Entertainment

Streaming economics, game design, film and television craft — the structures behind the things we watch and play.

11 articles

Studios do not greenlight sequels on box office alone; audience tracking, franchise planning and risk management all play a part. T…

Idris Oyelaran14 Aug 202610 min read

The release date of a television season is the visible endpoint of a long, quietly strategic chain of production and marketing deci…

Mara Devlin14 Jul 20263 min read

Difficulty is one of the most carefully tested aspects of modern game design, built on playtesting data rather than instinct. This…

Helena Vos8 Jul 202610 min read

Subtitling and dubbing are treated as an afterthought by many viewers, yet they involve strict technical rules, cultural judgement…

Mara Devlin12 Jun 202610 min read

Great film sound design is built to go unnoticed, shaping emotion and tension beneath a viewer's conscious awareness far more than…

Mara Devlin9 Jun 20264 min read

Touring artists rarely choose cities in the order fans imagine; the real driver is a discipline called routing, which balances trav…

Idris Oyelaran10 May 202610 min read

Trailer editing is a distinct craft, separate from film editing, with its own rules about pacing, structure and disclosure. This pi…

Helena Vos5 Apr 202610 min read

Video game storytelling evolved from sparse text and cutscenes into branching, player-driven narratives that no other medium can fu…

Idris Oyelaran25 Mar 20263 min read

A casting director's job goes well beyond auditions, touching contracts, chemistry, and even a studio's marketing plan. This articl…

Mara Devlin18 Mar 202610 min read

Film budgets are rarely spent the way audiences assume, with visual effects and star salaries often eclipsed by unglamorous logisti…

Idris Oyelaran2 Mar 202610 min read

Streaming platforms replaced the weekly episode with the full-season release, and that shift reshaped pacing, plotting, and how wri…

Idris Oyelaran18 Feb 20264 min read

One email a week: the stories worth your time, plus what we are working on. No tracking pixels, unsubscribe any time.

The weekly briefing