Degrassi: Encyclopedia II - Degrassi - At the beginning

Degrassi - At the beginning

Linda Schuyler, a former teacher, and Kit Hood, a video editor and former child actor, first established the Playing With Time company in 1976. The first few productions were fun, educational videos for children and adolescents in junior high school. After their adaptation of the children's book Ida Makes A Movie by Kay Chorao, the idea for the mini-series The Kids of Degrassi Street was born.

In 1979, CBC Television and Magic Lantern agreed to give partial funding to make the mini-series of six episodes, initially intended to continue on from Ida Makes A Movie. Several years passed before Playing With Time were able to afford the seven episodes per year deal, and by 1986, 26 episodes of The Kids of Degrassi Street were produced. They auditioned a small group of young actors with little if any acting experience and started filming around the area where their company was located on a modest budget. This series focused on elementary and primary school children, and when all the characters reached grade six, the series finished. The production company began work on a sequel-like series, Degrassi Junior High, re-using seven of the actors who had acted on the original series, but with different character names. The series focused on more adult issues and used a larger cast.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "At the beginning", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki