Tape Recording Hollywood

Abstract

Abstract: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 film industry initially wired magnetic media into its production and postproduction stages. In so doing, I explain why the adoption of such a revolutionary recording technolog y did not initially usher in changes to the industry's modes of acoustical representation and why these changes instead took place several decades later.