Jennifer Reynolds
When traditional film and television production “basically vaporized overnight,” as Cody Chesneau puts it, his Georgia-based company Film Quality Services was already poised to led the way on the future of content creation.
This weekend, Film Quality Services will demonstrate its approach with “STREAM,” a four-day, live-streamed Halloween competition that blurs the lines between escape room, reality show and interactive entertainment.
In partnership with Influencer City and Kick Studios, a streaming collective with over 1.1 million followers, the event will trap 10 content creators inside Film Quality Services’s sound stages, where they’ll face puzzles, challenges and frights while audiences watch and influence the action in real time.
“We’re gonna have chat being engaged into what’s going on, and they’re going to be helping choose this narrative,” said Chesneau, CEO of Film Quality Services. “That’s what makes people tune in longer at home, because they have some of the power themselves.”
The event represents what Chesneau sees as a fundamental shift in how content gets made. He explained that in the past, content was brand-driven. A major company would create content and engage someone famous, often a celebrity, to help promote the project.
Now, he said, the model has flipped: Creators build their own audiences first, then brands come to them.
Film Quality Services, which converted its facilities into purpose-built sound stages for live streaming and content creation in 2024, positions itself as the bridge between independent creators and professional production standards.
“We’re helping provide them guardrails as to what is considered professional and traditional production,” Chesneau said. “Let’s help refine your ideas and give you opportunities that you may not have from the traditional pipelines.”
Unlike traditional film, where directors can call for multiple takes, live streaming offers no such luxury.
“We only have one” take, Chesneau said. “What we traditionally do is a lot of that post-production that you’re thinking about happens in pre-production.”
His team has been preparing for a month, building elaborate sets, including a lab, a maze and a “confessional” coffin.
But once the stream goes live at on Oct. 24, flexibility becomes key. That real-time feedback loop extends to the audience.
“If parts aren’t hitting well, we can tell it in real time and go, ‘OK, cool, maybe the next day we don’t do that segment,'” Chesneau said.
Chesneau’s team draws heavily from esports and gaming backgrounds. He started as a Twitch DJ and content creator.
“We all know the content, we know content that works for these types of platforms because we consume a lot of it,” he said.
They’ve worked together since 2019, developing the kind of rhythm essential for live production.
For “STREAM,” a puppet master operating from Film Quality Services’s control room will manipulate the contestants through various challenges. The competition runs continuously from Friday evening through Monday night, with premium production coverage from 4:30 p.m. to midnight each day.
The last creator standing wins.
For those considering launching their own content careers, Chesneau offers simple advice: Stop overthinking it.
“The beauty of social media is you can get your content out so fast and get feedback on it so fast that you should be less looking to try and understand the perfectionism,” he said. “Just get it out there. Start posting. Start showing. Start being your authentic self. That’s what people are going to be able to associate with.”
“STREAM” will be available to view at kick.com/influencercity from 4:30 p.m. to midnight ET, Oct. 24-27. The event is produced by Influencer City in partnership with Kick Studios and Film Quality Services.
