We sit down with Emmy-winning TV producer Clara Plestis, whose work as an executive at Smart Dog Media, helped redefine what family-friendly television can be. Clara has been instrumental in shaping formats that blend high-concept experimentation with broad appeal, from AI-powered dating shows to variety competitions. Her work demonstrates that entertainment aimed at mass audiences doesn't have to be safe or predictable—it can be surprising, ambitious, and culturally resonant.
Clara walks us through the creative decisions behind Song vs. Dance, a Japanese-American co-production that combines performance, gaming, and visual flair into a highly original competition format. She also opens up about the bold choices behind Love by AI, a provocative dating experiment that hands matchmaking—and even the date experience itself—over to artificial intelligence. Through these shows, Clara reveals what it really takes to push fresh concepts through the development process: a deep understanding of global markets, strong format discipline, and the confidence to take calculated risks.
Join us for a deep dive into Clara’s process and what she sees on the horizon for television development.
About Wrapbook
Wrapbook is a smart, intuitive platform that makes production payroll and accounting easier, faster, and more secure. We provide a unified payroll platform that seamlessly connects your entire team—production, accounting, cast, and crew—all in one place.
Wrapbook empowers production teams to manage projects, pay cast and crew, track expenses, and generate data-driven insights, while enabling workers to manage timecards, track pay, and onboard to new projects from any device. Wrapbook brings clarity and dependability to production payroll, while increasing the productivity of your whole team.
For crew: The Wrapbook app eliminates the headaches of production payroll by providing a fast, transparent, and secure solution for workers to complete startwork, submit timecards, and track pay.
Trusted by companies of all sizes, Wrapbook powers payroll for some of the industry’s top production companies, including SMUGGLER, Tuff, and GhostRobot. Our growing team of 250+ people includes entertainment and technology experts from SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and more.
Wrapbook is backed by top-tier investors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Andreessen Horowitz, and A* Capital.
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