Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space by Brian R. Jacobson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space by Brian R. Jacobson Kenneth Garner (bio) Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space. By Brian R. Jacobson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Pp. 312. $30. In histories of early cinema, the emergence of the studios has been generally associated with the industry's increasing capitalization and its adoption of industrial techniques and forms of organization in the first decade-and-a-half after the Lumière brothers' famous first screening in December 1895. One of the many virtues of Brian Jacobson's Studios Before the System is how it reframes studios both in terms of their architectural precursors and, even more fruitfully, as spaces designed to regulate the environments in which films were shot. Jacobson argues that studios, and studio technologies, were designed to order and re-order the natural world to produce usable images. Studios regulated their environments through architectural design, new technologies such as electric lighting and prismatic glass, and the creative deployment of space. This, Jacobson argues, explains the particular visual and aesthetic qualities that different production companies achieved in their films. Jacobson structures his study through chapters that alternate between American and French film production companies. One problem they all shared was the critical need to control light. Early studios like the Edison [End Page 799] Company's Black Maria, created by W. K. L. Dickson in 1891, or Georges Méliès's glass house in 1897, developed out of such antecedent architectural forms as photographic studios and laboratories. The way that each studio's architecture and technologies sought to regulate the filming environment, however, were markedly different. The Black Maria sought to regulate light both architecturally through its awkward slanted-roof design and by using a deeply recessed black background that Dickson had adopted from Etienne-Jules Marey's photographic experiments. The result was an observational style that limited the action to a single plane and limited the subject matter that could be filmed to single-action shots characteristic of the "cinema of attractions." Méliès, on the other hand, derived the design for his first studio from André Disdéri's rooftop glass-and-iron photography studio. This more open and flexible design allowed Méliès the opportunity to create artificial environments through painted backgrounds and enabled him to develop his famous trick photographic effects like substitution shots, matte inserts, and dissolves. If Dickson's Black Maria produced a highly restricted "framed aesthetic," Méliès' glass house emphasized flexibility, plasticity, and artificiality. If filmmakers used architecture to regulate and control the filmic environment, they also sought out new technologies to reduce their dependence on the unpredictable natural world. Jacobson devotes a part of his third chapter to the development of artificial lighting. It was Biograph's adoption of Cooper-Hewitt's mercury vapor lamps that essentially freed filmmakers from their dependence on natural light, although early critics complained of the consequent harshness of the filmed images; paradoxically, production companies searched for ways to make their artificial lighting more "realistic." As studios became larger and more complex by the early teens, production companies faced new challenges as a result of their need for expanded facilities and new technologies, especially electricity. French film giants Pathé and Gaumont's vast production complexes underscore, for Jacobson, the fragility of modern technology. He describes how Pathé struggled with municipal authorities in Paris over the regulation of celluloid film stock following a massive celluloid explosion in February 1904. Thus, Pathé's efforts to create their own film stock were threatened by the new wave of restrictions and building codes that followed in the explosion's wake. French studios, such as Gaumont's Cité Elgé studio, lacked access to centralized municipal electricity sources and often built their own electrical generators. Yet the creation of major industrial-sized studios ultimately showed that production companies had perfected the architecture and technology needed to successfully control their filmic environments. As Jacobson states, "The systemization of studio production, the industry's technological development, and the industrialization of studio infrastructure all developed together" (p. 158). [End Page 800] Jacobson has written...