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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building the Studio System by Luci Marzola Talia Shabtay (bio) Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building the Studio System By Luci Marzola. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. In her excellent Engineering Hollywood, Luci Marzola examines the largely overlooked history of how Hollywood became Hollywood. No, this is not a story of glamorous movie stars, hot shot producers, or visionary directors, as production-centered approaches to Hollywood history have well documented (T. Schatz, The Genius of the System, 2010, and D. Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System, 2005). The book is not a study of individual films as technological or aesthetic art forms. Nor does the author fix on the innovative role of pristine artefacts like cameras or lenses as others have thoroughly observed (H. M. Raimondo-Souto, Motion Picture Photography, A History, 2007). What this book does offer is a fresh and compelling picture of how, during the 1910s and 1920s, engineers, cinematographers, and mid-level technicians drove the formation of a technological system that would become America's first creative industry. This is the story of how those who never saw their name in lights pooled expert knowledge and technical savvy, established the trade organizations and professional societies that still structure the motion picture community, and made quality control a definitive marker of Hollywood cinema. Marzola argues that through maintaining and adapting mostly existing technological knowledge, engineers played a central role in forming the Holly-wood studio system, a system that was always deeply enmeshed in the so-called "tech industry" and the American economy writ large. Marzola structures the book in two main parts, each consisting of three chapters. The first part, Engineering an Industry, maps the emergence of a network of engineers involved in the manufacture and use of motion picture technologies. To generate new revenue, established makers of everyday technologies including Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, GE, Westinghouse, and DuPont adapted products they were already manufacturing for the motion picture market. These companies' engineers were the earliest leaders of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) that helped facilitate knowledge-sharing among tool manufacturers. Hollywood's growth from a niche market to a full-fledged culture industry compelled these companies to tailor their products to the Hollywood market and open branches of their firms in southern California. By the early 1920s, new service firms were flourishing around Hollywood. Their customers—largely cinematographers—grew increasingly professionalized and powerful as evidenced in new technician-oriented periodicals like The Academy Technical Digest and American Cinematographer, and formal networks like the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). [End Page 574] In the second part, The Science of the Studio System, we see members of the motion picture technical community joining hands to consolidate influence over quality standards, assert control of their tools, and safeguard specialized technical knowledge. Marzola contends that the trade collaboration known as the Mazda Tests (cooperative staging of incandescent lighting demonstrations) was more about uniting tool makers and tool users than any innovation brought by the new "inkie" lights. Marzola underscores that with technicians cooperating at the core of Hollywood's formalized industrial networks, the studio system managed a relatively smooth transition to synchronized sound film, despite having to overcome tremendous knowledge gaps and solve myriad technical challenges. By the end of the 1920s, as Marzola shows, a controlled body of technical knowledge and a system of cooperation between manufacturers and producers would set the studios of classical Hollywood apart from all other film producers in the country and the world. Engineering Hollywood builds on key analytic frameworks of recent interest to history of technology scholars. The book convincingly demonstrates that more than glamour or novel advances, less visible forms of community and social organization developed and maintained the technical and aesthetic standards that propelled Hollywood's success. Expanding the work of Maintainers scholars, notably Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel (The Innovation Delusion, 2020), Marzola foregrounds mid-level figures—cinematographers especially—who applied both technical expertise and artistry to continually improve and regulate the mundane, often invisible, yet fundamental features that distinguished Hollywood films...