Fred Holmes
SUPER-DEE-DUPER! We've got an exclusive interview with Fred Holmes, who was a director and writer for Barney & Friends. Conducted by our wonderful Barney Wiki admin, Isaac, this conversation with Fred went in many different paths, so this will read more like a story (from his perspective) with various chapters/headings from beginning to end rather than a typical Q&A interview. We hope that you'll still enjoy Fred's stories and memories. On behalf of Barney Wiki, we thank Fred again for his time!
Interview
The set of Barney & Friends
Fred Homes holding a producer's slate on set during the filming of I Love My Friends on October 22, 2010.
[Barney & Friends] was a lot of fun. Prior to Barney, I had done quite a few shows and over the years and a lot of children's shows. I was prepared for the kind of show it was, and I'd worked with puppets and all those kind of things. The thing that was different about Barney was the atmosphere of when I came on the set for the first time.... [it] was different than what I had experienced on other shows in the past. And what I mean by this is that most of the times when you're doing series television, it's extremely high pressure environment. You have very little time to turn out a lot of work. And there's a lot of money involved... by the time we ended the Barney show, and I think it was 2010, we were spending a million dollars an episode. So there's a lot of pressure and, and in the past most shows that [I] had worked on, they were a kind of a cold environment. And the first time I went on Barney, everybody was friendly and they were laughing and you could tell they just they love being there.
One of the things that attracted me to the show and kept me going on the show for fifteen years was that the way they treated their kids. I'd always felt like there was no point in creating a show that was designed to do something good for children all over the world if you didn’t start by first treating your own children, the kids that were the cast kids. They really treated those kids well.
Filming
Fred Holmes directing Barney on the set of Barney's Good Day, Good Night.
I directed Wishbone, which was another PBS show, and Wishbone was shot differently. On Barney we did what's called a video style, which is three videos style, whereas Wishbone was all with single camera film style. The reason I was hired to do Barney is that Barney and Wishbone were owned by the same company. I was one of the few people in my area who had directed both film style shows and video style shows, because I've directed movies before and I've done a lot of film style stuff. After Barney had been on the air for about three years, they were trying to get away from this traditional video style of editing or shooting.
Jim Rowley who was the executive producer, was also a director on Barney, he was an old friend of mine, and he called me up and he said, "we would like to start trying to break out of the mold and start trying to do something a little different. Would you be interested in coming in and directing Barney?". I've never seen the show. I said "give me some episodes, I'll watch them and then, and I'll give you a call." So he loaned me some episodes and I loved the fact that the show is really trying to teach a lot of good lessons to children on a variety of levels. I said, "I'll direct a home video for you. And then we'll see how I get along with everyone." And so I went on and did a home video and loved everybody I worked with. Penny Wilson, who was our performance director at the time and Penny was wonderful, I loved the kids, Bob, David, Carey... I got along great with everyone and so they hired me to start directing PBS shows and I was there for another fifteen years.
The directors [were] not on staff...[we were] all freelance. So while I was doing Barney I was also directing shows for other people and writing shows for other people. They would sign a contract with me to direct a certain amount of episodes each year based on what their order was from PBS. Depends on how many episodes they get an order for, I would be hired to direct a percentage of those, which was anywhere from 1/3 to half of them. So we ended up doing close to one-hundred PBS episodes over fifteen years and then several home videos and then a bunch of what we call interstitials which are these little video shows that are interjected between episodes.
Interstitials
Some of them are real cute! We generally did them on green screen and we did a lot of animation. The first one I did was one where Barney is walking down a path in an animated world surrounded by butterflies. I got that idea from an old Disney movie called Song of the South. It had its issues but it had some really creative stuff in it. One of the things they did was Uncle Remus was sitting in front of a fireplace and telling a story to a kid. And the camera starts zooming in slowly to his face. And right as it gets into a close up, he goes "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"; that background exploded into an animated world and suddenly he was walking down a path surrounded by bunnies and birds and all kinds of things. I thought that was so creative and when I was asked to do my first interstitial I did that.
Changes
I directed the episode where we introduced Riff for the first time. He was kind of a difficult character for me and for a lot of people on the show because I didn't feel like Riff added anything. I like the character and he was fun, but BJ was already a musical character...he loved music and he loved playing the drums. I think Riff was one of those ideas that someone with HIT Entertainment in New York came up with that they thought they would help move the show and get the show more ratings, but you really didn't need the character.
As far as splitting the show into two, doing these two eleven minute shows instead of doing one twenty-eight minute show, it was a very interesting idea that the people in New York came up with. They thought it would help our audience. They [the audience] have a fairly limited interest span so they [HIT] felt like, breaking up like that into two of those would help keep their interest. I didn't personally feel like that was the issue. We constantly did tests all the time. We would bring kids into a room, we would play them episodes and we would observe the kids while they watch the show. And one of the things that we noticed was that when the characters were singing and dancing, the kids paid attention and they would sometimes get up and dance and they would sing along with the songs. But as soon as you went into dialogue, you lost their interest. The age of our target audience, their attention span is fairly limited. They have a difficult time following storylines. So you had to keep your storylines very simple. But even doing that they like the singing and dancing, that was their favorite thing. One of the things we tried to then do after using this test information is try to add more music and singing.
"Little Red Rockin' Hood"
And I came up with an idea and I said "why don't we just do a big music video? Why don't we do a rock opera where we sing the show?" So I came up with a script idea called "Little Red Rockin' Hood." Pitched it to the producers but [they were unsure]. It was too different. We went back and forth. I wrote them a treatment, showed them how we could do it. I met with our music producer and I brought him on board to where I would write the words of the song, and then he'd write the music and we collaborate. And then the producer said, "okay, do it." And so I did "Little Red Rockin' Hood" and to this day, I get more fan mail on "Little Red Rockin' Hood" then I did on any other episode I ever directed. [It] was probably my favorite [to direct]. There were several that I enjoyed that were really fun for a variety of reasons. And a lot of times it had to do with the kids that I got to work with.
Children's cast
Director Fred Holmes, on set with Barney, Emma (Deborah Cole) and Ben (Austin Lux).
When I was hired to direct an episode, I was generally sent a treatment of what the episode would be about unless it was when I was writing, of course. I'd read that, I'd send them notes. And then when they had a first draft of the script that sent to me, I'd send them notes and so we were going back and forth. And then as we approached production, they would send me a list of potential cast kids. And the reason they did that is so that we could then spread out the kids. They had a flow sheet where they used one kid on one week and then they had a week off and they'd use them in another week or maybe two weeks later. And they’re trying to juggle all these kids around among the directors. Why? So the kids would get a break and so that all the kids would get a chance to be in an episode. The problem is there were certain kids that were just better than other kids and kids that got along better with better kids. Usually all the directors felt the same way about those kids. These are kids that would show up on time, would show up prepared, were easy to direct, paid attention, just were great kids, besides being talented and fun and all those things. We would all be requesting the same kids. We were all requesting Selena, Deborah Cole who is wonderful and just a bunch of different kids that were just our favorite kids. Victoria Lennox was another one. We were always requesting the same kids. But if I got my cast kids, the ones I wanted, which was very rare, those ended up being my favorite episodes because they were just a lot more fun.
Fred Holmes on the set of The Land of Make Believe.
Home video
As far as home videos, my favorite was The Land of Make Believe. Not only did we spend a year going back and forth to Universal, going around the park and creating a story and coming up with ideas….I was then there for a month during the shooting. We only shot for like two weeks but I was there for a month prepping and planning and working with my crew and setting everything up. We would have to shoot our scenes surrounded by people who were there just to play in the park. It was a logistical nightmare. It was a challenge trying to shoot a show in the midst of all that.
Barney's World
[I have] some concern. I'm not following it real closely. I've seen some of the drawings and I've heard some of the choices they may be making. There's a certain amount of trepidation. It's got fans all over the world who love the show the way it was. I'm all for progress [and] I'm not against changing anything [but] I hope that the heart of the show remains the same. Barney's target audience was much younger than the target audience for say Sesame Street or Mister Rogers, the two other shows that were on during the early years of Barney. People don’t understand that the reason why the show was done simply as it was and why Barney acted the way he acted was because our target audience was very young and they were easily scared, easily intimidated. And so you want something that's loving and kind and sweet. And a lot of the people that that came along later and started criticizing and complaining about Barney didn't understand who the target audience was. I am reserving my opinion about the Mattel reboot until I see it. It's not fair for me to judge anything until I see it. I love the idea that it's going to continue on. So I wish them the best of luck. I hope it works and I'll be cheering for them.
Return
I would love to do it [Barney & Friends] again. I don’t know if my body would take it [as] the difficulty with doing production, whether it's a movie or TV show is that it's not just mentally demanding it's physically demanding. I loved doing the show. If I could have my old team back with all my old kids back, it would be an absolute joy to go back and do it. And I would certainly do it in a New York minute… just to see everybody again and just have that experience one last time.
Note: This interview was conducted by Isaac Nelson and has been edited, condensed and reorganized for clarity purposes by Miller. All opinions expressed in the interview belong solely to the crew or cast member interviewed, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Barney Wiki, Lyons Partnership, L.P. and or Mattel.