Hollywood on Location: An Industry History

Location shooting has always been a vital counterpart to soundstage production, and at times, the primary form of Hollywood filmmaking. But until now, the industrial and artistic development of this production practice has been scattered across the margins of larger American film histories. Hollywood on Location is the first comprehensive history of location shooting in the American film industry, showing how this mode of filmmaking changed Hollywood business practices, production strategies, and visual style from the silent era to the present. The contributors explore how location filmmaking supplemented and  later, supplanted production on the studio lots. Drawing on archival research and in-depth case studies, the seven contributors show how location shooting expanded the geography of American film production, from city streets and rural landscapes to far-flung territories overseas, invoking a new set of creative, financial, technical, and logistical challenges. Whereas studio filmmaking sought to recreate nature, location shooting sought to master it, finding new production values and production economies that reshaped Hollywood's modus operandi. 

Table of Contents:
Contents                                                                                                          Introduction                                                                                                                                        Joshua Gleich and Lawrence Webb                            1. The Silent Era, 1895-1927                                                                                                              Jennifer Peterson 2. Classical Hollywood, 1928-1945                                                                                                    Sheri Chinen Biesen 3. Postwar Hollywood, 1945-1967, Part 1: Domestic Location Shooting                             Joshua Gleich 4. Postwar Hollywood, 1945-1967, Part 2: Foreign Location Shooting                                            Daniel Steinhart 5. The Auteur Renaissance, 1968-1979                                                                                              Lawrence Webb 6. The New Hollywood, 1980-1999                                                                                                   Noelle Griffis 7. The Modern Entertainment Marketplace, 2000-Present                                                                 Julian Stringer Notes on Contributors  

About the Author :
JOSHUA GLEICH is an assistant professor in the School of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Arizona. He is author of Hollywood in San Francisco: Location Shooting and the Aesthetics of Urban Decline.   LAWRENCE WEBB is a lecturer in film studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. He is author of The Cinema of Urban Crisis: Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the City.  

Review :
"Location filmmaking evokes a wide range of contradictory meanings—from the roughness of the handheld action scene to the technical polish of the runaway production, from the specific rendering of place in the regional drama to the anonymous depiction of the generic modern city in the contemporary international production. Drawing on archival research and close readings of dozens of films, Hollywood on Location offers a new history of location filmmaking, doing full justice to this complexity. Carefully distinguishing Hollywood location work from various alternatives, such as Neorealism and the New Wave, the authors show how the economics, technology, aesthetics, and logistics of location filmmaking developed over the course of a century—before, during, and after the studio system."— Patrick Keating, editor of Cinematography "Joshua Gleich and Lawrence Webb have edited an exemplary book of essays on Hollywood location filming. It is chronologically comprehensive in its covering the US film industry from the silent era to contemporary productions, as well as unfailingly astute and insightful. This is a book that all who are interested in US commercial film should read--scholars, students, and fans alike."— Stanley Corkin, author of Starring New York: Filming the Grime and Glamour of the Long 1970s "This is a work that should be cited in any subsequent analysis of Hollywood location filmmaking and would be an appropriate assignment for any undergraduate or graduate classes on the subject."— Journal of Popular Culture "The individual voices in Hollywood on Location come together to provide a consistent, succinct and enlightening history of location shooting."— Times Literary Supplement "Location filmmaking evokes a wide range of contradictory meanings—from the roughness of the handheld action scene to the technical polish of the runaway production, from the specific rendering of place in the regional drama to the anonymous depiction of the generic modern city in the contemporary international production. Drawing on archival research and close readings of dozens of films, Hollywood on Location offers a new history of location filmmaking, doing full justice to this complexity. Carefully distinguishing Hollywood location work from various alternatives, such as Neorealism and the New Wave, the authors show how the economics, technology, aesthetics, and logistics of location filmmaking developed over the course of a century—before, during, and after the studio system."— Patrick Keating, editor of Cinematography "This is a work that should be cited in any subsequent analysis of Hollywood location filmmaking and would be an appropriate assignment for any undergraduate or graduate classes on the subject."— Journal of Popular Culture "The individual voices in Hollywood on Location come together to provide a consistent, succinct and enlightening history of location shooting."— Times Literary Supplement "Joshua Gleich and Lawrence Webb have edited an exemplary book of essays on Hollywood location filming. It is chronologically comprehensive in its covering the US film industry from the silent era to contemporary productions, as well as unfailingly astute and insightful. This is a book that all who are interested in US commercial film should read--scholars, students, and fans alike."— Stanley Corkin, author of Starring New York: Filming the Grime and Glamour of the Long 1970s