Pojmy z teorie a dějin médií I(teorie mediální produkce)

Petr Szczepanik(jaro 2011)

plán přednášky1. Kariéra a projekt2. Autorství3. Mody produkce4. Filmové studio jako místo,

podnik, pracovní svět5. Produkční kultura

Lekce 1+2: Kariéra a projekt v dějinách filmu• bezbariérová kariéra (boundaryless career) a filmový

projekt: 2 organizační modely filmové výrobydisciplíny:• production studies• political economy of media• cultural/creative industries theory• organizational and management studies• sociology of media work• ethnography of media work• cultural and economic geography of media

industrial context: vertical disintegration, flexible specialization

(Susan Christopherson – Mark Storper: The City as studio; the world as backlot)

• vertical disintegration: production is carried out primarily by independent production companies which subcontract direct production activity to small specialized firms. The industry is vertically disintegrated and its production process is nonroutinized and designed to maximize variability of outputs and flexibility with respect to inputs. The numerous transactions required to produce the film product now take place on the market rather than within a firm. As vertical disintegration has proceeded, those firms providing services to producers have become smaller and more specialized. These specialized subcontractors reduce their own risk by marketing their services to other entertainment industries, including recording and television. As a result of these combined processes of vertical disintegration and cross-industry subcontracting, an entertainment industry complex has developed.

• flexible specialization: firms produce specialty goods with relatively short production runs. They spread risk by serving a variety of clients, with different final outputs They are capable of responding quickly to changing market conditions. They are connected to the market via contractual relationships with other firms; production via “subcontracting linkages”. They specialize in certain generic functions (props and scenery, editing, sound mixing), but are able to work on a broader range of product outputs (only small minority concentrates exclusively on film and TV)

• disparities in access to work hours: core and peripheral work force: core work force: very successful search and rehire processes, continuous employment x peripheral: the same high hourly wages (but: without premiums for overtime etc.), but loses work easily in downturns, unemployed for long periods

(Christopherson and Storper: The effects of flexible specialization on industrial politics and the labor market: the motion picture industry)

• changing skill requirements: a) above the line: skills of actors, writers, and directors have expanded to include collaborative and transaction skills” (to acquire “property” or solicit investors): “industry-specific rather than occupation-specific skills in conceiving, packaging, and financing”: the roles they play have multiplied; often work for a share in the profits rather than solely for a wage

• b) below the line: skill flexibility and specialization: functional separation of talent and craft: increasing gap between above (involved in production as a speculative venture) and below the line (hourly pay for specific tasks): in contrast to talent, craft workers developed more specialized skills (but: used in variety of products, to a wider range of situations: e.g. particular make-up effect, not standard tool kit as before), have less influence on the content and pacing; = qualitative redefinition of skills, rather than de-skilling or up-skilling

temporary organizations for project-based work(Robert J. DeFillippi – Michael B. Arthur: Paradox in Project-Based Enterprise: The case of film making)

• project-based enterprises (companies formed to pursue a specific project outcome) and project-based careers (careers habitually moving from one project to another) → where complex, non-routine tasks require the temporary employment and collaboration of diversely skilled specialists

• independent film industry: producing company is essentially disbanded once the film is released

• the project-based enterprise inherits its strategic vision, rather than shapes its own, moreover, the vision is temporary, and geared to one specific product rather than multiple related products

• structure/staffing are temporary• short-term, project-specific capital investments • enterprise dissolution precedes outcomes• idleness is necessary: alternating between frenetic activity and enforced idleness ,

vigilant readiness to be mobilized on a moment's notice → learning-by-watching phenomenon, to observe how tasks outside one's current role are performed by other members of other specialized crews, those returns to learning will principally benefit a new enterprise formed for a subsequent project

...

inconsequential jobs are sought-after:• senior crew member explicitly provide opportunities for the interns to

closely observe the performance of their well-practiced craft → "learning by watching" among the most junior members

• performance of the mundane tasks of getting coffee or tea is a time-honored socialization ritual for new crew members and both their performance and attitudes are duly noted → the neophyte's behavior is incidental to the current project, but is seen as indicative of his or her commitment and compatibility for performing more demanding tasks in future projects

• the most junior role on any film project: a "runner" who literally runs around the set to deliver information or material (e.g., script revisions, stage props) as needed → becomes exposed to the complex, chaotic interconnections among specialized film crew activities

• low responsibility, inconsequential jobs assume a delayed importance in film making → sought after because of the career benefits they offer the job-holder; in turn, they also make the prospective learning benefits available to other, later, enterprises; neophytes are socialized into the shared values and uncodified tacit knowledge of their community of practice.

...career mobility drives industry stability• producers and directors are not permanently employed by any studio• instead, the studios had regular access to talented producers and

directors from whom-to pick for their next investments.• the studios' access to directors and producers gets mirrored in the two

principals' further access to artistic and business talent → able to draw on their range of personal contacts to appoint principal lieutenants → those lieutenants in turn filled out the rest of the crew.

• film industry = a small, socially interconnected network → it is through inclusion in that network that future project opportunities are identified

• each film project sustains or enhances each project member's network of industry contacts, any one of whom may provide the lead or recommendation for future project opportunities

reputation:• producer and director go to their separate networks, using social capital

to locate further human capital resources to build the film crew• in turn, principal lieutenants did the same thing with their crews• the system works through reputation, which may be viewed as an

estimate of human capital conveyed over social capital channels.• continuing nature of this interplay between skills (human capital) and

work relationships (social capital)

...• knowledge and its sources are not necessarily contained within

organizational boundaries but instead reside within the tacit knowledge and practices of professionally and occupationally based communities of practice → these communities interpenetrate the boundaries of large and small organizations and of temporary and durable organizations → it is the mobility of human capital and its attendant tacit knowledge across these boundaries that are responsible for the creation of flexible forms of organizing, including the project-based enterprise form

• a project-based enterprise cannot accumulate core competencies → core competencies for the project are embodied in the human and social capital of the project participants → the project team as a locus for knowledge capital accumulation and learning

• project-based enterprise represents a flexible, temporary form for organizing human and social capital → such temporary enterprises are supported by some combination of geographic proximity, network ties from prior associations, and by electronic and web infrastructure linkages → each project becomes a learning episode for each participant and for their respective industry and occupational communities → drivers in these project-based enterprises are the career aspirations and competency accumulation practices of project participants, who leverage and extend.

project (Candace Jones: Careers in Project Networks: The Case of the Film Industry)

• project network: film industry = network organization: constantly created and recreated (new projects = new participants);

• type of network: project network (film, music, construction industry); projects = organizing mechanism; teams are comprised of diversely skilled members who work for a limited period to create custom and complex products or services; organization producing the product: involves multiple firms and subcontractors, neither formally nor legally defined, temporary and constructed around the product, usually involving pioneering endeavors;

• 2 main characteristics of project networks: a) task is complex and nonroutine, team interdependence: requires many individuals, high level of mutual responsibility; emphasis on horizontal information flow: fast sharing, complex tasks; b) uncertain and dynamic environment (shifting consumer demands); independent producers to facilitate product adaptation and innovation; resources easily reallocated among members (thus: adaptive)

projects as temporary total institutions (Beth A. Bechky: Gaffers, Gofers, and Grips: Role-Based Coordination in Temporary

Organizations)

• Two important structural characteristics of film projects provide the organizational context within which coordination takes place: interorganizational career progression and projects as temporary total institutions → context, in which members are isolated in a work world that strongly socializes them to enthusiastically embrace their roles, provides participants with an understanding of general role structures on film sets. However, such role structures are provisional, influenced and maintained by participants’ behavior on each set.

• temporary organizations are not unstructured (from workers’ perspective): team-based organizational structures: although self-managed teams lack the controls of bureaucracy and hierarchy, they tend to develop alternative control mechanisms. With these less centralized control tactics, normative control constrains and structures the behavior of team members → their value-based work ethic turned gradually into a strong source of normative rules.

• Temporary organizations are in fact organized around enduring, structured role systems whose nuances are negotiated in situ [= on the film set].

• The career progression provided the continuing context for crew members to understand and generalize the role structure, while the institutional nature of film sets enabled strong social pressures that guided role enactment.

Interorganizational Career Progression: generalized role structure• job roles in the film industry evolved through longtime convention and the establishment of union rules: historical

conventions institutionalized by union rules served to establish the basic role structure in the film industry (in 1946 the Hollywood below-the-line production unions negotiated a “Basic Agreement” with the Association of Motion Picture Producers that set the basis of employment for production workers ; late 1980s, a shift to nonunion production on independent films increased flexibility)

• role structure strictly organized by department, with a thin upper hierarchy, and a pool of production assistants at the bottom;

• above-the-line → more fluid in tasks: members are dependent on the skills and personalities of the individuals on each set; the roles of the production assistants are also more fluid;

definition of career • Arthur: ‘the evolving sequence of a person’s work experiences over time’

→ passage of time, history: career histories, career episodes; career vs. job, work, profession; parallel work experiences, and successive sets of experiences in apparently disconnected fields of employment, be considered part of the same career (x idea that parallel or successive jobs are unconnected → ‘multiple careers’ → interferes with the holistic view of the career) → focus on one person, one career, and one lifetime in which that person can work, learn, make friends, start a family, etc.

• Candace Jones: an individual's career, objectively, involves a series of roles or offices with associated statuses which are typically revealed through a sequence of jobs or work experiences

• careers as property: prevailing roles – their relationships and understandings – of a time period → career histories as a repository of individual experiences and knowledge or of a social era's prevalent structures, relations, and practices that become encoded into the person;

• careers as process: how the sequences of roles may reinforce or alter prevailing roles, relationships, and understandings → are shaped by or reshape an organization, occupation, or field → how careers unfold within organizations, occupations, and institutional fields

advantages of “career” for film studies

• filmmakers don’t just create films and styles → they also build careers (credits, reputations, social capital, networks); they don’t just earn money, or financial capital, they also earn career capital → accumulate credits, contacts and knowledge

• careers interconnect creative and strategic (managerial) thinking, work and learning, technical knowledge and social capital, individual and institution (careers link persons to institutions through organizations and occupations), freelancer and project network, artists and producers on the market, personal and occupational life; helps to understand collaborative networks and alliances, reputation (similar cumulative career profiles, career capital).

• “career” allows us to reconceptualize some traditional issues of film studies: authorship (as career path), creative choice (as strategic career choices), unique individual and collective style (‘technologies of the self’, strategies of self-governance), creative collaboration (social networks), talent (as reputation, or cumulative credit)

boundaryless careers• Arthur: boundaryless careers (the term introduced 1993; vs. bounded or

employer defined career: loyalty, skills and value attached to the firm) = ‘a sequence of job opportunities that goes beyond the boundaries of any single employment setting’

• Jones: boundaryless careers in project networks: short-term projects, informal personal networks, interfirm careers: move across firms (x within firms), validation from the market rather than the employer, cross-organizational networks of information

• typical career patterns: a) individual free agent, moving among many different subcontractors and firms (most common); b) member of production team (highest status if works in the elite core of the industry)

• advantages: varied opportunity, development potential, access to exciting projects among myriad firms, enhancement of skills and reputation due to increased experience in different work settings; disadvantages: high demands on time, energy, lifestyle

• alternative terms: kaleidoscope careers (Mainero & Sullivan, 2006), protean careers (Hall, 2002), ‘portfolio careers’ (McRobbie)

careers as repositories of knowledge (Candace Jones – Robert J. DeFillippi: Back to the Future in Film: Combining Industry and Self-Knowledge to

meet the Career Challenges of the 21st Century)

• what: knowing of what type of career system (culture, rules of game) one is entering;

• why: knowing why one is pursuing a particular career• where: knowing where to gain entrance, training, and

advancement• whom: knowing with whom to initiate contact and

relationship• when: knowing when to stay or leave an employment

situation• how: knowing how to perform the tasks and roles

needed for capturing opportunities

boundaryless career stages (Candace Jones: Careers in Project Networks: The Case of the Film Industry)

• 1. getting access → identify gatekeepers, seek successful subcontractor who will place the newcomer in his/her first project and getting foot in the door;

• 2. learning technical skills and being socialized into the industry culture → intense socialization creates common understanding, routines, conventions, values, goals among different parties that guide behavior (x written rules, regulations), so that rules for working together do not have to be re-created for each film;

• 3. navigating the career: building reputations and creating contracts; status within industry: being associated with commercially successful films;

• 4. maintaining the career: extending the profession and balancing it with personal needs

who works with whom (Faulkner – Anderson: Short-Term Projects and Emergent Careers: Evidence from Hollywood)

• markets (as differentiated structures of roles and ties) and careers: procedures for matching jobs to jobholders: career = a two-sided affair, sustained by entrepreneurs making distinctions among qualified artists; on the other side of the market, artists are making distinctions among film productions

• who works with whom (individuals and types): high densities of market transactions among persons with similar cumulative career profiles (or, accumulative productivity values – APVs → the pattern of credits and economic return);

• continuous monitoring and evaluating; • career attributes are accumulated as people move from credit to

credit → sustained participation in this structure of contracts, credits, and attributes is the requirement for continued success

cores and peripheries (Jones)

• tightly knit relations in the core, loosely woven interactions on the peripheries; peripheries: open to newcomers, inner cores: restricted; only small percentage enter and remain within the core for most of their careers

• those in the core: have rich informal communication networks; periphery: poor comm. networks, rather occasional, incidental contacts, not solid ties.

contact types and semi-permanent work groups(Helen Blair: ‘You’re Only as Good as Your Last Job’: the Labour Process and Labour Market in the

British Film Industry)

- semi-permanent work groups = uncertainty reducing mechanism for employer, heads of department and ‘technical grades’;

- are commonly configured around departments and so a camera, art or sound department may move from project to project as a unit; group leader or head of department recruiting his/her ‘gang’ and taking them with them when moving jobs, the skill hierarchy, and skill reproduction and socialisation within the group;

- recruitment for film projects proceeds by the producer and director appointing heads of each department (e.g. camera, art, sound). The heads of each department then stipulate the people who will fill the grades within their department. These will tend to be people who are known to the head of department through a previous working relationship or relationships, or recommended to him/her by someone else who has experience of their work

- Such a system provides flexibility to meet rapid fluctuations in demand without large overhead expenditure, provides a path of upward mobility for key groups of workers, by-passes employers lack of technical knowledge and assists in stabilising effort and task allocation. [...] For members, being in such a group reduces if not removes the need for job searches as the head of department does it for them; members of groups viewing their head of department as their employer, rather than the production company (their legal employer)

- contact types: family-members, friends, ex-colleagues : directly offering a job opportunity, informing the entrant of a potential job, or recommending the entrant to third parties . After entering the industry, family-type contacts become much less significant in securing ongoing work. Friends remain important in serving a recommendation and information provision function (although an individual’s group of friends may alter). However, ex-colleagues, as those people in a position to comment on the quality of an individual’s work, become the dominant form of contact used to secure either direct work offers, recommendations or general job information.

movie clipshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIyg2a72uV4&feature=related(Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe - a career in telly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lql7Iwf7M6A&feature=related(NATPE, National Association of Television Program Executives)

Lekce 3+4: Autorství

John Caughie „Authors and auteurs: the uses of theory“ (2007)

• vanishing from academic debate, the auteur is everywhere else – in publicity, in journalistic reviews, in TV, in film retrospectives, in the marketing of cinema → authorial branding.

• the significance of authorship theory for Film Studies lies in its productivity: its production and institutionalization not simply of a ‘knowledge field’, but also of a community within which that field could be shared and contested: a field on which sides could be taken, theoretical battles fought, and solidarities formed and reformed

theories and practices of authorship

Janet Staiger: „Authorship approaches“ (2003)1.authorship as origin2.authorship as personality3.authorship as a sociology of production4.authorship as signature5.authorship as reading strategy6.authorship as site of discourses7.authorship as technique of the self

1. authorship as origin

• religious hermeneutic tradition: „what (godly) sources produced this writing?“

• film = a direct expression of the author´s free agency• strategy: evaluation on the basis of the biography of the

author: films must display the morality of author´s life• techniques: interviews, memoirs, etc. used to support

ascribed meanings• author´s intention (see „intentional fallacy“ – intencionální

klam)• “the biographical legend created by the author” mediates

between text and reader (Boris Tomaševskij)

2. authorship as personality

• personal idiosyncrasies in historical circumstances• intention, self-awareness and free agency not assumed• ideology: Romanticism: expressive realism → film as a

projection of the feelings or personal identity of the author• auteurism: Cahiers du cinéma, 1950s

prehistory of auteur theory

• early theories: evolutionary development of techniques which allow cinema to move from the photographic reproduction of reality to its creative representation, from a technology to an art

• film artist ‘distorts’ the unmediated photographic reality → expressiveness (Russian montage theory and German expressionism)

• example: Rudolf Arnheim’s Film als Kunst (1932)• critical tradition of impersonality + educational approach

(educating the public to a better, more critical appreciation of the films) → the theoretical context for the offensive of Cahiers

French auteurism:• allows films to be treated as art: directors reveal themselves through their

work (like painters or writers) → cinema is – self-evidently – an art which can be discussed in the same way as the great monuments of European culture

• but: confusing the category of art: Hollywood directors as artists and rebels against the system (against studio pressures, genre conventions, star demands, story requirements)

• director → unified personal vision to be found in repetitions of themes and stylistic choices from film to film

• the value of the auteur was guaranteed not by the seriousness or moral purpose of the film’s content but by the audacity of its style, especially in mise-en-scène (spacial relations)

• the best film of a metteur en scène, a director without a consistent signature, is less interesting than the worst film of an auteur: emblematically, Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is less interesting than Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford, 1937)

• politique d’auteurs = a policy of favoring particular directors: e.g. Truffaut's 1954 attack on the cinema of quality, Rohmer's admiration for Hitchcock, Rivette's celebration of Hawks and Lang and Preminger

legacy of auteurism

• a legacy of debate, of reading and of the omnivorous appetite of the cinephile

• an attention to mise en scène, not simply as a set of techniques for the representation of reality but as a language of creativity with which an auteur transformed material

• analysis of mise en scène = a method of detection, finding there rather than in subject matter the signature of the director

• breaking down high/low cultural distinctions• politique d’auteurs: establishing canons or pantheons

criticism of auteurism

• Bazin: does not consider circumstances of collaboration, of genres and formulas

• Pauline Kael: stereotyping, narcissistic male fantasies, ignoring cultural determinants,

3. authorship as a sociology of production

• creation of film requires creativity and ingenuity as well as efficiency and routine work patterns → artists as workers, collaborative processes, work teams

• studying the working arrangements and hierarchies of individuals within firms and society

• structural-functional (liberal) approach: socialization to norms and values of the industry

• critical (Marxist) approach: modes of production, division of labor, hierarchies of power by which the mode extracts surplus value from workers → exploitation, alienation, but also resistance

• strategy: to shift authorship to another worker in the system (to producer, scriptwriter), firms: sources of innovation (product differentiation)

• criticism: workers still as subjects with coherency and free agency• examples: J. Staiger (on Hollywood management system and its division of

labot), Robert L. Carringer: The Making of „Citizen Kane“

4. authorship as signature (auteur structuralism)

• follows from the insistence of the politique on thematic consistency and wholeness as a mark of the auteur’s signature.

• moves away from agency for an individual within a mode of production• structural anthropology: director´s oeuvre as a myth (personal myth)• recurrence of authorship traits through various films as determined by historical

contexts• repetition = unconscious because of the place of the individual within historical

structures (cultural, social, political)• Peter Wollen: director making the same narrative over and over, with variations

→ director has „preoccupations“ (hl. myšlenky, zaujetí), script affects those preoccupations as a „catalyst“

• Wollen’s famous distinction between ‘Fuller or Hawks or Hitchcock, the directors’ and ‘“Fuller” or “Hawks” or “Hitchcock”, the structures named after them’

• director as structure (created by the critical act) vs. director as abiographical individual

5. authorship as reading strategy

• reader produces a representation of the author and uses it as a reading strategy

• authors = viewers´ fictional constructions participating in viewers´ interpretation of films

• reception studies → influence of Roland Barthes´ „The Death of the Author“: reader replacing the author

6. authorship as site of discourse• author = effect of the text, one of several textual subcodes to be decoded

→ directorial subcode interacting with other subcodes• author = a poststructuralist subject → a historically constituted subject

that is a locus of social, psychological, and cultural discourses and practices

• author further devoid of agency, knowing intention, coherence, continuity and, potentially, of significance

• Foucault: discourse can exist without agency → author = a tablet through which culture writes its historical discourses

• Barthes: text as a fragtmented tissue of quotations → author: mixing writings, not expressing himself

• strategy: what subject positions are available in the text?• examples: Stephen Heath, Paul Willeman

Roland Barthes: „Smrt autora“ (1968)

• Reacting against an interpretative criticism which seeks in the personality of the author the truth of the fiction and the guarantee of the interpretation

• The tyranny of the author is attributed to an ‘ordinary culture’, hungry for the biographical and psychological background which fleshes out the ‘image of literature’, and to a tradition of criticism which finds in Baudelaire’s work ‘the failure of Baudelaire the man’, in Van Gogh’s ‘his madness’

• The author does not precede the text, but is ‘born simultaneously’ with it. He or she does not stand behind the text as its truth, authorizing a correct reading, but is written in the text, identical with the writing

• Without the author as the ultimate guarantee, the analysis is never final and complete, but remains partial.

7. authorship as technique of the self

• feminism, identity politics, queer theory → re-theorization of agency within poststructuralist theory, to rescue the expression of the self as a viable act, significant for political action, i.e. resistance

• authoring = repetitive assertion of „self-as-expresser“ through culturally and socially laden discourses of authoring → individuals author by duplicating recipes and excersises of authorship

• authorship as a mode of self-fashioning (applying Michel Foucault, Judith Butler) → by conceptualizing authoring as a technique of the self, as a citational practice, an individual person "authors" by duplicating recipes and exercises of authorship within a cultural and institutional context that understands such acts as agency and repetition of such acts as signs of individuality

• a directorial choice is performative only as it is given that directors may make a choice → firms hire directors to make these choices, and the division of labor places them into a work structure with specific authority to make authoring statements

• contingencies of agency and cultural conceptions of what constitutes making one's self into an author → what performatives might work for authoring to happen in a historical moment?

• granting limited agency through speech acts which do have effects of producing statements our culture recognizes as authorship → potential political efficacy for minorities struggling for expression as subjects → minority authorship

• agency as rearticulatory practice, immanent to power (not external to power) → rebellious authorship = particular kind of citation asserting agency against the normative

• performative tactics (x strategies) that researchers have ascribed to minority authors include: 1. creation of alter egos, 2. silence, 3. repetition: from mimicry to parody or camp, 4. recombination, 5. inversion, 6. accentuation

• = citational practices that have an outcome of differing from dominant expressions

research prospects and challenges:Denise Mann, „It´s not TV, It´s Brand Management TV: The Collective Author(s) of the Lost Franchise“ (2009)• today´s post-network, 2.0 TV (convergent, conglomerated, globalized,

interactive): high-concept, high-profile, multi-platform „TV blockbusters“→ „transmedia franchises“: mobilize many ancillary revenue streams, engender merchandising opportunities, and spawn a multitude of spin-offs (digital content, promotions on the web, new participatory platforms like ARG – Alternate Reality Game, blogs, podcasts, fan conventions, webisodes, mobisodes)

• expanded role of showrunners (= writer-producers) → „brand managers“→ steering global, corporate TV empires like Heroes or Lost (Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof), navigating „the mothership“

• transmedia TV in the age of internet altered the practices of collective „authorship“ (though industry discourses publically adhere to the singular auteur paradigm): corporate fabrication, story construction coming out of a corporate ethos inherent in creating and selling a multiplatform TV brand (story/business model: „Gillian meets X-Files“)

• traditional TV author (showrunner/head writer): a single person focused on running writers´ room and overseeing postproduction, an independent-minded showrunners at odds with the network´s corporate agenda

• x today : showrunners (= „six pack“ of (co)executive producers/co-creators) also oversee promotional 2.0 content and other platforms related to the story and characters → multitasking within a highly bureaucratized environment (J. J. Abrams: launching and overseeing several franchises at once)

• plus: an army of production personnel in networks, studios, talent agencies, advertising agencies, freelance production companies, etc.

• despite this: industry discourse paradoxically adheres to the humanist-modernist concept of „singular voice“ of author(s) (for Lost: Abrams, Lindelof, Cuse) → a hierarchy simplifying issues of credit and payment set by WGA + publicity reinforcing the image of the TV author (e.g. D. Lynch) + symptoms of workplace struggles among divergent members of the production community (fears of overstepping one´s place within the rigid workplace hierarchy)

• auteurism infiltrates and permeates the production community: writers-producers of primetime series holding a mysteriously powerful and revered place within the organizational hierarchy

industrial authorship (John Caldwell: Production Culture, 2008)

• collective (writers´room → „cumulative pitching“)• contested• institutional (house style, rationalization of writing, „giving notes“)• producer vs. director, pre-production vs. production• management / creative (showrunners)• rituals of appropriating and manifesting authorship• authorship as branding and brand management• authorship/ownership → intellectual rights as corporate property rights• systematic idea theft• credits and awards• repurposing content (internet) → residuals• cultural remixing

movie clip: auteurism and Hollywood

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJf0cLrumY4&NR=1

Lekce 5-8: Modes of production

Modes of production Janet Staiger: The Hollywood Mode of Production. In: David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson: The

Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (1985)

• Hollywood as a mode of film practice: narrative and stylistic norms (= collective style) + mode of production (= industrial conditions) → „an integral system, including persons and groups but also rules, films, machinery, documents, institutions, work processes, and theoretical concepts“

goal of the analysis: 1. to link the history of style (and technology) to the history of industry, to

understand their mutual influencing and reinforcing: a) mode of production as a condition of resemblance among films (a historically defined group style), creating, shaping and supporting stylistic norms → the mode of production leaves structural marks in films; b) at the same time: stylistic aims shape the mode of production

2. to understand Hollywood filmmaking (1917-1960) as a unified mode of film practice = to understand the conditions of the existence of this practice and their changes: what and why is changing (changes in technology, stylistic norms and industrial conditions) and what remains constant

• how the capitalist system of production changed over time → 6 kinds of management structures which emerged with developments in a) division of labor, standardization of product for efficient and economic mass production, simultaneous differentiation of product to compete for consumers´ attention, and, b) ideological/signifying practices

• the dominant mode of production was not the cheapest one (!) → stylistic and ideological practices proved to be more important determinants of the mode than economic ones

• changes in the mode of production → attributed to its conditions of existence: a) economic, b) ideological/signifying practices → standards of systems of representation established by industry discourses: classical style → primacy of narrative, „realism“, causal coherence, continuity, spectacle, stars, genres (→ they influenced the emphasis on certain job tasks or even made studios to create new jobs: research staff in mid 1910s, continuity clerk in late 1910s)

• material nature of practices and the ways how they were distributed: institutions+discourses formalizing and spreading the practices→ guilds and unions, advertising, handbooks

mode of production – a basic definition

• m.o.p. = set of production practices (x industry as the economic structure and conduct of companies)

• 3 mutually influencing elements: 1. labor force (workers as certain work functions, their hierarchy and structure of control, interrelation of management and labor), 2. means of production (physical means, technology implying certain techniques), 3. financing (capital, ownership which can differ from management)

• factory mode of production: 2 features:1. mass production → interchangeability (of parts), standardization

(uniformity, quality), assembly (detailed division of labor: work processes broken into discrete segments; serial manufacture: connected phases of development, craftsmen collectively and serially producing a commodity, dependent on one another → different from the assembly line)

2. detailed division of labor → conception separated from execution of the work → managers from workers

division of the work• increasing subdivision of the initial work functions and order (example:

cameraman → DOP, assistants, laboratory technicians, continuity person)• causes: economic (increased production rate, technological complexities),

ideological/signifying practices (demands for certain stylistic qualities)

management systems2 modes:1. social division of labor: workers still know and perform an integral series

of tasks, from conceiving to completing (early cinema: „cameraman“ system)

2. detailed division of labor: workers lose the overall knowledge of the craft → alienation; faster and more predictable product output, but never to the level of assembly line (dominant after 1906, with narrative films) → 5 systems: director (1907-1909), director-unit (1909-1914), central producer (1914-1931), package-unit (started in the early 1940s, dominant 1955-today)

add 2.: 2 levels of management: a) strategic management: long-range decisions directly affecting the economic operation of a capital (investment decisions, financial calculations) → highest power, but low knowledge of the lower-level work processes and technology; b) tactical or technical management (subordinate, middle management): day-to-day planning, co-ordinating, supervising, still partly involved in execution (decisions about types of production process, level of production, integration of the phases of production, maintenance of performance, etc.)

script• early 1910s: script as a blueprint for the efficient film production, from

which all the work was organized, meeting certain standards of quality (defined by the industry´s discourse)

• multiple-reel narrative film → precise pre-shooting planning necessary

standardization and differentiation• explain the uniformity and stability of production and stylistic practices

throughout the industrystandardization: 2 coexisting meanings:a) regularity, uniformity (in terminology, dimensions, simplification in types,

sizes, grades, rules of practice, product specifications, testing quality, rating),

b) criterion, norm, excellence • certain tolerance permitted• repetition of characteristics considered desirable in the film: narrative

dominance and clarity, verisimilitude, continuity, stars, spectacle• industrial mechanisms facilitating standardization: advertising, industrial

interest groups, adjacent institution → dispersing standards (stylistic, technological, business) via ads, writers' or cinematographers ' guilds, how-to books, trade press, critics

• standards originally adapted from other media, but in the late 1910s: systematic techniques to spreading them → condition for uniformity

differentiation• = practices in which firm stresses how its goods are different• changing products, search for novelty: also economic necessity →

difference between products as a competitive method, marketing advantage: encouraging repeated consumption, more control over the price (appearance of monopoly), enabling product cycles

• that´s why filmmaking never achieved the assembly-line uniformity prevalent in other industries

• trade press, advertising, guilds, unions: stability based on small changes in the norm: tensions between standardization and differentiation, „formula“ and „showmanship“ →

a) encouraging and rewarding the innovative worker: industry encouraged innovations, but they should support or at least not interfere with the controlling standard, example: German-inspired spectacular camera techniques of the mid 1920s : accepted if support the story → generally: changes justified as improvements of standards (of verisimilitude, narrative coherence, continuity, etc.): authorial touches (without displaying „the hand of a worker“), technological novelties differentiating products („showmanship“)

b) cyclical innovation of styles and genres: small innovation: successful only when it becomes a new standard → cycles, series, repetition of innovations; techniques periodically recovered and recombined within more particular genres and styles (progress illusory)

the cameraman system (1896-1907)

• social division of labor: unified craft situation → cameramen (W.K.L. Dickson, Edwin S. Porter) performing all the production tasks from selecting the subject matter and staging the scene to photographing it and editing.

• the artisan-craftsman (or a small group) knows the entire work process → conception + creation unified

• not predictable, rapid and inexpensive enough, as the growing industry needed after 1906

the director system (1907-1909)• more rapid, predictable, regular, centralized, mass-produced• fictional narratives as a dominant output → could be made in a central

location and on a predictable (predictable cost per foot), mass basis, with routine assembly processes → produced in a centralized studio-factory and released on regular (weekly) basis

• first detailed division of labor (modelled on legitimate theater)• cost advantages of dividing labor: only the most skilled workers get high

salaries• separation of conception from execution: one person staged action

(conception), another photographed it (execution)• director: most of the major + over financing, script development and

personnel including cameraman (= producer´s tasks)• scripts: as just an „outline“ of the narrative• less location shooting• examples: D. W. Griffith, Sidney Olcott

the director-unit system (1909-1914)• necessitated by increase in production, regularity of output → need to

hire more directors/producers → fully integrated, predictable sets of employees

• winter weather: sending units to better climates from NYC and Chicago• units for location shooting• expanding stage areas: simultanous filming (multiple units within a studio)• further subdivision of labor and separation of knowledge and functions:

work functions divided into departments, headed by technical specialists (= middle-level, tactical managers) x upper-level strategic management: long-term decisions about financing, type of products, hiring of middle-level managers, assessing of market conditions and trends

• in such a hierarchy: information generalized as it moved up the hierarchy• wage payment based on fast work and deadlines, most workers? straight

execution, no design contribution• = departmentalization, specialization, structural hierarchy• physical arrangement of the studio-factory → cooperation between

departments: logical processes from room to room, without waste of time, enabling simultaneous shooting

• from outdoor stages to glass studios with electrical lights by 1916• decrease of location shooting• change in script writing: discontinuity shooting → breaking story into

shots to be taken in 1 setting• script as a basis for quality standard of continuous, clear, logical, realistic

narrative• script → checking the standard length (1 reel: 1.000 foot, 300 m)• script → blueprint for filming, ensuring the standard of continuous action

will be met

the central producer system (1914-1931)• detailed continuity script to plan and budget entire film shot by shot → a shift

to scientific management• causes: standards of the classical Hollywood style and the feature length

(„multi-reeler“: 75 min. and more) required planning and budget control• reasons for lengthening (by 1916: dominated the market): adaptations of

famous literary works as new quality products, movie theaters: increase in prices and runs, copyrights (requirement to faithfully reproduce stories)

• special advertising focusing on 1 story, one individual, different film (before: cheap entertainment)

• films distributed as individual products (before: as reels): higher prices• „central producer“: modern manager of a well-organized, mass production

system, necessary to produce the quality multiple-reel films• scientific management: planning and controlling all decisions and steps in the

work process so that any waste can be eliminated → written instructions for each job, hierarchy

• producer´s office in the center of the studio → defining duties and responsibilities for all the departments

• planning , budgeting , profit estimates on the basis of a carefully prepared script, detailed sketches for all sets

• script: a blueprint detailing shot-by-shot breakdown of the film → functioned as a paper record to coordinate shooting out of order, large number of workers at various places while achieving clear, verisimilar and continuous representation of causal logic, time and space

• improved regularity, speeed, use of materials, uniformity and quality of the product

• changes in management organization: functions of the producer and director split: director lost the position of a unit head → restricted to shooting (directing actors and crew), still approving the script, casting, sets, wardrobe, end editing, but his decisions subjected to producer´s approval ; much actual creation done by departmental experts → director as a head of another department, the producer chose him as he chose a writer or a designer

• work of the producer split further: the producer took over the management of the pre- and post-shooting work for all the films in the studio, while the new manager of the production department coordinated the studio facility´s planning, budgeting and accounting.

• producers = new kind of top managers, responsible for the whole output: Thomas Ince, Irving Thalberg

• centralization: end of units, central scenario department supplied all scripts, those were distributed to directors specialized in a given genre

• studio-wide pool of actors• central property department• manuals for work regulations and responsibilities • product quality control assigned to management, not individual workers

→ superiors changing work of subordinates (famous lost case of Chaplin vs. Essanay, 1916 for changing his film Charlie Chaplin´s Burlesque on Carmen) → a firm, not employee controls the product, unless the contract stipulates otherwise → managers at the top, as agents of the firm, with varying degree of interest in individual parts of production; a talent with prestige could demand a final control of a cut, etc. (only few)

• classical continuous style → techniques of achieving this continuity: matching action, maintaining direction, crosscutting → greater demands on the memory of the production mode: paper plans and records, more elaborate scripts

• „continuity script“: list of titles, cast, 1-page synopsis, script itself: listing all exterior and interior sites along with their shot numbers, intertitles, technical instructions → a blueprint for workers

the division and order of production under the central producer system

• physical plant of the studio: city within a city• reasons for more and more detailed subdivision of labor: a) economic:

expertise, speed, efficiency, b) standards of quality films → standards of quality caused by economic + ideological/signifying practices, not vice versa

• new specialized jobs (research cepartment, continuity clerk) → caused by new design and quality standards (greater attention to continuity, narrative clarity, spectacle, more complicated), competitive hiring of experts from outside the film (theater, painting, architecture, fashion design, music) who separated specialized roles even further, technological innovation (experts on special effects)

• the causal links between industry and style: economic and signifying practices (need for mass production + new standards of quality: continuity, verisimilitude , narrative clarity, spectacle) → changed production practices: new work division and subdivision (planning, continuity script, accounting, scientific management), and professions (assistants, specialty staff: art directors, costumers, researchers, continuity clerks, continuity writers, planning department, casting, FX, etc.) → conditions for a group style

the conception of the production• management: separated from ownership + sectioned to capital direction (president

and board members in NYC) /technical management (producers in Hollywood) • → yearly budget meetings in NYC: overall budget for the next season, based on

market analysis (opinions of exhibitors, distributors), precise number of films, casting, stories, 2-3 cost levels (specials for roadshows, programs to fill commitments to the exhibitors, after 1930: B-films for the second spot in double-features), strategy (spread the risk across many films or to count on fewer and more expensive), after the meeting: implement the directives in LA

• production department: assisting the producer with planning, day-to-day management, cost estimates, records, paying workers by time (chief expense became time → 70-80 % salaries and wages), script breakdown (→ assistant director: director´s liason with people on the set and in the production office, routine organizational work: checking locations, sets and costumes, hiring extras, daily planning)

• new accounting procedures introducing greater pressure to control shooting: charging as much as possible for individual films, the rest: overhead, dividing it by feet of exposed material → discouraged re-takes, improvisation, re-arranging of the script on the set, long takes

• encouraged re-cycling of sets and costumes• focus on fast set construction (x real locations) → efficient use of limited

space• elaborate daily routine reporting system: keeping track of all the

operations, tracing efficiency and cost of every stage of production

pre-shooting work• standardized script writing: from 1911: story reading/writing departments,

mid 1920s: agents for non-studio materials, since early 1910s with multiple-reelers: technical experts for translating a story into continuity script, only then giving it to directors

• team writing: subdivision of labor (stories, gags, re-writing, title and subtitle draughtsmen) + scripts travelled througg several writers or group of writers

• intermediary step between the original story and the final script: treatment → special needs of the studio: notes of decision-makers, new versions, trial cosntruction without expensive writing process

• research department (mid 1910s): details of accuracy, libraries, clippings• art direction: art director/property manager, from painted backdrops to

increasingly comples 3D sets, planning: diagrams of sets with camera set-ups• casting: files on character types, casting director: methods to nclassify actors

(indexing), while director chose only leads• make-up: until mid 1920s: responsibility of indiv. actors, then: make-up depts• costuming: 1915: fashion designers for leading female roles

shooting• subdivision: mid 1910s: AD (seldom became directors → too

valuable), 2nd cameraman, around 1915: cameramen begun purchasing their own equipment (→ invention of accessories), studios bought them again after coming of sound

• rehearsals (after 1908)• order of shooting: exteriors first, big sets in the end,

dangerous scenes last• multiple-camera shooting: saving money: re-use, protection

against re-takes, European negative, different POVs• continuity clerk: taking notes for editors on the set (late

1910s) → needed for continuity editing, matching of action, lighting of stars, accuracy of mise-en-scene

post-production

• early 1910s: cutters: took over parts of director´s responsibilities: rough cut following the continuity script, later also continuity clerk´s notes, while director still doing the final cut

• late 1910s: cutters became „film editors“: technical experts who refined the film the rough cut to the final cut

• around 1914: previews → revisions: rewrites, retakes

movie clip

• Jak se dělá film (Karel Melíšek, Jaroslav Mottl, 1936)

• 1:16

Producer-Unit System (1931-1955)• a move away from the strong central producer toward greater

specialization in the upper management: a group of managers, each supervising 6-8 films/year, concentrating on a particular type of films (x central-producer 1914-1931: 50 f./year → example of the central producer: Irving Thalberg: had 10 specialized associate supervisors)

• „unit production“: a number of (anonymous) producers will each make one film at a time, following it through to the completion → saving overhead and allowing for greater individual creativity of directors than the strict factory-like central system, producer having closer control over day-to-day production

• but: this was not decentralization or multi-divisional production → the studios retained central control and planning

• ideology of individual creativity + tendency to typecasting and increasing specialization: certain producers for certain categories, new departments and positions → in scriptwiting, pre-shooting production, cinematography, make-up, market research

• example of further specialization: story acquisition → worldwide coverage; scouts gaining access to manuscripts; reading staff preparing dozens of synopsis (10-75 pages) analyzed by editorial staff who wrote summaries (1 page); extensive files with cross-checking by plot structure, comic or tragic elements, etc., covered almost everything published; story conferences (discussions of the possiblities of the stories before treatments were written)

• sound → dialogue as a new element in the continuity script → script format needed to be adapted: „master scene“ form combining the theatrical and pre-sound script formats

• research library for music, searching for copyright sources• late 1930s: loans of actors more common, agents started functioning as

producers (setting up contracts, personal representatives managing a client´s career, packaging sets of actors for accross media) → slowly moving into production activities

• early 1930s: more formal methods of market research: testing rough cuts, titles, scripts, cast → testing useful to determine rential fees for actors

• mid 1930s: „production designer“ (William Cameron Menzies) → art direction + sketching camera set-ups, involvement in directing → control over the look of the film

all the studios: standard structures and practices

• those stayed the same during central producer and producer-unit system, uniform across the industry → because of the industrial discourse emphasizing efficient practices, standardization of the product and because of the unionization reinforcing a uniform subdivision of labor → explains the stylistic similarities between films made in the 1930s and 1940s in different studios

• smaller deviations → innovations that become standard → controlled stylistic change

• small variations in allocation of effective decision-making to work positions → occured at the point of upper-level management structures (beyond that: just standard procedures) → both between and within individual studios (→ more attention to more expensive productions x lower-cost A: quickly produced, B-product: hardly supervised at all by the first-string managers)

• Did management structures influence standard work practices and stylistic techniques? Zanuck (at 20th-Fox): wanted medium shots and plenty of close-ups to play with them in editing (x long takes). WB: many angles so that there would be a choice (x cutting with camera) → desire of management for control of the film´s look and sound

• = favoring certain alternatives within the classical paradigm to sustain the classical style

• criteria of quality: guiding individual decisions, no matter what position or which worker

• serial manufacture if a standardized product → collaboration of a group of craftsmen, collaborative work situation → many workers felt positive about it

The Package-Unit System (1955-)• after WW2: end of mass production and the diffusion of independent

production → the production sector made fewer films, chiefly through independents

• the industrial structure ≠ the mode of production → definition of commercial independent production: not based on its organization of production (can use any of the systems)

• „package-unit system“: a new method of organizing labor• package: a producer organizes a project: secures financing and combines

workers + means of production (narrative „property“, equipment, physical sites of production) → transitory combination, film-by-film arrangement (x producer-unit system: a producer commited to make 6-8 films per year)

• from firm to film → disappearance of the self-contained studio; employment: based on a film, not on a firm; the entire industry becomes the pool for labor and materials

• production unit: leases components of a project (means of production) for a project from support firms

what continues from the previous systems

• each new system retained much of its predecessor´s organization (despite cyclical development from looser control of deadlines and hierarchy to more rigid and back)

• directors of capital assigned control of production to a powerful worker: cameraman, director, producer, star

• still an instance of detailed division of labor• labor pool still unionized → labor structure: subdivision of work and

management hierarchy• craft specialization continued to increase• professional associations: standardizing mechanisms, easing the

introduction of new equipment and securing interchangeability of the parts and technicians

• the tension between standardization and differentiation → what did it mean for workers: a) a standard of making a quality film, b) the encouragement to innovate and redefine the standard

what changed:• part of the postwar industrial shift: instead of the mass production of

many films by a few manufacturers: the specialized production of a few films by many independents

• external economic and social causes: decreased attendance and income losses, demographical changes, advent of TV, consent decree (reduction of blind selling and block booking) , divorcement of exhibition from distribution, growth of talent´s bargaining power

• resulting new practices: shift to independent deals and packages → reduced fixed costs, flexible limited output (with no regular-release schedules), concentration on fewer big-budget films and elimination of B-movies, location shooting and runaway production, longer runs, new distribution practices (targeting population segments), intensified need to differentiate the product (innovations, story, stars, directors → branding by talent names, not studio names which further increased certain laborers´power)

• majors: financiers and distributors• increased role of talent agencies: packaging casting + material (MCA:

bought Universal in 1959)• advantages of one-time packages: reduced fixed costs, flexibility, aiming

films at 1st-run theaters only• foreign investment and runaway production → foreign laborers (on

middle and lower level) → altered standard US production practices by foreign production cultures: number of crews, labor responsibilities, general work conditions → but: these variations were only on location shooting, did not change Hollywood practices

• paying some workers by profit-shares rather than time → middle and upper levels: attractive only for the most powerful workers: stars, directors, sometimes writers → this encouraged more flexible and cooperative pre-shooting planning with less strict division of certain labor functions and more flexibility relating deadlines (profit-sharing workers controlling their own time)

• combining creative and management functions: in certain parts of the middle- and upper-level management (producing, writing, directing, acting): individuals combining positions: writer-director (Billy Wilder for Sunset Boulevard, 1950), producer-director (Stanley Kramer for The Defiant Ones, 1958), star-director-producer (John Wayne for The Alamo, 1960)

• they had to take over some business functions and spent a lot of time negotiating new deals

• but: the old system unchanged in other departments and on lower levels of labor hierarchy (union contracts → continuance of the detailed division of labor)

conclusions: the historical logics of the Hollywood mode of production

• it changed continually as the conditions of its existence changed: the economic and ideological/signifying practices → conceptions of efficiency and quality developed the subdivisions of the execution of the work

• economic conditions: new jobs (AD, unit managers, production department workers)

• narrative coherence and clarity → movement of star personalities to the foreground and their directors toward the top of the management pyramid

• verisimilitude → researchers, art directors, specialized set-construction crews, composite photography experts

• continuity techniques → continuity writers, continuity clerks, expert editors, make-up artists

• spectacle → technological innovations• reasons for adopting subdivisions of work: a) to increase output and insure

predictable quality, b) imitating methods of advanced capitalism in related work areas, c) to achieve a particular look and sound, c) technological change , d) unionization

the classical style and the mode of production

• classical style (narrative logics to control space and time) → reinforces both economic practices (e.g. cost efficiency) and ideological/stylistic practices (e.g. the standard of the quality film)

• stylistic norms influence the directions and functions of technological changes (how new technology is introduced and used)

• tensions of standardization and differentiation, the increase of specialization, and the tendency toward a controlled uniformity → dependent on the norms of the classical style

• economics alone doesn´t explain the mode of production: films could be made more cheaply without conventions of narrative construction, spectacle, verisimilitude, continuity, etc.

contemporary film production• still retains the same mode of production and classical style, despite minor

changes in trade practices (four-walling /renting a movie theater for a period of time and receiving all of the box office/, platforming, saturation booking, platforming, extensive market analysis, year-round biding, recutting and re-releasing)

• conglomerate structure → doesn´t change the mode of production• strategic management at the level of conglomerate ownership doesn´t

influence tactical management in individual branches• majors as financiers and distributors → allowing individual package units to

operate on their own once a deal is set• „clout“: more power of the worker´s perceived value (based on the grosses of

his last film) to determine his share of the next project → some top talent even decide whether or not a project is financed

• talent agencies continue as producers, putting together packages• still detailed DOL, classical quality standards, script as blueprint,

work/management, conservative use of technological innovations in the name of classical norms and efficiency

contemporary style: conservatism, classical norms continue to dominate

• stylistic assimilation: the „old“ Hollywood selectively incorporating and refunctionalizing devices from international art cinema and merges them with classical norms → looser causal links, motivation by realism and authorial expressivity, ambivalent characters, explorations of pychological states,...

• absorbing art-film techniques and taming their disruptiveness within a coherent genre frameworks and expectations and boundaries of classical style

Aplikace Staigerové na čs. film

Co to byla socialistická dramaturgie

• Plánování produkce celého studia nebo dokonce národní kinematografie na základě politické a kulturní agendy KSČ (tematické plány, dramaturgické plány, výrobní plány částečné a souhrnné).

• Dozor, posuzování a schvalování práce jednotlivých skupin v rámci studií.

• Dramaturgická praxe těchto skupin (literární příprava, etc.)

modus státní filmové výroby: systém dramaturgických jednotek• Zestátnění a vznik výrobních skupin na půdorysu protektorátních výroben

(1945–1947)• První zásah do profesní hierarchie: umělečtí šéfové místo šéfů

produkčních (1947–1948)• Tvůrčí kolektivy: odloučení dramaturgie od realizace (1948–1951)• Kolektivní vedení: vrcholná centralizace (1951–1954)• Tvůrčí skupiny: podmínečná decentralizace a liberalizace (1954–1959)• Banská Bystrica, oficiální zavedení přímé kontroly ÚV KSČ a historický

význam tvůrčích skupin (1959–1962)• Tvůrčí skupiny jako kvazi-nezávislá producentská centra (1963-1969)• Dramaturgické skupiny opět odloučeny od výroby (1970-)

praxe skupin v nejširším rozsahu1. navrhují dílčí dramaturgický plán2. vybírají náměty v reakci na centrální tematické nebo

dramaturgické plány3. vybírají scenáristu4. připomínky, posudky, schvalování povídek, synopsí a scénářů5. zapracovávání připomínek horních pater dramaturgie a řízení,

včetně nejvyšší politické moci a cenzury6. výběr režiséra a hlavních herců7. dohled nad celým procesem realizace, včetně dekorací, denních

prací a sestřihů8. zapracování připomínek ke konečnému sestřihu a jeho úpravy9. dohled nad premiérovým a festivalovým uvedením10. širší strategie: pěstování vlastního profilu a autorské stáje → typ

brandingu

the structure of dramaturgy

ÚV KSČ

prezident státu a další vlivní jednotlivci

ředitel státního filmu a studií

státní cenzura

external influences:

dramaturgické skupiny

• složeny z uměleckého šéfa nebo hlavního dramaturga a produkčního šéfa (v některých obdobích), 3-5 dramaturgů a lektorů

• proměnlivá míra kontroly nad realizací (výběr tvůrčích pracovníků, casting, kontrola denních prací, hrubého a čistého sestřihu, atd.)

• proměnlivá míra autonomie vůči horním patrům hierarchie řízení filmu, státní dramaturgii, ÚV KSČ

vývojové proměny základních dramaturgických jednotek

• 2-4 „výrobních skupin“ (1945–1948)• 8-11 „tvůrčích kolektivů“ (1948–1951)• jedno „kolektivní vedení“ (1951-1954)• 4-6 „tvůrčích skupin“ (1954–1970)• 6 „dramaturgických skupin“ (1970-1977), na něž

dohlížel ústřední dramaturg s posílenými pravomocemi

• 6 „dramaturgicko-výrobních skupin“ (1978-1983)• 6 „dramaturgických skupin“ (1983-1990)

Geografie tvůrčí práce

ve filmu:

A: Barrandov B: centrum

Prahy (vzdálenost: cca 10 km)

Barrandovské ateliéry

(dostavěny 1932, arch. Max Urban)

Jan Werich (1905-1980)

Ze scenáristické profese se mělo stát zaměstnání s pravidelnou docházkou, ověřovanou píchacími

hodinami. Jan Werich, který se stal vedoucím jedné tvůrčí

skupiny [správně: kolektivu], to komentoval po svém: „Výkaz

práce - Ráno jsem přišel… Píchnul jsem, sedl jsem si a

začal jsem přemýšlet… Nic mě nenapadlo… Po obědě jsem dostal nápad a začal jsem

psát… Večer se mi to zdálo blbý, tak jsem to škrtnul… Píchl

jsem a šel jsem domů…” (rozhovor s J. Krejčíkem)

„mazáci“ versus

„diletanti“:

filmové studio jako továrna,

dramaturgie jako „stroj na scénáře“

(foto z knihy, která popisuje filmaře

jako součást pracující třídy)

Dramaturgie dnes?• the decline of film dramaturgy identified as the main cause of poor scripts and script-development practices

• dramaturgical units dissolved, the practice largely moved to public television which became the major (co-)producer of feature films

• attempts to revive the „collective art of dramaturgy“→ “MIDPOINT: Central European Script Center” http://midpoint-center.eu

conclusions: dramaturgical-unit system of the socialist mode of film

production

1. the cultural interface between the Party and the actual filmmaking practice, as well as between the broader cultural-political trends and filmmaking

2. the locus of political struggle to transform the production culture, change generations, and implement the ideological and aesthetic directives top-down

3. at the same time: the sites of collaborative authorship sheltering script development from the direct commercial or political pressures

4. semi-independent producers in the state system where there are no actual producers (the only producer is ultimately the state itself)

5. dramaturgs as tactical managers

klipy• Banksy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo

Lekce zrušená: Filmové studio jako místo, podnik, pracovní svět

• samostudium: studijní materiály v IS• Ben Goldsmith• Edward Epstein

• Allen Scott: economic geography of the cultural economy• space economy of modern capitalism: localized articulations of cultural-

products industries – industrial clusters scattered around the globe• film studios after WW2: many of the activities previously carried on in-

house were steadily externalized, many small and medium-sized firms linked together in flexible vertically disintegrated production networks; many types of workers eliminated from permanent studio payrolls and reemployed in smaller firms

• project-oriented mode of production: “flexible specialization”, “post-Fordism”, or the more neutral “new creative economy”

• the most successful of cultural-products industries concentrated in cosmopolitan cities with extended global influence

• clustering of firms: economies of agglomeration +localized increasing returns effects: economizing on spatial interlinkages, concentrated labor markets, learning effects, information flows; result: complex institutional arrangements, social conventions, innovative potential, magnet for aspiring neophytes (= competitive advantage).

• spatial system of production, work, social life: permeated with symbolical assets deriving from historical place-specific social traditions, mental associations and icons, which will be embedded in goods and services produced there; this is important for authenticating and differentiating of cultural products by consumers

• industrial agglomeration: many units of production in one place + strong functional interdependencies and overspill effects (i.e., externalities) linking these units together

• managerial creativity, business experiments• dense, many-sided local labor market• idiosyncratic superstructure of institutions• todayʼs Hollywood production system divides into 2 functional groups: new

Hollywood studios: “system houses”: large-scale production units turning out limited numbers of extremely variable and complex products; they are associated with smaller firms (subsidiaries and independents)

• + independent production companies and service providers, whose sphere of operation doesn’t intersect with that of the majors: flexibly specialized, narrow range of outputs in limited quantities and in ever-changing forms, colonizing different production niches, pushing out organizational boundaries of Hollywood (digital effects sector in the 1980s and 1990s)

• these firms interact with one another and with the majors

media conglomerates• media conglomerates: attempts to internalize the

synergies found on the intersections between different segments of the media and entertainment (and hardware) industries;

• conglomerates = parallel in economic space to industrial clusters in geographic space, i.e. organized economic collective, with the difference that if in the one case the relevant synergies are activated under the umbrella of common ownership, in the other they owe their genesis to geographic proximity.

Goldsmith, Ben and Tom OʼRegan. The Film Studio: Film Production in the Global Economy. Lanham, Md.:

Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

• theory of industrial districts and regional development • Hollywood production complex consists of 4 functional and

organizational features: a) overlapping production networks (nodes: majors, independents, providers of specialized services), b) local labor market (skills, sensibilities, forms of habituation, migration), c) institutional environment, d) regional milieu (traditions, proximity of other industries)

• these features are forming positive externalities, resulting in competitive advantages (increasing returns to scale and scope /i.e. size and diversity/, positive agglomeration economies); they are major elements of an organizational-geographic framework that functions as a hotbed of creativity and innovation for the industry

Lekce 9+10: Produkční kultura

Production Studies → Production Culture(Mayer – Banks – Caldwell /eds./: Production Studies, 2009)

• production as culture(s) → from production of culture to cultures of production → „lived realities of people involved in media production as the subjects for theorizing production as culture“ (Mayer – Banks – Caldwell 2009)

• „looking up and down the food chains of production hierarchies, to understand how people work through professional organizations and informal networks to form communities of shared practices, languages, and cultural understandings of the world“ (Mayer – Banks – Caldwell 2009)

• filmmakers = particular kind of workers • filmmakers and support personnel of all kinds = cultural actors → „they

shape and refashion their identities in the process of making their careers in industries undergoing political transitions and economic reorganizations“

• media production as „creativity within constraints“→ unique from all other forms of production? → the reach of mass media texts, the celebrity of particular professionals, the infiltration of media commodities into daily life, economic resources concentrated in a handful of global cities

disciplinary influences of production studies• integrating cultural studies + political economy• disciplines: cultural studies and cultural anthropology, production-of-

culture theory, sociology of work, organizational studies, cultural and economic geography, political economy of media, cultural economics,...

• methods: participant observation, oral history, textual analysis, grounded theory, lay theory,...

• cultural turn in social sciences and ethnographic turn in the humanities: everyday spaces where people actively make meanings through their consumption habits, active bodies, and ritual activities, in the context of their lived realities; interrelations of culture and power relations

• inspiration by audience studies: interpretative communities as „producers of meaning“, organized along fault lines of class, gender, race, etc.; scholars reflecting on their own position toward the communities they analyze → studying media workers as interpretative communities and contexts within which they produce meanings

• difference from audience studies: studying making of meaning not in terms of the politics of pleasure (consumption), but political economy of labor, markets, and policy → e.g. uncertainties, deskilling , outsourcing and self-exploitation of media workers

sources and data• empirical data: a) on routines, rituals of production processes, b) on

economic and political forces shaping roles, technologies, and the distribution of resources according to cultural and demographic differences

• sources: field research notes, semi-structured interviews, „behind-the-scenes“, making-ofs, demos, (auto)biographies, publicity, manuals, artifacts (technological equipment) + fiction films

• interchange between producer and scholar: problem of gaining access to closely garded communities

roots of media production studiesLeo Rosten: Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (1941)• Rosten: Chicago School tradition of positivistic sociology, but also attempted to

become screenwriter himself → this gave him an insider access to Hollywood community

• 2-year grant to study Hollywood (with a group of assistants) → Hollywood of the late 1930s as a social system (x geographical place) characterized by status relationships, hierarchies, conflicts: like other social systems save for the popular fascination

• primary focus on elites: on social and economic power, on contradictions between creativity and commerce

• „I wanted to analyze the community that makes movies for the world the way an anthropologist might study the Maori.“ (Rosten´s memoires)

• empirical data: both hard and soft: interviews, questionnaires (directors, actors, screenwriters, producers), government statistics, casual observation of media elites,...

• rather than documenting interactions with media producers: generalized meditations on movies, celebrity, etc., written in a journalistic prose

• connections between political economy of media production (management-labor relations, limiting pressures from the government and outside interest groups, contradictions between creativity and commerce) and sociology of media producers (not only occupational roles, but also social and relational dynamics of Hollywood´s social scene)

• critical analysis of the film production, obscured to the public by the celebrity culture, rags-to-riches stories

• Hollywood movie makers as regular workers, but: symbolic product shadows the real processes of capital accumulation: workers anonymous, „in the shadow“ of the product

• relationships between workers´ material conditions and their subjectivities• content + production: economic and social conditions of production

influence the way how movies perpetuate damaging social stereotypes• macrosocial perspective → Hollywood of the late 1930s was young (62%

under 30, 30% between 30 and 40), not so well paid as expected (except for a small core elite) → H. as a mecca for eager young creatives, but satisfying only small numbers

• 3 concentric circles of Hollywood : 1) all the 30 thousand movie workers, 2) the „movie colony“ (producers, actors, directors, writers), 3) the movie elite (250 persons earning 75 000 USD or more a year) → Rosen´s focus: the movie colony and the elite and their social dynamics as constituted outside of the boundaries of the workplace

• Hollywood elites: on and off the studio lot, their sociodemographics and social habits → a small group dictating terms of business but alsoof social interaction

• a „nervous“ elite: constantly seeking validation for their financially priviledged status from others in the elite, but the elite has no respect for itself, feels inferior, accepts derision from others

• chronic economic uncertainty: volatility of fortune in Hollywood → constant strain, but, at the same time: ignoring economic realities of the business and focussing on the creative side of their work → „self-fascinating quality“ of the environment

• cease to be individuals and become business institutions → the most alienated class: self-objectification: promoting their own celebrity through extravagant spending and highly public personal relationships, unconscious need for anxiety, swinging between euphoria and despair, assessing their value through income and status comparison: worked long hours but still dissatisfied

• Hortense Powdermaker: Hollywood the Dream Factory (1950): ethnography of Hollywood in the late 1940s

• workers motivated by profit + imaginary ownership (credits, authorship)• more attention to lower positions of the labor hierarchies: workers as

property (similar to slaves, prostitutes, servants)• lack of freedom that workers trade for success in the industry → workers

often accept exploitative conditions in exchange for a self-realization through collaboration → collective modes of creative ownership that allowed more control over the production process while embedding the workers deeper in the system driven by alienated labor and profit motives

• team-based production: simultaneously liberate and harness creativity to generate profit

• Todd Gitlin: Inside Prime Time (1983)• 7 months of interviewing 200 prominent television employees, observing

operations of US networks and their role in TV production • the forces that shape creation of TV series and schedules from the top

down: the processes by which executives evaluate content with regard to advertisers and audiences, make programming decisions, negotiate with producers, writers, actors, directors → intersection of many industrial operations (advertising, audience research, program development, scheduling, agent representation) → industrial norms, institutional practices, reflecting prevailing social trends and affecting the programs

• reveals how economic and political forces led the networks to narrow range of content with a consistent idology

• method: Clifford Geertz´s ethnographic „thick description“ of complex processes, practices and players → operations of media industries as ambivalent, contested, unpredictable → not an inevitable outcome of ownership structures and regulatory norms

John T. Caldwell: Production Culture (2008)• industrial reflexivity: a) self-representation , self-reflection of the

industry: „behind-the-scenes“, „authentic inside“ of the industry now serves as onscreen entertainment → marketing dimension, b) expression of lived realities of production communities

• = both corporate macrostrategies + human microstrategies → top-down conglomerate power + human creative resistance on the local level → trade communication + workers´ expression

• production cultures (in plural) → micro-social level: film and TV industries as local cultures and local communities expressing themselves and their self-understandings → production as a cultural text in itself

• interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz: not direct analysis of social groups, but hermeneutics of cultures as texts by „looking over the shoulder“ of of those who produce them as a sort of self-ethnography → Caldwell: „indigenous“ interpretive frameworks of local production cultures

• how collective lay theorizing („lay theories“) is animated in trade stories, tools, artifacts, social behavior

• critical approach: self-reflexive producers not final guarantors of authenticity and meaning → revealing self-interest, promotion, spin, self-censorship (confidentiality agreements)

• trade talk x deep texts: contextualizing direct, explicit explanations of producers by studying deep texts and practices: embedded theories through tools, machines, artifacts, iconographies, working methods, professional rituals and narratives → all of these contain embedded reflections on theoretical questions we know from film studies: What is film? How film works? How the viewer responds? How film reflects or forms culture? → far richer variety of communicative registers and formats to discusss, employ, explain, contest ideas about nature and meaning of film and TV → to collectively examine and understand film

• cultural-industrial method → 4 modes of analysis: 1) textual analysis of trade and worker artifacts; 2) interviews with workers; 3) ethnographic field observation of production sites and professional gatherings; 4) economic/industrial analysis → balancing, cross-checking between these registers

• 6 features of industrial self-theorizing:1. instrumental and inductive: concepts which „work“, providing a logic to

daily working practices and fitting to the long-standing índustrial mode of production → work inductively, from the ground up

2. eclectic: use any solution (any aesthetic tradition, theoretical perspective) providing a tool to overcome some obstacle or a key that fits the film, e.g. editors: versatile and hybrid theorizers, required to render someone else´s vision

3. unintentional, effacing: workers don´t impose their will upon filmed material, the filmed scenes impose their will on workers → workers responding with decisions appropriate to the material, creative work discussed as craft or even physical work, practical problem-solving (especially below-the-line)

4. reductive and proprietary: reducing the complexity of work processes to the „magic“ of artists, hi-tech science masked as artists´ intuition and personal vision

5. pre-emptive, real-time: part of marketing → precedes the product6. commoncensical: hesitate to assert intellectual significance → pragmatic,

middle-level theorizing within the realms of the industry

embedded theory: 3 registers of artifacts and rituals: 1) fully embedded deep texts and rituals: intra-group; cut-off from the

public, circulated within proprietary work worlds, primary function: intra-community (demo tapes, pitch sessions, machine interface designs, equipment iconography, how-to manuals, trade and craft narratives and anecdotes, on-the-set crew pedagogy and work behavior, union and guild workshops, corporate retreats);

2) semi-embedded deep texts and rituals: inter-group; dialogues between companies and associations; typically function to bring generalizing discussion of the nature and meaning of film from one corporate media company to another; cross the boundaries of the local professionals community , reaching to media journalists, advertisers or affiliates, new personnel(electronic press kits, trade shows, trade publications , internship programs, panels on „how to make it in the industry“)

3) publicly disclosed deep texts and rituals: extra-group (making-ofs, DVD extras, studio-supported fan conventions, screening q+as, viral marketing,...)

example for a critical analysis of production culture: trade stories

• functions: rationalization, solidarity-making, career mobility, social pedagogy, self-serving legitimation, marking professional boundaries, negotiating one´s value on the job market, navigating tactics face to face technological change and economic uncertainty

• genres: war stories, against-all-odds allegories, genesis myths, paths-not-taken parables,

• klip: Druhé filmové žně Zlín (1941)

mediální návyky: tipy• InMediaRes: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/• Antenna: http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/• LA Times: Company Town:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/• Henry Jenkin´s blog: http://www.henryjenkins.org/• Jennifer Holt´s blog: http://profholt.blogspot.com/• Alisa Perren´s blog: http://www.themediaindustries.net/• Mark Deuze´s blog: http://deuze.blogspot.com/