The aesthetics of early feature-film scores were shaped by narrational problems introduced by multi-reel features and their longer durations. Using The Patchwork Girl of Oz, I show how stylistic devices like silences and musical pun- ctuation were used to address the coherence and pacing of multi-reel storytelling.

This article details the historical factors that shaped Hollywood’s adoption of magnetic recording during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It draws upon economic theories of technological change, archival correspondence, technical records, analyses of postproduction workflows, and delineations of the structural constraints that limited how the f…[Read more]

This chapter investigates how the introduction of stereo complicated Hollywood’s vococentric practices. It also reveals how sound technicians developed mixing techniques that preserved the salience of dialogue in multi-channel soundscapes. The author refers to such techniques as monocentrism and illustrates monocentric norms by analyzing the c…[Read more]

“The company builds cars and destroys men” was the promotional tagline of one of the posters for “Blue Collar” (1978). Shot in Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan, the film stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto playing three Detroit auto workers in financial despair who break into and rob the offices of their own union. “Blue Collar”…[Read more]