How It's Made

Hailing from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, How It's Made (Comment c'est fait in French) is a Science Show (well, a Technology Show, but we don't have that trope yet) that shows how various products are made, using video shot in actual factories and workshops; a narrator describes what's happening on screen. The show is produced in a way that allows easy redubbing for export -- factory employees do not speak on camera, and no reading skills are required. The show has been running since 2001, and so far has featured hundreds of different products, from sporting goods to food to vehicles.

The show is produced by MAJ Productions in association with the Science Channel (which airs it in the US) and Discovery Channel Canada. The US version is narrated by Brooks Moore; he was replaced for one season, but as of the new season (which started in fall 2008 on the Science Channel and January 2009 on the Discovery Channel) he has returned.

So far, the series has avoided making a show about itself, however they have done a promo for the show, showing how the show is made

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Tropes used in How It's Made include:

• Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: The cheese, Swiss cheese, and goat cheese segments.
• Brand X: Played straight and subverted at the same time. In the narration, all products are referred to by generic names (presumably as a result of Canadian laws against product placements,) but at the same time no effort is made to hide logos and brand names on the featured products.
  • Especially hilarious in an episode showing the construction of the Segway; how do you talk about a product known only by its brand name without using its brand name? Evidently, by saying "transporter" and hoping people don't get confused.
  • This troper has actually noticed some segments having blurred logos or URLs, but it's quite uncommon. On the other hand, the end credits have a "Thanks to:" credit that lists the companies involved.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Literally during a Science Channel promotion for new episodes of the show, where the entire process of the making of said promotion up to the playing of the episode on Thursday evening at 9pm Eastern back at network operations is described by Brooks Moore in the style of an episode segment.
• Clip Show: The "Automated machines" segments, which are video montages of the various machinery seen in each season.
• Did Not Do the Research/Artistic License: In most of the episode segments. Here are a few examples:
  • Artistic License Chemistry: In the "Pipe Organs" segment, the narrator says that organ pipes are "made of lead". Actually, they're made of metals such as copper, aluminum, silver, iron, and brass, but not lead.
  • Artistic License History/Religion/Linguistics: In the "Butter" segment, the narrator says that butter was "mentioned in the Old Testament" when "Abraham offered it to angels". In the Bible itself, however, the food that Abraham offered to God and his angels is not butter, but cheese, as described by the words "curds and milk", which is equivalent to cottage cheese. Since the narrator doesn't know that the Bible was written in Hebrew, the reason is that the Hebrew word that we normally translate as "curds" does not mean "butter". Ironically, in the "Cheese" episode, the narrator made no mention of the cheese in the Bible. So in other words, history and religion = fail.
    • Speaking of cheese, the narrator clearly Did Not Do the Research in the "Cheese" segment because he thinks that whey is "a solid object to cut up" instead of a liquid, centrifuges are "separators", pasturization is "sterilization", and the agitators are "cheese-stirrers" instead of cheese knives.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Or would that be "Dragons Are Dinosaurs"? In the "Mascots" segment, the guy is making and wearing a dragon mascot costume, yet the narrator calls it a "dinosaur mascot costume", even though it clearly looks like a winged dragon.
  • Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: Though not an animal, in the "Gas tanks" section, the narrator calls propane gas tanks "barbecue tanks" instead of propane gas tanks!
    • Probably because propane tanks are most associated with propane barbecue grills, thus it's a probably name for it.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: And how.
• Follow the Leader: One of the most blatant examples is Factory Made, another show that basically follows the same premise and airs on the same channel.
• Forging Scene
• Gun Porn: Literally during shows where rifles and handgun creation processes are shown.
• Hurricane of Puns: The US dub in particular loves this trope. This, for example, comes from the episode about kitchen knives:

"Today's blades are truly a cut above the stone tools that cavemen used. Knifemaking is now a science, producing tools that really give you that edge in the kitchen".

• • That's nothing - every episode in the UK dub ends with a Hurricane of Puns about the items from the show.
• Product Placement: Inverted. Usually brand names will only be shown when absolutely necessary (as in packaging), and many businesses in and around Montreal and Quebec City getting unexpected publicity from the series, along with businesses in Europe (European products are seen when an American or Canadian equivalent of a product cannot be found).
• Science Show
• Shout-Out: In one "Video Games" segment, this one must have been a shout-out to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time... particularly because the guys borrowed some "behind-the-scenes" making of the game in video. And did we mention that the narrator talks about modern video games instead of old ones?
• Slow Motion: Typically industrial work machines are dizzyingly fast, and it's really hard to understand what exactly they're doing - all you see is a blur. The show goes to great pains to slow this down so the viewer can see every step: either the machine is slowed down or the video is overcranked. Occasionally the slowed-down machines have jerky movements hinting they're being moved by hand, as they probably can't go that slowly by themselves. When they're done explaining they usually show you how the machine looks when it's not slowed down.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In one "Chicken Hatchery" segment, some happy/creepy music plays while the baby chicks hatch and get tossed around in a Conveyor Belt O' Doom and some machines! That's just so squicky!
• Spin-Off: The show has amassed so many episodes that they can reconfigure segments to cover one theme such as "Chores", "Boats", "Roadwork" and "Baseball", and call it How It's Made: Remix.
• Take Our Word for It: With certain products, usually food, steps had to be skipped because the company's wouldn't let them film those parts, or for obvious things such as the most graphic parts of meat processing, would not make for good viewing for the queasy.
• Technology Porn: The episodes dealing with factory production (most of them, really) show exquisite details of all sorts of machinery, both computer-operated and not. They often slow down the machine (or the video) in order to show you precisely how things work.