely finishes
at the studio before midnight. His conversation is punctuated by swoosh, vroom, k-pow noises and I realise these noises are
identical to the special effects we hear in the series, another example of the LazyTown team replicating exactly what Magnus
asks for. He jumps up frequently to scribble on a white board or reaches for a video to illustrate a point. He is wearing
a Superman t-shirt. 'Terrible logo slapping,' he says. 'But it makes me feel like him!'
How did you create the concept of LazyTown? When we began to devise LazyTown we analysed other kids' shows. In general they have emotional storylines involving friends,
or they are about conflict, good vs evil. We wanted to combine these two elements, as well as being useful and entertaining.
This is very difficult; if you put up on a shelf all the qualities a kids' show should have and then try to add an educational
element, something important always falls off.
Why is it called LazyTown? If we'd called it HealthyTown or HappyTown no-one would have watched. And because we have all been in LazyTown. LazyTown
is a lifestyle. It's about choices and children learning that choices have consequences.
