In the Studio: Visual Creation and Its Material Environments

Studios 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 spaces—worlds 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 icons—Pinewood, Cinecittà, Churubusco, and CBS—as well as about the experimental workplaces of filmmakers and artists from Aleksandr Medvedkin to Charles and Ray Eames and Hollis Frampton.  

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments  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 

About the Author :
Brian R. Jacobson is Professor of Visual Culture at the California Institute of Technology and the author of Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space.  

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.” "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."