The Czech Connection

As the huge back-lot set at Barrandov Studios was being readied for a jousting tournament in medieval London, Antonin Sach painted the finishing touches on bleachers for a crowd of spectators to be played by Czech extras.

“I’m interested in the Middle Ages. When I’m working on this, I can feel the history of our ancestors breathing on me,” said Sach, 38, a Czech who usually paints house interiors but much prefers this job helping to make Columbia Pictures’ “A Knight’s Tale,” starring Heath Ledger and Mark Addy.

Sach earns less than $3 an hour--less than one-tenth the wage of a union painter in Hollywood, but more than he makes painting houses. Working on films “is an adventure,” he added, so he’s satisfied with his pay even though he knows a professional painter in Los Angeles would earn much more.

People like Sach--along with wardrobe experts, set construction specialists, camera operators, other freelancers of all types and a handful of entrepreneurs pulling it all together--are making the Czech Republic an increasingly potent player in the quickly globalizing film industry.

“Prague has turned into Hollywood East because there’s an opportunity to make your money stretch a long way,” said Amy Robinson, an executive producer of “From Hell,” a Jack the Ripper tale starring Johnny Depp and directed by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes for 20th Century Fox.

In addition to “A Knight’s Tale” and “From Hell,” other U.S. films being shot in the Czech Republic during July included “The Affair of the Necklace,” an Alcon Entertainment film for Warner Bros. starring Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, and the TNT/Warner Bros. television miniseries “The Mists of Avalon,” starring Julianna Margulies and Anjelica Huston.

Four productions at once marked a peak in the intensity of U.S. filmmaking here, and it put a strain on the availability of such talent as English-speaking camera crews, U.S. producers said. Other U.S. films were shot here earlier in the year, as were various European productions.

“Right now, millions and millions of dollars are being spent in this country on these films,” Robinson said.

Matthew Stillman, the British head of Stillking Films, a production company he founded in Prague in 1993, estimated that foreign film and television productions will spend about $70 million in the Czech Republic this year. Stillking competes with Czech-owned production firms such as ETIC Film Production and EIS Production, both run by former Barrandov employees.

Shooting U.S. and other foreign films here is a cooperative effort. Foreign producers bring in scripts, directors, stars and key crew members, while contracting through local production firms for sets, local employees and the use of spectacular sites such as castles and chateaux.

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Some things are possible in the Czech Republic that wouldn’t even be imagined in Los Angeles or London. For example, the immense outdoor set for “From Hell,” which represents several 19th century London blocks, including skid-row and upper-class districts, was paved with real cobblestones rented by the truckload from the Prague city government.

The set cost about one-fourth what it would have in Los Angeles, director Albert Hughes said.

Producer Todd Black said the cost of “A Knight’s Tale” will be “in the $40-million range,” with local spending in the Czech Republic of about $10 million. With a dollar generally estimated to go three times as far as in Los Angeles, after accounting for hotels, plane tickets and other costs of working abroad, that indicates a savings of about $20 million on the film.

“A huge number of films seem to have descended on Prague all at the same time,” said Richard Morris, a producer for “Affair of the Necklace,” a story he said concerns “a necklace that Marie Antoinette was inveigled into desiring.”

Barrandov’s facilities, low-wage professionals and fabulous, centuries-old locations are the three key factors that attract film producers here. But Prague’s reputation as a wonderful place to visit also helps.

“There are a lot of countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, that we could go to that are even less expensive than the Czech Republic, but they don’t have the training,” said Mark Wolper, executive producer for “The Mists of Avalon,” about the women in the King Arthur legend.

“The other very interesting reason why we come here is because when you tell an actor or an actress or a big director or a big producer that you’re going to shoot in Prague, that sounds OK,” Wolper added. “If you tell them they’re going to shoot in Bucharest [or] Warsaw, it doesn’t sound as romantic as Prague. And that’s important. Prague sounds sexy and in and hip, and that really is important when you’re going to go somewhere for four months.”

Margulies, best known for her role as a nurse (and George Clooney’s on-screen girlfriend) in “ER,” said she feels “a little more taken care of here than I do in L.A.”

“I don’t know if it’s because we’re foreigners and they’re treating us really well. But I’ve loved it. There’s a certain quaintness and a charm and a sort of pride, I feel, in them wanting us to enjoy being here.”

“To be able to walk through Old Town Square and see the architecture, I mean it’s just beautiful,” she added. “If you have to work in a city, I’d say Prague is a lucky choice. And just shooting in a country where there’s a history, as opposed to Los Angeles, is a big difference.”

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The potential advantages of filming here are so great that in the case of “A Knight’s Tale,” a story of medieval jousting pegged to an imaginary explanation of how Geoffrey Chaucer gathered material for “The Canterbury Tales,” director Brian Helgeland crafted the script with the Czech Republic in mind.

The story line “is sort of a medieval ‘Rocky,’ ” Helgeland said. “The heart of it is a rags-to-riches sports story, jousting instead of boxing. Jousting was basically the medieval sport of Europe.”

Helgeland, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning script for “L.A. Confidential” and directed “Payback,” said that by filming here, he could “take advantage of some of the locations, the castles and the countryside.”

“Also, my first film that I directed was fairly low budget and I was afraid that this script would seem very expensive, and that studios would balk at letting me direct it because they would think it was a $60-million movie,” Helgeland said. “So I specifically wrote it thinking I’d shoot it in Prague, having had the luxury of being here before and seeing what was going on, and knowing that we wanted to build some sets that would be really almost prohibitive to build in the U.S.”

When he sent the script to studios, Helgeland said, he included a cost estimate based on shooting in the Czech Republic. “I think it helped get the studios over the initial fear they might have had that the movie was too expensive to make,” he said.

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Barrandov Studios, founded in 1932 by Milos Havel, the uncle of Czech President Vaclav Havel, has long been at the center of the Czech film industry. During World War II, it was used by the Nazis for propaganda films. The Czech film industry was heavily subsidized during four decades of Communist rule, but Czech directors managed to turn out some internationally acclaimed productions despite political controls.

Barrandov was privatized in the early 1990s, and about 85% of its 3,500 employees quit or were laid off. Since then, a growing portion of its resources--which include 11 soundproof stages, 270,000 costume items and 110,000 props--goes to help produce foreign films. In addition to the key role of Barrandov facilities, sets are sometimes built in abandoned factories or other locations.

The sale of Barrandov to an international investment group is expected soon. But Radomir Docekal, Barrandov’s chief executive officer, stressed that the prospective new owners plan to strengthen the studio, not turn its real estate and resources away from filmmaking, as feared by some who have heard about the impending sale.

Several of the independent companies that contract directly with foreign filmmakers to provide production services are based in rented office space at Barrandov, and the freelance crew members they hire for specific films often are former Barrandov employees.

Last year, 37% of Barrandov stage usage was for foreign feature films or television specials, while only 3% was for Czech films, with 31% for Czech television and 29% for foreign and domestic commercials. This year, about 50% of stage usage will go for foreign film production, Docekal said.

Many foreign directors and producers praise Czech film workers for their low-cost professionalism. But local employees often believe their abilities aren’t fully appreciated. Money is often wasted on hotels and high salaries for foreign crew when a Czech could do the job equally well, if not better, some local freelancers say.

“I think one of the mistakes a lot of the foreign productions make is they think that we’re ‘100 years behind the monkeys,’ as we say in Czech, and it’s not the case,” said Nicole Kytyrova, a freelance production coordinator who has worked on several foreign films.

“On one of the bigger films, they brought in a really sweet guy, a transport captain,” she said. “You have 30 minibuses picking up all the people [to bring them to and from work]. I’m sorry, but an American guy from Texas has no way of knowing how long it’s going to take, who it’s better to pick up first. I mean, that’s really dumb. So he just hung out with his cowboy hat and cowboy boots, but he couldn’t do anything.”