The Czech internet series #martyisdead won the international Emmy Award in the category of short series and thus became the first Czech program to receive this television award. The thriller series has eight fifteen-minute episodes, in which the father of the dead fifteen-year-old Marty tries to trace back to the tragic end of the videos that the boy shot shortly before his death. The series was produced by Bionaut, CZ.NIC and Mall.TV. “We are already a generation that has also gone through this, we have experienced it firsthand, although perhaps not as fatally as in Marty’s case,” says the director of the series Pavel Soukup (30).
You are the holder of probably the most prestigious award in the field of television production. You have already wonebal?
Probably yes. But the truth is that since the announcement that we have won the award, it has been a big onslaught. Someone is still calling me and I haven’t actually slept yet. First we celebrated, I did interviews and in that spirit it goes on the next day. This is, of course, the price for how the event is exposed. So I probably absorbed it, but it wasn’t time to think about it.
As you prepared the theme, it occurred to you that such an award could be heardtreasure?
That probably doesn’t occur to anyone. In addition, I think there are a lot of better series that just didn’t enter the competition like we did. It’s speculation, but if the series from the Czech Republic signed up for an Emmy, they have – I think – a chance. The biggest credit for the success goes to our producer Jakub Košťál, who was brazen enough to try it with Emmy, albeit with a minimal vision that something could be out of it.
Still, what makes Marty unique? Why is hewill Emmy?
More people are asking me about it, but I don’t know. I could cowardly run away from the answer and say that this is a topic that resonates now, and that we have managed to process it well in terms of genre. It is not a lamenting drama, but a thriller that is not common in the competition of internet production. The visual side of the series is also on a different level than is usual with Internet television, as is the music composed by Jindřich Kravařík directly for the series and is not from a music bank. This may have led to success. But I really don’t know, in fact I would be interested in the jury’s comment.
When did you decide to work on cyberbullying?
The beginning of the idea is about three years old. If I said that we wanted to get involved in cyberbullying from the beginning, I would be lying. At that time, the Blue Whale media case appeared, and no one knew much if it was a hoax or if a bunch of children were actually performing deadly tasks, most of which they died for. This gave rise to the idea of a thriller, in which it would work on a similar principle: someone blackmails someone online, they have to perform tasks and do not know how to get out of it. Such a substance interested and amused me. In the end, the blue whale turned out to be a hoax, but we wanted to shoot it the same way: we wondered who it was, why someone would release a hoax on the Internet and what the political consequences might be. Unfortunately, we hesitated until it was no longer relevant. Current and equally dark, however, were other problems, including cyberbullying and so-called cybergrooming, which is also related to blackmail through sensitive materials. So we took a search for the original idea and started working on cyberbullying.
Did you talk to people who became cyberbullyed before filming?
We are already a generation that has gone through this, we have experienced it firsthand, although perhaps not as fatally as in Marty’s case. By the time we were in schools, platforms like ICQ, lidé.cz, spolužáci.cz were already running, on which similar practices worked. Virtually everyone has encountered some type of bullying, including the one in the online space – and we can all empathize a little with what it means to be bullied. Otherwise, of course, we also talked to the people who went through it. We also have a professional advisor, Martin Kožíšek, a specialist in Internet security, who deals with similar topics professionally and has the most experience with this issue in the Czech Republic.
Do you think that the series has opened a public debate on cyberbullying??
I’m not sure if it had such an impact that it really started a debate. Maybe it will happen now after winning the Emmy Award. On the other hand, we tried for some educational activities, we go to schools and debate with pupils and students. And it happened to us that we were at the festival in Zlín – and after the debate, a child told Martin that something was happening to him and confided in his problem. Even this one child would be a great result. It can only give you this type of project that fulfills some form of enlightenment. At other times, I try to overlap in my films, but when you can really change someone’s life, it’s different.
For whom, then, the seriesl I?
For both teenagers and parents of teenagers. I would not like to define it, however, the dramaturgy and the story go to these groups.
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What series are you watching yourself? Did some of them help you form Marty?
I could name forty films and series that deal with cyberbullying and that appealed to me. The most important for me is Disconnect, a film from 2012, which is the same as Marty in one part of the storyline. In our case, of course, it is more branched and the plot goes in a slightly different direction, including the final point. There is also a brilliant series Black Mirror, which perfectly demonizes social networks and what horrors can happen behind the screen. The last reference is the Semester series, which takes place entirely on a computer display, on which we monitor the relationships of young people. We knew we didn’t want a show series on the monitor, but it should be an important element. We have shown social networks in a different genre and context.
Is your generation ready to take over a larger part of Czech production and are you given space to do so?
I think we are getting the same space that the generations before us received and what the generations after us will receive. Unlike previous years, however, we have an advantage in the Internet television platform. The process of coming up with an idea, someone approving it, turning around and letting it out is much faster. It is also a freer platform on which to try other styles and ways of working.
Now you are planning a free sequel, this time about child abductions…
This is a completely new story, although it follows loosely and some of Marty’s characters appear there. But we leave the topic of cyberbullying and move on to even scarier things that can happen to children on the Internet.
Does this mean that Marty’s open end will remain open and you will not return to him?
The open end was not an empty phrase, but we will continue it, so the audience will find out who is behind the manipulation of Marty’s classmate and who is actually the driving force behind Marty’s death. He’ll find out who Valerie is.
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