“Country Party”: behind the scenes of this animated series where children look like yours

2023-04-17 10:09:23

Their names are Lina, Raphaël, P’tits pieds, Grande perche, Manon, Le Lièvre or even Samson. They are between 6 and 10 years old and have the greatest common point of living in the small village of Bellefontaine. This village — and above all the nature that surrounds it — is their playground. The children run, jump, climb and stumble. Nestled in the forest or with their feet in the river, everyone laughs as much as they bicker. Every day, “it’s an adventure around the bush”, explains Franck Samuel, the producer of the series. At the corner of the bush, because there is no “great adventure” in “Party of the countryside”.

For Pierre Coré, author and showrunner of the cartoon, there was no question of making characters with a delirious life. “We didn’t want heroes with superpowers, but to show what happens when nothing happens,” he explains. A daring bet, but undeniably the result is a hit.

The very joyful episodes of “Party of the Countryside” take us on board at the height of children: their bursts of laughter, their pain, their doubt. We see them interact, discover themselves rivals, reconsider their opinion and patch things up. The characters all have their qualities and their faults and the series does not hide them. Between excessive authority, a profound lack of tact, an all-consuming shyness and a crisis of preadolescence, the series poses as a sincere photograph of contemporary childhood: the kids all seem real, the kind we meet in our primary.

If the village of Bellefontaine is fictitious, the elements of life in the countryside are very real. No idyllic countryside. Between the trees and the butterflies, the children sometimes discuss bad smells and pesticides. If one has a mother who practices beekeeping in all respect for the environment, the father of the other, on hundreds of hectares, devotes himself to very intensive agriculture. The countryside captured as it is and without artifice.

Eco-responsible approach

In the background again, young viewers are awakened to more social issues. Not all animated heroes come from the same background, not all go on vacation, live in houses of very different sizes. Despite these differences, they form a troupe, a collective, a group where everyone, depending on the fluctuations, knows how to find their place.

Station Animation designed this large bowl of nature with an eco-responsible approach. No question of showing beautiful countryside landscapes without taking care of the planet. Located in Paris, this studio at the origin of Campaign Partybut also of Sahara (2017) or from Funny little beasts (2017), has been working for several years with low-tech techniques.

Not all animated heroes come from the same background, not all go on vacation, live in houses of very different sizes. The Parisian

Clearly, the rarest possible change in computer hardware. While offering a great visual diversity, the graphic designers recycle the elements already created. To create the forest of Bellefontaine, only five trees were drawn. And yet, we believe it. The wind rushes through the trees in three dimensions, the leaves move, and the birds sing all around the children who live, in a countryside like ours, an extraordinarily banal life.

Editor’s note:

« campaign party », Monday to Friday at 11:52 a.m. on France 4, twelve-minute episodes.