Klimentská 4 is the address of FAMU Studio in Prague, the place where students of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts flock along with many peers from France and overseas. This production house has it all: from cameras to an editing suite to a sound studio to a cutting-edge screening room whose acoustic and visual parameters are superior to most cinemas in Europe. Despite all that, working in the facility is not simply idyllic – it can sometimes be quite hard, says Director Ondřej Šejnoha. Students even work night shifts before state final and final commission exams to make sure they turn in their work on time.
What type of work do you primarily produce?
The core of our job is exercises and films required by the curricula. Every student knows what they have to create each year at their Department. We call it the White Book and the Production Sheets; it’s like a timetable for our production. In terms of genres, we primarily produce films and also help students from the Department of Photography and the Centre for Audiovisual Studies. We are currently working with the Faculty on securing production background for doctoral students. A large portion of our production is attributable to the Departments of Directing, Documentary Film, and Animated Film. We also handle a huge quantity of what is referred to as field exercises. These are intended for students to perfect their skills working on specific assignments and present their progress in the field in final commission exams. In addition, the Department of Cinematography runs many smaller-scale projects intended to test and improve students’ grasp of various techniques. The Department of Animated film has been in the spotlight most recently, with Daria Kashcheeva and her successful films Daughter and Electra. This year, there has been another very successful film, Our Lovely Pig Slaughter that received like ten Czech Lion Award nominations. This is a coproduced graduation project directed by Adam Martinec from the Department of Directing.
You are a production house. What do you offer students?
We are an in-house production facility. We offer everything from preparation for filming to wrap-up, that is to say postproduction and distribution of data to screening rooms. We have a cinematography section, a sound section, a postproduction suite, screening rooms, studios, workshops – just about everything. We cover the majority of the requirements using our own resources. FAMU Studio also works as an intermediary and guarantor towards the professional sector – we work with all major vendors of cinematography and sound equipment and all other services. We liaise between the students and those firms and institutions, acting as the authority that places orders and pays the bills. Luckily, we still have fairly decent budgets to make all of that work.
How good is your equipment?
In terms of cameras and sound equipment intended for use on the set, I guess we rate as well-maintained mid-range. Some of our analogue cameras might even be described as well-kept museum pieces, because we cannot purchase cutting-edge cameras every year. It is much more reasonable to rent them on the market including vendor services. Thanks to this, we can use the latest models for selected projects. We rank rather high in terms of image and sound postproduction and screening, most notably in our facility at Klimentská 4. FAMU Studio’s Reference Screening Room [editor’s note: reference screening is used to verify the image and sound quality of the produced film copies] can be seen as the flagship asset of the Klimentská facility in terms of equipment. It is truly designed and built to the highest standards, including a Dolby Atmos certificate. The screening room is equipped with four screens as well as a grading suite and a sound postproduction suite. This means that we can finalise films to the very best standards in terms of sound and image. Ours is one of the three perfectly fine-tuned reference cinemas in Europe. We also have excellent image and sound editing suites and a Dolby Atmos mixing room. This is the reason why, for example, students from a French film school come to us to work on their projects because they do not have such facilities at home.
How does this work in terms of financing? Do students have to stick to fixed budgets?
Yes, the budgets are fixed and detailed in the FAMU White Book and Production Sheets. These policies define the set internal costs of using the FAMU Studio facilities as well as external costs. To give you an idea, a master’s level graduation film produced by the Department of Directing has a budget of CZK 800,000 internal (our own funding) and CZK 350,000 external. We provide graduating students with those external funds to pay costs such as leasing locations, actors’ pay, equipment rental, transport and so on. We have a total of 8.4 million crowns ready to cover external costs every production year. This is cash for our students to make films in accredited Czech programmes, and this funding is secured for the next three years.
What is the students’ attitude to the support provided by FAMU Studio? Do they appreciate the fact that they can make their films thanks to public funding?
They certainly realise and notice how much has to be taken care of so that their film, even short, can be made. Our students are adult people, so they are obviously capable of a certain degree of self-reflection from the beginning. They notice most acutely when they visit other schools because our Faculty and FAMU Studio are far superior to certain other schools in terms of the amount of funding that we can provide. The same applies to the related services.
Students are submitting their final commission works for the January term as we speak. What is the procedure for the final commission exams at FAMU?
The January dates are usually less busy than those in June; this year, we are handling about 30 projects in January. These need to be seen, commented on, and rated. The brunt of our work will hit in September. Those are final commission and state final screenings, and that means as many as 300 projects blitzing through our two screening rooms and being evaluated.
Can the general public attend those screenings?
The screenings are primarily focused on each student or Department and teachers obviously attend, but yes, outside viewers can come too. Experts such as journalists are usually invited as well. If the capacity and organisational circumstances permit, a student can invite their family and actors to watch the film together. It all depends on the available capacity.
How stressful are final commissions? Are there any tears or door slamming?
There is no need to slam doors – this is all done for students to improve their skills in their chosen fields. There may be tears and disagreement, though – after all, this is evaluation, and that is stressful in itself. Evaluators rate your work, which took you six months of effort and all the hardships involved in making a film. Yes, evaluation may elicit emotional reactions, but it is also an opportunity to practice accepting criticism and absorbing a collective opinion on your work. Ratings can often vary widely from one teacher to the next. The viewpoint of a head of a workshop who has been with the student and their project from the very beginning differs from that of the invited evaluation panel members who see things from a bit of a distance. This is completely fair. Feedback and recommendations allow students to improve their work, but this applies to presentation only; the school archives their original version as submitted as their final commission work. A few years back, the Faculty leadership launched shared final commission screenings for both crews and teachers. This helps teachers and film crews to approach the submitted work from multiple viewpoints.
How do you maintain equipment if it is working non-stop? Does it wear excessively?
This happens, though not intentionally of course. With the number of projects we produce, it would literally be a miracle if nothing went wrong. What we strive to do is eliminate situations such as when a student leaves a piece of equipment – say, an expensive lens – somewhere, and it gets lost eventually. Of course, all our equipment is insured, but it’s difficult to replace an item such as this on a short notice. In the past, we used analogue equipment that endured a lot of use, whereas these days we mostly use digital technologies that are much more ‘consumer-grade’ and cannot take nearly as much beating as earlier equipment.
Can the general public see student work online?
There is this web platform called FAMU Films. It has been in operation for three years, and we internally nickname it ‘FAMU Netflix’. It is a video library, a collection of what the Faculty’s distribution centre considers fit for presenting to the general public. For a small fee, it is also accessible through a mobile phone app. This is an interesting method of presenting FAMU’s films, of which there are about 450 produced annually. I’m not saying they’re all excellent and festival-worthy, but people should be given an opportunity to see them. Silver screen connoisseurs can attend FAMUFEST, a traditional showcase for all of the Faculty’s output.
You have been working at FAMU Studio for 15 years. How have students changed over time?
I draw a line between the pre-covid and post-covid periods. The pandemic truly was a milestone that affected the education sector in a big way. I think that living around here was more optimistic and easier before covid, at least from my point of view. I sense more seriousness in students these days; they were less worried before covid. It’s probably not just due to covid but also to what is going on in Ukraine and other developments worldwide. I think their life situation is more difficult. They struggle to reconcile studying, their personal lives, and finance. In addition, everything is very fast nowadays. When I first started working here 15 years ago, we certainly weren’t compelled to address so many issues at one point in time. There was more room to take a breath and assess things calmly in the past. Another major change is that affairs used to be addressed on an individual, student-to-teacher basis or within the staff, whereas today, many issues are discussed widely on social media, and I don’t think this is helpful in each and every case. Sharing everything with everyone is good sometimes, but it can hinder the efficiency of decision making when conflicting agendas are involved.
Do you enjoy your work even though it can be mentally taxing and stressful at times?
Yes, I do enjoy everything about it including the frictions. FAMU Studio is an emotional environment, and this is only logical – art is meant to elicit emotions. It’s also good practice – you need to be able to maintain balance and take care of your wellbeing despite stressful situations.
What are the friction and stressful situations like?
Projects occasionally do not follow their schedules for various reasons. Filmmakers largely depend on each other, so if a director has trouble finding their sound designer for a long time, they may end up unable to start shooting on schedule, and stress will set in. Of course, the run up to final commission and state final exams is highly stressful. We have to address resource availability so that students can get their time slots in the editing suites and sound studio, and that is why we literally work 24/7 sometimes. For example, sound designers get to work at the very end of the production process, and they routinely stay in the studio overnight during these rush times. This happens mostly before the summer screenings. What matters most to me is that, every year, we eventually work our way to the final commission and state final exams without major physical, mental and material damage. This environment is by no means the ‘sunny side of the street’ – the world of audiovisual art can be brutal. We act like an anteroom into that, a safe lab where you can perfect managing your emotions and conduct. Ideally, our students should be leaving school equipped with enough communication skills to make their mark in the real world while living a sustainable professional and personal life.