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

FAIN: FEL-262651-19

Luci Ann Marzola
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)

Research and writing of a book-length study on how technology and science shaped early cinema in Hollywood.

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 cutting-edge technologies in ways that had never been seen before. In re-examining what made the studio system work, I frame it foremost as a technology-dependent business with connections to the larger American industrial world. Using extensive archival research, I examine the role of technicians, engineers, and trade organizations in creating a stable technological infrastructure on which the studio system rested for decades. 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 way, we can move past an exceptional view of the motion picture industry and see it for the ways it modeled other industries that bring creative practice and technology into close connection for their operation.

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