David Chase, the creator of the hit HBO TV series ‘The Sopranos’, can legitimately claim to have changed the culture of how TV dramas are made.
How? Well his aim, as he says in this New York Times article, was to ‘make a little movie each week’. 60 minutes, no ads, and each ‘movie’ would be able to stand on its own two feet as a single hour of drama, while at the same fitting into a larger vision.
And it worked. Spectacularly. In the end, he made 86 movies, not all amazing, but when you make 86 of them, they don’t all have to be for the overall project to have an impact.
Without The Sopranos, we wouldn’t have had The Wire, Breaking Bad, or the many Netflix dramas that now dominate the viewing patterns of many people.
One movie a week, one tune a day, one album each year, whatever the challenge is that you decide to set for yourself. If you can be consistent and dedicated to producing your best work possible each time, it’s amazing what can happen.
