In January 2013, Johannesburg will get its very first hop-on, hop-off City Sightseeing tour-bus service. And Flow has been a part of the journey to launch it.
City Sightseeing offers tours of some of Johannesburg’s suburbs. The tour will start at Gold Reef City casino and theme park, through the CBD, past some of Johannesburg’s most iconic buildings and areas, through the southern suburbs and will end back at the casino.
Passengers can hop off at any one of 12 stops along the route, then catch another of the buses that will come along at 30-minute intervals.
Flow’s part in this journey has been to develop a script for the commentary for children that runs throughout the trip (there is a separate commentary for adults in various languages, including English, Afrikaans and Zulu), and a booklet for children that includes puzzles, games and pictures to color in.
Here’s what some of the role players had to say:
Tara Turkington, Flow CEO: “We had wanted to work with City Sightseeing forever … then they approached us to write the children’s script for the bus tour. It entailed coming up with a script that could keep a child entertained for 120 minutes.
“We came up with four characters – Nick the Mynah, Joey the Bus, Thandi Tower and Shy Shongololo – and each one is very distinct. They talk, jostle, argue and joke with each other while teaching children about Johannesburg.
“Thandi Tower is tall and snooty and minds everyone’s business. The central character is Joey the Bus – his parents wanted a girl, but they got a Joey. He is wet behind the ears, loves Jo’burg, and sees everything with a sense of wonder.
“Then we have the appropriately named Nick the Mynah, who nicks gold from Gold Reef City. He is the villain in the story. And there’s Shy Shongololo, who is shy, gets trampled on, is always for the little people, loves the environment and doesn’t always get the joke.”
Christine Tworeck, Flow’s client at City Sightseeing: “We are very excited about the script. The aim was to make Johannesburg come alive for children, make the journey exciting and interesting, and Flow has done that perfectly with the script.
“We love how the dialogue flows and we love the four characters. I love all the characters, but I have to say Joey the Bus is my favourite.”
Janet Berger, Flow Exhibitions CEO, who did the drawings of the characters for the children’s booklet that accompanies the script: “It was up to me to visualise the four characters – they had voices but no faces. My favourite part was developing the personalities of each of the characters; I’ve never done that before and it was quite fun.
“I like Joey – he has a very friendly face – but Thandi is the most rounded character. She was the most difficult to do. To convert a post office tower into a character was challenging.”
“I also enjoyed developing the puzzle book that children on the buses will get. There’s crosswords, join the dots, colouring in, spot the difference, quizzes and word searches. There’s great potential for these characters to be developed further … maybe something like a kids’ club with merchandise centred around the characters.”
Matthew van Onselen, Flow journalist who co-wrote the script: “I love script and dialogue writing, so this project appealed to me. Tara and I came up with the characters, and had to decide how they would speak and what they would say. Janet made them distinct.
“We spent hours on the net looking for the best children’s jokes. It was great fun. Nick is my favourite – he’s the bad guy and I think children like a villain.”