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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.
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.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
PART I: Engineering an Industry
1: A Community of Engineers: Cooperation and Competition Among East
Coast Motion Picture Technology Manufacturers
2: "Maintained Solely for Your Benefit": Technological Service
Firms and the Hollywood Industrial Cluster
3: Between the Lines: Engineers in the Movie Studio
PART II: The Science of the Studio System
4: Inventing the Mazda Tests: Trade Collaboration and the First
Scientific Endeavor in Hollywood
5: The Fundamentals: Technical Education in the Chaos of Sound
6: The Academy Technical Bureau, Cooperative Research, and the
Building of the Studio System
Conclusion: Epilogue
Appendix A: Acronyms
Appendix B: Biographical Index
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Luci Marzola is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film and Media
Studies at University of California Irvine. She was the recipient
of a 2010-2020 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
Her work on early Hollywood technology and infrastructure has been
published in Film History, The Velvet Light Trap, and American
Cinematographer and is forthcoming in the Historical Journal of
Film, Radio, and
Television and the Oxford Handbook to Silent Cinema.
"One would have thought by now that Hollywood's industrial history
has been well documented, but Luci Marzola's remarkable
intervention shows that the predominant focus on the studio system
has overlooked a major part of the picture. Engineering Hollywood
examines instead the trade associations and technical and
bureaucratic infrastructures that established the shared
operational protocols and quality standards vital for Hollywood's
global success.
This brilliant account provides not only new insights into our
historical understanding of the industry, but also of the workings
of creative industries in the age of corporate capitalism." --
Joshua Yumibe,
Michigan State University
"We know about the star system. We know about the studio system.
But we know virtually nothing about the dynamic technological
systems that made Hollywood possible in the first place. This
essential book closes that gap, telling a crucial story about
America's first creative industry to integrate and spectacularize
technological change. Silicon Valley take note. Marzola provides a
breathtaking view to another hub of American innovation, one that
fuelled the
global rise of another uniquely American industry." -- Haidee
Wasson, Concordia University
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