“Every new technological shortcut gets embraced with one goal in mind: cut costs, pocket the difference.”

The next breakthrough in production isn’t AI. It’s cultural intelligence, according to CONNECT THE DOTS, a “glocal” collective of freelance producers across Asia  The company was born to be at the forefront of this future of global production company that bridges languages, expectations and working styles to remove the invisible cultural gaps and wrong assumptions that lead to wasted budget, slow approvals, wrong partners, and projects that never reach their full potential. Italian-Japanese Takehito Kuroha, is Director & Executive Producer, CONNECT THE DOTS. He joined the collective after working across Europe and Asia and encoutering the same issue again and again - the global production ecosystem rarely reflected the nuanced needs of each project, nor the cultural differences that define smooth collaboration. 

Here Kuroha talks about the lessons of experience, cultural understanding and the adapt or die imperative that is a hallmark of the production industry.

Fair to say you have remarkable broad experience across filmmaking - films, commercials, music videos, web-series and fashion films. Which challenged you the most? Which taught you the most?

Takehito Kuroha: It's hard to give an answer, as different formats bring different challenges. The most obvious distinction is that personal projects like films offer the most creative freedom but come with the tightest budgets, while commercials are (or used to be) the opposite - higher budgets, far less creative latitude.

That said, I think music videos first, and fashion films later, were the real school for my generation of filmmakers. They were projects where we could truly dare: push ourselves, take risks, express our vision with few limits. But they also taught us to work with a counterpart, whether musicians or record labels, and that balance between creative freedom and client collaboration shaped many of us before we stepped into commercials and features.

More broadly, I believe filmmakers should always strive to challenge themselves, and their clients. Pushing out of your comfort zone is easier said than done, but the willingness to go beyond and risk something, especially when you're young, is what truly shapes a career. I remember vividly the first commercial campaign I was offered. A production company couldn’t find a director willing to take it on because it was considered technically impossible: it involved light painting, which typically requires stop motion due to long exposures. But the creatives wanted natural, fluid movement while the talents painted with light, something you can now do with a phone app, but back then was a genuine nightmare. When no one else would take it, they came to me. I told them, with full confidence, it was absolutely doable. I had absolutely no idea how to do it.

I spent a week in panic, searching for a solution, until I stumbled across a Dutch engineer and a team of artists who had just developed a system that could make it work. We pulled it off, and thanks to that project, we were shortlisted at the Cannes Young Director Award, featured in major international advertising publications, and I began working with production companies around the world.

You also have broad experience across cultures. What insights/understanding has this added to your knowledge bank and skillset?

Takehito Kuroha: Travelling, meeting, and working with people from different parts of the world has enriched not only my work and style, but my life immensely. Being Italian-Japanese, I was fortunate to experience that from day one. But every encounter with someone from a different culture or background remains a gift, no matter how many you've had.

And yet, in an age where travel has never been easier, technology is quietly pushing us to stay put - eyes down, scrolling, consuming. Funnily enough, we're often the ones creating that content. We watch more than ever, but experience less. Even a simple walk down a street on a Tuesday afternoon can be full of discovery, if you let it. What we've lost, as someone says, is boredom - the kind that used to force us to look up and look around. The kind that made us curious. The kind that made us creative.

Watching something is not the same as living it. When you put yourself in a place out of your comfort zone, boots on the ground, let it take you somewhere you hadn't planned to go. Get lost in it.

Production has undergone a shift that no one would have envisaged a decade ago. What has it gained? What challenges have come with?

Takehito Kuroha: I'm not sure I fully agree with the premise. Production has always faced revolutions - enormous technological shifts, one after another, decade after decade - forcing creators to constantly adapt and evolve alongside the tools available to them. That's nothing new. What has always stayed the same, through black and white film, sound, Technicolor, digital, CGI and now AI, is that filmmaking is fundamentally about storytelling. And storytelling comes from US.

That said, production is absolutely the sector that has had to absorb those changes the most, with many professionals forced to adapt or die at every new cycle. But for me, the biggest challenge today isn't the technology itself. It's budgets. Advertising has quietly turned into a machine for feeding mere consumerism. Of course it has always been about profit, but what happened to the craft? The care, the attention to detail, the ambition to push boundaries technically and culturally? Quantity has overtaken quality. Our feeds are flooded with cheap disposable garbage, and every new technological shortcut gets embraced with one goal in mind: cut costs, pocket the difference.

The value of human skill gets quietly eroded, as if the machine does the work and we just press a button. And yet, the potential ahead of us is genuinely exciting. All the tools we have available today are incredible, unimaginable just two or three years ago. And luckily there are still people out there (yes, actual humans!), and clients, who keep believing in the value of quality. Not just as a nice idea, but because better work builds better brands that sell more.

Technology is neither good nor bad, at least until the Terminators show up. ???? My biggest concern today is not AI. It's human greed.

Does production/filmmaking in the APAC region have specific advantages, skills or styles that the world should envy or emulate?

Takehito Kuroha: APAC is an acronym that contains not one world, but many. It's the largest, and most populous, region on the planet, spanning two continents, a cauldron of cultures, as diverse as anywhere on earth gets. No other part of the world comes close to that level of variety in my opinion.

And that diversity is pure gold. So many cultures, ethnic groups, religions and languages living side by side, meeting, mixing, sometimes clashing - not just in boardrooms, but at street level, every single day. In many of these markets, ad agencies and production companies are a genuine babel of nationalities and backgrounds, and that richness has driven enormous growth across the region over the last few decades.

Then there are the economies that we really can't call "emerging" anymore - Southeast Asia, India, Central Asia. Places that have quietly reached and sometime surpassed many of the so-called First World. And what strikes me most when I'm there is what I see in the eyes of young people. That hunger. That determination. That optimism that, honestly, parts of the Old World have lost somewhere along the way, and should probably look to them to rediscover. These are people who roll their sleeves up and keep going no matter what comes at them, whether it's a market crash or a natural disaster. Nothing can stop them.

That energy is contagious. Every time I'm around it, it gives me a genuine boost, and a lot of hope for the future.