{"id":2340,"date":"2013-08-26T08:34:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/?p=2340"},"modified":"2013-08-26T08:39:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:39:41","slug":"kevin-spacey-on-how-business-shapes-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/kevin-spacey-on-how-business-shapes-narrative.php","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Spacey on how business shapes narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kevin<\/a>

SOURCE: Flickr user Lotusphere11-26<\/p><\/div>\n

Some great thoughts from actor Kevin Spacey on how business practice and process either foster or flummox the stories artists can tell. In these excerpts<\/a> from a speech at last week’s Edinburgh International Television Festival (article here<\/a>), he shares the challenge of the traditional American ‘pilot episode’ model for program development, and the potential of the Netflix model he experienced in making ‘House of Cards.’<\/p>\n

In short, a pilot demands immediate introductions to characters, cliffhangers to force a future episode, and short story arcs to suit what may be a single-shot series. With ‘House of Cards,’ the creative team wanted a loooooonnnng arc of a story over many episodes, with complex characters, and a full realization of a season without creating a compressed, compromised, and expensive, single-episode sales pitch.<\/p>\n

He also suggests that our current distinctions between ‘television,’ ‘film,’ and ‘Internet media’ are useful only to the business people trying to craft a back-end deal. The audience increasingly doesn’t care about which is which. They care about story.<\/p>\n

How much of this is also true for the practices, definitions, and distinctions we use in the nonprofit arts?<\/p>\n