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Letterboxd: Digital Database Fever
Skočdopolová, Anna ; Svatoňová, Kateřina (advisor) ; Szczepanik, Petr (referee)
Digital technologies have been able to impact many areas of our lives in a relatively short time. With the advent of the internet and the widespread ownership of personal computers and smartphones, many of our everyday activities have moved into the online world. The nature of much human activity has been significantly transformed by the move to the web servers. Due to the modern obsession with recording and digitizing various activities (from counting calories and miles walked, collecting data on menstrual cycles, books read to financial spendings), with a few clicks and the work of algorithms, we are now able to analyze an incredible amount of information that we would not otherwise have such an easy access to. At the same time, under the influence of social networks, we have become accustomed to turning many of these records of our everyday activities into data that we can present ourselves with on the internet. One of these recording tools is also the film database/social network Letterboxd, which I explore in this text. In my thesis Letterboxd: Digital Database Fever, I focus on what the socio-historical context of this phenomenon of recording and sharing information is, and what are the possible consequences of this behaviour for film spectatorship.
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Keeping up with Štiky: Docusoap in the context of Czech Reality TV
Plocek, Tomáš ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Papežová, Miroslava (referee)
(ENG) Docusoaps - programmes that follow their protagonists in various life situations and everyday activities in a "documentary" form - are an important type of reality TV formats. These documentary-like reality shows can follow the private lives of ordinary people as well as famous people and celebrities and, as Misha Kavka points out in his book Reality TV, can subsequently construct and reinforce the star image of a new type of celebrity typical of the 21st century. Despite the fact that the Czech and Slovak television scene adopts various formats and types of reality TV, we would hardly come across the docusoap format, following the American tradition of depicting the luxurious environment of rich and famous people. One of the few exceptions is the Czech docusoap Štiky (2018), produced by Prima TV. In my thesis, I want to answer the question of why this format of reality TV is so unique in our media landscape and what might be the challenges of transferring this format to home television entertainment? In my thesis, I will firstly define what types of docusoaps within reality TV formats work with celebrities; how these series reinforce and further shape the star image of their participants, and based on interviews with the creators of the series Štiky and their subsequent analysis, I will...
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Adaptations of Frank Miller's Graphic Novels: Possible Ways of Translating Comics into Film
Goldflam, Oto-Antonín ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Svatoňová, Kateřina (referee)
(ENG) Comic book movies are a significant part of contemporary cinema, however, they often take only the characters or the basic plot line from their source material. This thesis is intended to show that other elements of the original can also be brought into a film adaptation, ones that at first glance might seem non-transferable from one media to another. Film adaptations of Frank Miller's graphic novels will serve as a sample, focusing primarily on the films 300 and Sin City. The thesis looks at how the film adaptations reflect the various elements typical of comics (e.g. panels and their layout, drawing style, narrative structure, script and lettering) and what these are complemented by (e.g. music, sound, movement, casting). Through comparative analysis of both films, their prequels, and other adaptations, we want to determine how faithful the adaptations really are, but also to highlight how different the filmmakers' approaches to the source material can be. The aim is also to show which of the elements mentioned above can be transferred into film language and in what ways, and which are more difficult to translate, and in the latter case to reveal if these losses are compensated.
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Czech Television on demand: Curation of the iVysílání homepage between 2020 and 2022
Jurková, Anna ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Čížkovská, Jana (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on the topic of the public service media BVOD platforms, specifically Czech Television's iVysílání between 2020 and 2022, when a new version was launched, and has two main objectives. The first one is to compare how the curation of the homepage differs between both versions. The second objective is to find out how employees whose work is related to iVysílání perceive the fulfilment of the values of the public service medium in their work performance. The theoretical part of the thesis first discusses the most important definitions, the history of public service media and their VOD platforms, and finally the current state of existing studies on this topic. The research section presents the objectives, methods, design of the research and the findings, which are the result of a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. This thesis is intended to provide a better understanding of how curation with respect to public service values takes place and can be used as a basis for other researchers who wish to focus on iVysílání or other BVOD platforms.
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Viktor Tauš's cinematic style and the Rats TV Series analysis
Ramzerová, Anna ; Czesany Dvořáková, Tereza (advisor) ; Szczepanik, Petr (referee)
Bachelor thesis Viktor Tauš's Cinematic Style and the Rats TV Series Analysis intends to present the content-related, and particularly the formal aspects of cinematic style of Viktor Tauš as the film and a television author. In the thesis I strive to demonstrate typical features of Tauš's work and subsequently interpret and analyse them based on the neo-formalist film approach applied by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell. The primary analysis is focused on the television mini-series Rats (2020), whereas the rest of Tauš's author work - Canary (1999), Clownwise (2013), Blue Shadows (2016) and Monsters of the Shore (2019) - are utilised as references for main motifs of the thesis. At the outset of the thesis, I briefly examine the production context of the series and afterwards I deal with the social context as well. The main part of this thesis, the film style analysis, consists of three chapters. The most extensive one is dedicated to mise-en-scène of the series. The remaining two chapters are focused on its image and sound. Primarily sources are two semi-structured interviews with the Rats filmmakers - author Viktor Tauš and actor Cyril Dobrý.
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The Czechoslovak Film Industry of the 1960s as a Social Network of Selected Filmmakers
Lelek, Petr ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Podhajský, František (referee)
This bachelor thesis is focused on the phenomenon of social media in the film industry. First, selected filmmakers who made Czechoslovak feature films in the 1960s are chosen as examples, demonstrating what kind of informal clusters are emerging in the film industry, and according to which criteria these people assemble. Then, it uses the created network in different variations to answer the question if the creators of the so-called new wave were outsiders or not. Its main goal is to discover if this method can help discover new knowledge about a relatively well- mapped field of the Czech feature film of the 1960s and thus find out whether this method is relevant within the field of film studies in the region of small national cinematography.
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"A Song for Rudolf III" in Context of Evolution of the Television Song
Koulová, Pavlína ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Klimeš, Ivan (referee)
(in English): The subject of this thesis is the TV show Píseň pro Rudolfa III. ("A song for Rudolf III.) broadcasted by Czechoslovak Television from 1966 to 1968, its connection to "television song" and formal transformation during the production. The goal is to document how individual creators of the tv show used mechanisms of television song - a czechoslovak precursor of music video - to advance goals of institutions they represented. And how they were able to do so within the socialist economic system. The research consists of analysis of corporate documents from Czechoslovak Television, Czechoslovak radio, state label Supraphon and Rokoko theater, analysis of documents linked to the production of the tv show itself (mostly scripts) and consumer goods created to promote the show in the time of its first broadcast. Historical magazines and musicological literature are used to illustrate the workings of the popular music industry in the 1960s. The analysis suggests that the various goals could not be met by one stable mechanism. Instead the tv show underwent constant formal change, which is described step by step in the last chapter. Along with the show, the consumer goods related to it changed too.
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Little Series in the Big Television - Czech Television's Online-only Content
Vašíčková, Dorota ; Szczepanik, Petr (advisor) ; Jedličková, Jana (referee)
Little Series in the Big Television: Czech Television's Online-only Content Bc. Dorota Vašíčková Abstract This master's thesis in the field of film and television studies maps the process and first results of the establishment of a new programme production line in Czech Television. The thesis applies autoethnographic methods to the authors' personal experience in order to map the changes in institutional settings resulting from the clash of public media with the realities of the internet age. The work consists of four topic-defined sections, each following the period between spring 2019 and spring 2022 when the institutional reorganization and reconstruction of the Czech Television VOD platform was taking place. The work follows on topics such as the public media values, principles of dramaturgy or the ideas of managerism, all analyzed on the background of three years of participant observation. A key role in the analysis of specific production lore is played by the possibilities granted to originally independent web-based formats by having institutional backing. This thesis aims to capture the reality of the only Czech public media television and to analyze, how an institution of the size of the Czech Television copes internally with the emergence and establishment of a new production line of its programmes.
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The idea of a Film Chamber. The Bohemian-Moravian Film Union and continuity of centralizing tendencies in the film industry in the 1930s and 1940
Czesany Dvořáková, Tereza ; Klimeš, Ivan (advisor) ; Just, Vladimír (referee) ; Szczepanik, Petr (referee)
The key theme of this thesis is the development of the film-industry self-regulation during the years immediately preceding the occupation of the Czech Lands by Nazi Germany and the period of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Already in the First Republic (1918- 1939), the association structures were characterized by highly hierarchical relations and encompassed all areas - film production, film distribution and the cinema system. The predominant role was played by film industry associations and the largest unions of film workers. These organizations pressed for the solution of the protracted legislative deficits which complicated the day-to-day operation of the film industry. Starting in the second half of the 1930s, the essential aims of the activities of the film self-regulation included the foundation of a Film Chamber as the central body of Czech cinematography. The guarantor of the future public corporation, and possibly its financier, was to be the government. The views regarding the form of this institution were also influenced by foreign models, including the corporate structures of the Third Reich cinematography. As the authorities were taking their time to act, while the political situation was quickly changing, the film industry associations provisionally centralized their...
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