REEL WOOD: Decking the Recent Quality of Film and Television

With the proliferation of AI apps, copycat TV series and films, and a dearth of quality entertainment across channels, one might wonder how we get back to creating genuine, quality entertainment.

Over the last month, I’ve been rebuilding my cedar deck. It was in need of repair after 26 years of use. I decided to do it myself and this experience really got me thinking about quality, materials, craftsmanship, and time.??

When I started my manufacturing and engineering career on the shop floor in 1983, one of the first things I was exposed to was SPC (Statistical Process Control.) This quality system was used to analyze the quality of parts by closely monitoring the process and charting the trend of the key dimensions.

So, at a very young age, I saw the connection between how manufacturing processes could slowly start to degrade as you made more parts. In simple terms the more volume you make the more quality problems you would have. SPC allows you to predict that trend and head off any disasters.

Fast forward a number of years, to when I left engineering and went into tech startups, which was how I ended up working in entertainment (a whole other maddening story).

While working in film and television, my manufacturing plant experiences never left my psyche, and as I started to dive deeper into tech and entertainment, I noticed parallels in how quality was the key to sustained success.

In today's hi-tech digital world, it’s easy to measure and quantify data. So, one would think, it should be simple to find the next blockbuster movie franchise, pop star, or killer app.

But creating quality entertainment has not become easier, it’s become harder. Often, we see paralysis through analysis, where data and replication rule over creativity and originality.

Perhaps there's too much low-quality information that degrades the output.

In tech, they believe that by increasing the volume of data set you can synthesize it back to create something of value. This appears to be the premise of most AI content creation.

But if you leverage this same formula in the entertainment industry, you create a system that only functions by creating more shows in an effort to increase the chances they’ll get a hit. AI only feeds this monster.

Both seem to be missing the key which is this -

When you increase volume, your quality decreases,?

Unfortunately, that’s what we’re seeing across many of today's media channels.?

So my question is this. What would happen if we reapplied this old formula and put in the hard work using real, quality people telling real, quality stories??

I believe we would see the return of “genuine quality.”

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Remember, Quality is not a veneer glued over particle board. Quality is solid wood that’s been matured and hand-crafted to last.

Stephen Sadler?