Script Development and the Post-Socialist Producer: Towards a Comparative Approach to Cultures of Development
Abstract
The chapter proposes a model for in-depth study of film script and project development as a production practice and culture embedded in concrete industrial and policy contexts. It presents a new interpretation of qualitative data collected for an ethnographically informed industry report on feature film development conducted on commission by the Czech Film Fund.
The aim of the chapter is to reflect on the possibilities of using these data, despite their local specificity, for a comparative cross-national analysis of script development in small media markets. While the features of the local screen industry ecosystem and the stakeholders' responses to them are locally specific per se, the differences between the professional groups and the types of practices involved in film development might be extrapolated to serve as a conceptual framework for comparative cross-national research.
While script development remains the main focus of the chapter, it is systematically placed in the context of a broader industrial process of film development as approached and understood by independent producers. It draws systemic distinctions based on a Bourdieu-inspired analysis of the field of cultural production: the differences between producers aiming at gaining field-specific symbolic capital versus those who are market-oriented; the differences between those at the margins and in the mainstream of the field; and the differences between screenwriters, directors, script editors, and producers as professional groups involved in development-all of which increase our sensitivity to regularities hidden behind the seemingly messy, boundary-free and never-ending development process.