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Luci Marzola
Oxford University Press, USA

Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building the Studio System

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AuthorLuci Marzola
PublisherOxford University Press, USA
PublishedJan 13 2023
Book FormatHardcover
ISBN-139780190885588
Dimensions-
Weight-
BISAC
CategoriesPerforming Arts > Individual Director
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

Engineering Hollywood tells the story of the formation of the Hollywood studio system not as the product of a genius producer, but as an industry that brought together creative practices and myriad cutting-edge technologies in ways that had never been seen before. Using extensive archival research, this book examines the role of technicians, engineers, and trade organizations in creating a stable technological infrastructure on which the studio system rested for decades. Here, the studio system is seen as a technology-dependent business with connections to the larger American industrial world. By focusing on the role played by technology, we see a new map of the studio system beyond the backlots of Los Angeles and the front offices in New York. In this study, Hollywood includes the labs of industrial manufacturers, the sales routes of independent firms, the garages of tinkerers, and the clubhouses of technicians' societies.

Rather than focusing on the technical improvements in any particular motion picture tool, this book centers on the larger systems and infrastructures for dealing with technology in this creative industry. Engineering Hollywood argues that the American industry was stabilized and able to dominate the motion picture field for decades through collaboration over technologies of everyday use. Hollywood's relationship to its essential technology was fundamentally one of interdependence and cooperation-with manufacturers, trade organizations, and the competing studios. As such, Hollywood could be defined as an industry by participation in a closed system of cooperation that allowed a select group of producers and manufacturers to dominate the motion picture business for decades.

Author Bio

I am film and media historian who writes about the technology, labor, and infrastructure of the American film industry in the silent and classical eras. I teach in the Department of Film and Media Studies at University of California Irvine and at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. Previous to that I was a Fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts’ Department of Cinema and Media Studies.

I received my PhD in 2016 from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

I have just completed a book titled Engineering Hollywood, which explores the formation of the Hollywood studio system as a technology industry, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

I am currently working on an edited collection on Hollywood Unions and a book on the history of the Akeley camera.

Source: lucimarzola.com

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