Profile of Writer/Animator Will Shepard

Will Shepard, writer-director with the Watertown, MA-based animation company, Soup2Nuts, easily connected with aspiring film students at his workshop on April 3rd at Brandeis University.

Entertaining a crowd is something that comes easily to Shepard, a twenty-something invited to the second annual Sundeis film festival for his ability to create laughs for all ages, including the target audience of nine to 14-year old girls who watch "O'Grady High," his weekly cartoon series on the N Channel.

"I was astounded at the way we were able to create a virtual community around "O'Grady," girls who talk about the show online," Shepard said on Sunday. "Girls that age, I am finding out, feel like they're the only one going through what they are going through."

"One girl from Kansas will write, ‘OMG (O My God), I just saw the new O'Grady show it is so good.' Then someone from Nebraska writes, ‘OMG, I liked that show too!'"

That is a promising sign. Earlier in the conference, Gary David Goldberg, creator of such TV hits as "Family Ties" and "Spin City," worried that TV watching is no longer the shared family experience that it once was, causing the fragmenting of the TV watchers into target marketing audiences, specifically, the 18-34 demographic.

However, O'Grady provides evidence that there can be diversity in TV, especially now that there are cable outlets and not just the three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, that Goldberg recalls from his first years in television in the early 1970s.

"We try to challenge the audience, push the audience to respond to what we put on TV," Shepard said of "O'Grady," which he describes as a high school stuck in a sort of surreal "Twilight Zone."

"What is it that nine to 14 year old girls all understand about high school? There are these random rules imposed by parents, teachers, and social groups, and kids spend so much time think about these rules, and themselves, that a meteor could hit their town and they wouldn't notice," Shepard said.