> Take into consideration that it's easy to criticise a system as an outsider. You would have to witness first-hand an organised chaos that film and/or TV production is in order to appreciate every single idiosyncrasy (at a first glance) that makes it all work.

I think this can't be overemphasized. I got into the movie business from software and was astounded by all of the quirks in the process that seemed to me to be fundamental inefficiencies. I was fairly certain that I could quite easily reinvent the process to make it smooth, efficient, and pleasurable.

Now, having been in the business for 14 years or so, almost all of it makes sense, and my arrogance in regard to their process is embarrassing at best. There are still a handful of quirks that don't make a ton of sense (even the property department will acknowledge that the only reason they handle cast chairs is because it's tradition), but generally speaking there is a good reason for everything being done the way it's done and it was a tough lesson that made it that way.

I also think it's important to remember that this is a 100 year old industry, and it's not an engineered process, it's an emergent process.

Just as an aside, the first time you have a week worth of wet work scheduled on a movie that's shooting so far out in the sticks that you have to have a satphone for set to communicate with basecamp, a lot of the reticence to adopt technologies that aren't completely bulletproof makes a lot more sense.