Footnote #81 - The Studio System

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

The Fantasy/Animation footnotes return after the summer break with Footnote #81 that maps the studio system as an organising principle and defining industrial structure of Classical Hollywood production between the 1920s and 1960s, and a term that pertains to the rise of industrialised, consumer-focused, and globalised filmmaking practices. Topics for this episode include Fordist models of mass production and the role of studios, stars, and genres as repeating constants; the mechanics of vertical integration and the prestige of the ‘Big Five’/’Little Three’; the importance of theatrical exhibition and distribution, and the profitable chain where films travel from the production lot to the movie theatre; and the collapse of the system and its re-emergence in a contemporary animation era where studio recognition adheres to something of a Classical template.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**

Suggested Readings

• Connor, J. D. 2015. The Studios after the Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood (1970–2010). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

• Brown, Noel. 2021. Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

• Gomery, Douglas. 1986. The Hollywood Studio System. New York: St. Martin's Press.

• Krämer, Peter. 2005. The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars. London: Wallflower Press.

• Krämer, Peter. 2000. “Post-classical Hollywood.” In American Cinema and Hollywood: Critical Approaches, edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, 63–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Powdermaker, Hortense. 1950. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

• Schatz, Thomas. 1988. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Pantheon Books.