Eighty per cent.
A healthy series keeps at least eight out of ten viewers from episode one to episode two. Below that, the construction is broken, and no amount of production value repairs it. Pull your own numbers before you read any further. You already know which side you're on.
Most branded series die in the same place: they are briefed like an advertisement and written like an advertisement, then released in episodes and expected to behave like a story. Episodic storytelling is closer to writing a soap opera than to writing a spot. Almost nobody in the room has ever built one.
A showrunner, not an agency.
One person owns the construction: who the character is, why anyone follows them, what makes the next episode unavoidable, and how the product lives inside the story instead of interrupting it. The same person then makes it. No brief, no handoff, no seam.
The unit is not a video. The unit is a line: one character, one audience segment, one continuous story, released on a rhythm.
Series Teardown — five working days, $3,000 fixed.
I take your existing series, or your brief if nothing has shipped yet, and return three things:
- iWhere the audience left, frame by frame, with your own numbers next to it.
- iiThe rebuilt construction of episode one, written out.
- iiiOne generated frame from the rebuilt version, so you see it instead of imagining it.
The teardown is delivered whether or not you like what it says. That is the point of paying for it.
If the teardown works, the next steps are a pilot line, a full season, or a standing showrunner engagement. We talk about those after you have read the teardown, not before.
The tools.
Arcads, Creatify and the rest produce volume. Volume is a real problem and they solve it. They do not produce a reason to watch episode two, and no version of them ever will. If your problem is variants, don't hire me. If your problem is that nobody finishes, variants make it worse.
The agency.
An agency gives you hands. Your first episodes were not bad because of hands. They were bad because the construction had no author, and a construction with no author is exactly what an agency is structurally unable to provide.
The studio.
A studio executes beautifully from a brief it didn't write. You pay twice and you get the seam.
- iOne person who owns the creative yes.
- iiA budget that already exists. I am not the person who helps you argue for one.
- iiiSomething at stake. Not a content calendar.
Send me the series.
A link is enough. If there's nothing shipped yet, send the brief.