Production Memo: Pilot Pre-Production Program (4P) - November 2024 – Asians in Animation

Production Memo: Pilot Pre-Production Program (4P) – November 2024 – Asians in Animation

This month has been a whirlwind of creativity, collaboration, and, well, a lot of tea (you’ll see what we mean). We’re brewing up something special—let’s break it down!

About the Show, “TEA”

Logline: “When a society built on tea trade and consumption is threatened by a mysterious company, a young outsider must gather the exclusive Houses of Tea as allies to revitalize ceremonial tea magic.”

How it Started

Fresh off of the success of Asians in Animation’s inaugural talent incubator, the AIA Immersive Lab, the Asians in Animation Pilot Pre Production Program (4P) was greenlit at the beginning of September. 

The goal? To expose talent to industry processes by taking a 100% original AIA-made series IP from concept to a ready-for-production animatic. 

Running October 2024 to May 2025, participants will get hands-on experience in an animation industry simulation, ultimately working together to create a professional-level pilot animatic with a full production crew.

To pilot this new pilot program, Asians in Animation Creative Chair and incoming Chief Creative Officer, Saira Umar, stepped into the Showrunner/Executive Producer role and Asians in Animation Creative Director and incoming Head of Production, Alice Jiang as the Producer.
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After two whirlwind weeks of preparing our production documents and templates, building the production calendar, opening applications and building an animation writers room, we were ready to launch the program!

Writers’ Room

September 28th was the first day of our Writer’s Room! At our first Story Summit, Saira Umar (Showrunner) and Stephanie Sim (Story Editor) fielded ideas from 13 summit members, who pitched 13 different concepts, from which we selected and developed our top 3, resulting in TEA (our public facing title.)

The initial pitch? A “tea-themed magical girl show,” described as Sailor Moon meets Bridgerton.
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“Tea-themed magical girls in a regency/period setting! Just before her debut tea party that marks her entrance into society, MC shatters her family's priceless heirloom teapot! If she wants to impress her fellow debutantes, she needs a new tea set, and quick. She visits an antique store and accidentally acquires a MAGIC teapot. At her tea party, MC and her friends become Tea Time Magical Girls!” 

We’ve definitely strayed very far from this idea, but the same spark of Tea Magic remains! We were excited to lean further into historical inspiration and more mature themes as the pilot evolved.  
After several rounds of outlining and refining, we hit a major milestone on November 18th: our first full draft table read!
 
The script is currently in revisions, and should be done mid-December!

Building the Crew
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Recruiting for 4P was no small feat, with over 200 applicants ranging from fresh talent to seasoned pros, including:

• Story (50+)
• Design (80+)
• Production (~40)
• Music/SFX, Editorial, Casting Lead, and the Program team​

Our team of reviewers and artistic leads carefully sifted through portfolios, websites, resumes, and some seriously impressive application responses. So far, we’ve interviewed over 80 candidates and welcomed 42 crew members aboard. The Story & Art departments are still rounding out their teams, but the crew’s shaping up to be TEA-riffic!

Visual Development

Now for the eye candy. We’re halfway through our Vis Dev period and are cheerfully seeing the world of TEA come to life! Our 15 artists have gone above and beyond, bringing an impressive 257 (and counting!) pieces of art within the past month!

Art by Seungmin Oh and Vy-Anh Nguyen

“Noble” was our most competitive role with over 50 auditions!

Casting
We received 120 auditions across 15 roles (with most people  auditioning for at least 2-3 roles), for a total of 260+ file submissions!
A small team went through and “blinded” every single submission, so that the casting team, led by Casting & Voice Director, Topher Ngo, could review all submissions without any bias or recognition of names for the first round.
Once we have our initial picks, we plan to then unblind the applications and review them holistically, as well as callback and interview top candidates in the coming weeks.
Our cast will be selected around the start of December!

More
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Other departments are crushing it too! We’ve whipped up beat boards and started crafting music motifs for the show and its characters. Oh, and speaking of effort—our team has already clocked an astounding 2200+ hours in the last two months across 36 reporting crew members!
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With so much momentum and creativity fueling 4P, we’re beyond excited to see what’s next. Stay tuned—there’s plenty more magic behind the scenes!