How It's Made

How It's Made (Comment c'est fait in French) is a Canadian documentary television series that premiered on January 6, 2001, on the Discovery Channel in Canada and the Science Channel in the United States. The program is produced in Quebec by Productions MAJ, Inc. and Productions MAJ 2. Format The show is a documentary showing how common, everyday items (such as clothing and accessories, food, industrial products, musical instruments, and sporting goods) are manufactured. It also features the restoration processes of old items in some episodes. How It's Made does not include explanatory texts to simplify dubbing in different languages. The show also avoids having an onscreen host (after Season 1 in the Canadian version) and an interview with employees explaining the process. Instead, an off-screen narrator explains the process, often with puns. Each episode features three or four products divided by segments, with each product getting a demonstration of approximately five minutes; exceptions are allowed in the allotted time for more complex ones. The scripts are almost identical across regional versions of the show; however, the main difference in the U.S. version is that the units of measurement are given in the United States customary units instead of metric units used in the Canadian version. At one point in the U.S. run, a subtitled conversion was shown on-screen over the original narration.