Mobile Hollywood

Labor and the Geography of Production

Published February 2024 by University of California Press.

ISBN:
978-0-520-39901-3
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Contemporary film and television production is extraordinarily mobile. Filming large-scale studio productions in Atlanta, Budapest, London, Prague, or Australia's Gold Coast makes Hollywood jobs available to people and places far removed from Southern California—but it also requires individuals to uproot their lives as they travel around the world in pursuit of work. Drawing on interviews with a global contingent of film and television workers, Kevin Sanson weaves an analysis of the sheer scale and complexity of mobile production into a compelling account of the impact that mobility has had on job functions, working conditions, and personal lives. Mobile Hollywood captures how an expanded geography of production not only intensifies the often invisible pressures that production workers now face but also stretches the parameters of screen-media labor far beyond craftwork and creativity.

3 editions

A Fascinating Ethnographic Tour of the "On Location" Industry

Sanson provides a fascinating tour of how Hollywood movies get made, specifically on the portion of the industry that supports productions in non-studio locations. This gets into the work lives of location scouts, transportation, and other logistics personnel and its power with regards to the entire movie production pipeline. I would've liked more quantitative perspective on the scope of these different segments of production to help give context, as well as some more introductory material breaking down the mechanics of how a movie is made from start to finish to better understand how this class of work is positioned. Still, this is an engrossing dive on an industry that in many ways is an early look at the future of many kinds of work. Highly recommend

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