Abstrakt
In this paper, I draw on an extensive industry report on feature film development, commissioned by the Czech Film Fund in 2014. Together with my colleagues, we first conducted almost 70 in-depth interviews with key Czech producers, screenwriters and directors, and designed a Bourdieuan typology of producersʼ development practices.
Based on the qualitative data, we showed how the small, post-socialist national market and typical business models of Czech film producers limit possibilities for systematic screenplay development and long-term production strategies. One of the four basic producer types, which we called "mainstream arthouse", is not just the most internationalized and financially viable (due to its smart utilization of public money and co-production opportunities), but - quite surprisingly - also demonstrates the most progressive approach toward diversification and digital technologies, including online serial formats.
On the other hand, its primary competitor, the "mainstream commercial" type, suffers from the digitization of theaters and struggles to find any viable online strategy. A group of arthouse filmmakers teamed up with the strongest local competitor of Google, who was just planning to start a more aggressive original content production; in 2014, they produced a hugely successful online series.
Others followed, and the new trend changed the whole local television landscape. One of the effects of the arthouse producers' online experiments is a revival of political and social satire, genres considered dead by many in Czech Republic for some 15 years.
In this paper, I will try to show what kind of conditions and competencies helped this producer type being more successful online and how they are conceptualizing their position vis-a-vis current technological development. The core argument will not concern purely technical expertise but rather collaborative practices and "situated aesthetics" (G.
Born) characteristic for this filmmaking sector.