Dreams and Imaginations, the Nikhil & Jay way.
I often write in my dream journal - trying to remember the snatches of images, the scenes, the people. And sometimes I get ideas for stories from dreams, and if I don’t write them down, they disappear as mist on a spring morning. And before I go to sleep ever since I was four or five, I imagine. I lay there thinking about things I would like to do, or be, or meet. I had a continuing series of topics I would imagine about. Even now, almost every day, the first few minutes before falling asleep, in the quiet and dark, I lie in my bed imagining something preposterous. Something that might never happen to me but I would like it to. Is it healthy? I don’t know. But I know that is how I fill journals and journals of story ideas. That is my go-to and I learnt how to do it as a child.
I’m a creature of ideas, and less than 1% of my ideas have materialised into books or published stories or episodes of TV. When we were conceptualising Nikhil & Jay, I wanted to explore the imagination worlds of Nikhil and Jay. Children imagine things - live out their play in their minds - whether it is about a pet or going on adventure or putting themselves in the shoes of a character they are watching or a becoming a butterfly.
Beyond the imagination sequences in every episode for Nikhil & Jay, our writers also explored stories that involved imaginative play.
Here are two that really showcase my own obsessions with imaginations and dreams.
The clip above from Nikhil & Jay and the Imaginary Friends written by Becky Overton is a great example of imaginary friends blending into real life. You can watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer here (if you’re in the UK) .
And in this episode, Nikhil &Jay and the Dream Detectives, the brothers are trying really hard to help Nikhil remember the dream he had just before waking up! Written by Joe Sellman-Leava illustrates how we all want to spend more time in fun dreams. And often when you do come out of a dream, it is not the details that are so fantastic, that we want to replicate, but the feeling. The feeling of joy or surprise or thrill it gives us, which Joe portrays beautifully in this episode. Click here to watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer here. And do subscribe to the NIkhil & Jay Youtube channel to be notified when a clip from this episode becomes available.
