Barney's Campfire Sing-Along

Barney's Campfire Sing-Along (1990)

After listening to a story about camping read by her mom, Tina wishes that she could go camping someday. After Tina falls asleep, she dreams about a camping trip with Barney and the rest of the Backyard Gang. Barney takes the gang through different fun experiences from pitching tents to having a snack. In the mist of things, a storm comes around and Tina gets lost in the woods. Thanks to Barney's advice earlier of "Stay where you are, hug a tree and blow your whistle," everyone finds Tina and they continue onto more campfire fun. They even explore a cave where a bear lives. Back at the campfire, songs are sung around it and everyone learns how to make S'mores. After the trip is over, Tina wakes up and realizes it was all just a dream - and a magical one at that.

Date of release
1990-06-08
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
47m
Genres
Family
Director
Dwin Towell

Casting

Interesting facts

Barney & the Backyard Gang is an American direct-to-video series produced by The Lyons Group and released in periodic installments from August 29, 1988, to September 21, 1991. The first installment in the Barney franchise, the series' success led to the launch of the children's television show, Barney & Friends, which in its original run aired on PBS from April 6, 1992, to November 2, 2010.

Production

In fall 1987, Sheryl Leach was stuck in a traffic jam thinking about the lack of videos that held the attention of her 2-year-old son, Patrick. At this time, the only preschool aged programs around were Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, however, they appealed to a larger age range, rather than strictly toddlers. At the time, the only thing that could hold Patrick’s attention was a Wee Sing video.

Sheryl Leach proposed a preschool video series, which eventually would be Barney & The Backyard Gang, to DLM, Inc (Developmental Learning Materials). At the time Sheryl Leach was working at DLM, Inc. as a writer. The board she proposed to turned her down. Owner of DLM, Inc., Richard C. Leach, who was Sheryl's father-in-law, agreed to back her with the project with $700,000 of his own money.

When Leach pitched Barney & The Backyard Gang to her father-in-law, Richard, he asked that Kathy help to develop the character and show concept. Parker also had a 2-year-old child named Kaitlin. Both Leach and Parker began testing videos on their children, taking notes of what worked and what didn't work, as well as going to different preschools for research.

From their research, around twenty essential concepts were devised, such as using live-action instead of animation so children could better relate, having children as role-models, featuring simple music and having a familiar setting. They also concluded that imagination needed to play a big role, as well as having loving messages.

The bear concept was eventually scrapped due to Leach's son having an interest in dinosaurs after visiting a Science Place exhibit.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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