Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the longstanding battles between stereo and mono technologies. Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials and myriad stereo releases, from Hell's Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to show how Hollywood's financial dependence on mono prevented filmmakers from seeing surround sound's full aesthetic potential. Though studios initially explored stereo's unique capabilities, Dienstfrey details how filmmakers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound techniques that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive formats.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Making Stereo Fit provides important clarifications to the scholarly understanding of stereo technology, and - with the key idea of monocentrism - introduces a crucial concept to the study of film style." * Music Sound and the Moving Image * "Illustrating how technical and aesthetic changes need to resonate with their surrounding industrial context before they can become part of the apparatus, the book's model should prove generative to media historians." * Film Quarterly * "Making Stereo Fit is an exhaustive account of the technological fits and starts that laid the groundwork for and articulated the philosophy that came to define how Hollywood understands and designs three dimensional film sound." * Technology and Culture * "Making Stereo Fit is a well-researched and documented study of technological and aesthetic transformations in stereo sound that took place over several decades, from the studio era experimentations to the dominant position of Dolby Stereo." * Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal *
Reihe
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 152 mm
Breite: 230 mm
Dicke: 22 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-520-37955-8 (9780520379558)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Eric Dienstfrey is Visiting Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Stereo Front and Center
1. Widescreens, Headphones, and Concert Halls: Film Stereo's Identity Crisis
2. Fantasia and Failure on a Theme by Bell Telephone
3. The Cinerama Experience 83
4. The Triple-Track Disruption and the CinemaScope Solution
5. Perspecta, Todd-AO, and the Emergence of Monocentrism
6. Dolby Stereo: The End of an Era
Conclusion: Life's the Same, Movies in Stereo
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index
