Description
Book SynopsisStudios are, at once, material environments and symbolic forms, sites of artistic creation and physical labor, and nodes in networks of resource circulation. They are architectural places that generate virtual spacesworlds built to build worlds. Yet, despite being icons of corporate identity, studios have faded into the background of critical discourse and into the margins of film and media history. In response, In the Studio demonstrates that when we foreground these worlds, we gain new insights into moving-image culture and the dynamics that quietly mark the worlds on our screens. Spanning the twentieth century and moving globally, this unique collection tells new stories about studio iconsPinewood, Cinecittà, Churubusco, and CBSas well as about the experimental workplaces of filmmakers and artists from Aleksandr Medvedkin to Charles and Ray Eames and Hollis Frampton.
Trade Review“Consumers in the 1930s understood the importance of the studio; In the Studio argues that contemporary scholars of film and media studies should follow suit. The volume makes an important contribution to these disciplines, helping to advance a new subfield by showing how an emphasis on the material spaces of production expands or nuances our understanding of cinema and television.”
* The Moving Image *
"It is certain that In the Studio’s holistic methodology will provide a blueprint for the still vital research on the material environments that shape our media."
* Screen *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Studio Perspectives
Brian R. Jacobson
PART ONE. FORMATIONS
1. “The Longed-For Crystal Palace”: Empire, Modernity, and Nikkatsu Mukōjima’s Glass
Studio, 1913–1923
Diane Wei Lewis
2. Regulating Light, Interiors, and the National Image: Electrification
and Studio Space in 1920s Brazil
Rielle Navitski
3. Ephemeral Studios: Exhibiting Televisual Spaces during the
Interwar Years
Anne-Katrin Weber
PART TWO. FOUNDATIONS
4. Estudios Churubusco: A Transnational Studio for a National Industry
Laura Isabel Serna
5. Pinewood Studios, the Independent Frame, and Innovation
Sarah Street
6. Backlots of the World War: Cinecittà, 1942–1950
Noa Steimatsky
PART THREE. ALTERNATIVE ROUTES
7. The Film Train Stops at Mosfilm: Aleksandr Medvedkin and the Operative Film Factory
Robert Bird
8. Postindustrial Studio Lifestyle: The Eameses in the Environment of 901
Justus Nieland
9. The Last Qualitative Scientist: Hollis Frampton and the Digital Arts Lab
Jeff Menne
PART FOUR. STUDIO FUTURES
10. Made-for-Broadcast Cities
Lynn Spigel
11. The Nature of the Firm and the Nature of the Farm: Lucasfilm, the Campus, and the
Contract
J. D. Connor
12. “Make It What You Want It to Be”: Logistics, Labor, and Land Financialization via
the Globalized Free Zone Studio
Kay Dickinson
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
