This article continues to operationally define and test the resource-based view of the firm in a study of the major U.S. film studios from 1936 to 1965. We found that property-based resources in th...

The Resource-Based View of the Firm in Two Environments: The Hollywood Film Studios From 1936 to 1965

Genre and Hollywood provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of genre. In this important new book, Steve Neale discusses all the major concepts, theories and accounts of Hollywood and genre, as well as the key genres which theorists have written about, from horror to the Western. He also puts forward new arguments about the importance of genre in understanding Hollywood cinema.Neale takes issue with much genre criticism and genre theory, which has provided only a partial and misleading account of Hollywood's output. He calls for broader and more flexible conceptions of genre and genres, for more attention to be paid to the discourses and practices of Hollywood itself, for the nature and range of Hollywood's films to be looked at in more detail, and for any assessment of the social and cultural significance of Hollywood's genres to take account of industrial factors.In detailed, revisionist accounts of two major genres - film noir and melodrama - Neale argues that genre remains an important and productive means of thinking about both New and old Hollywood, its history, its audiences and its films.

Genre and Hollywood

and general in order to be able to be performed on a wide variety of new inputs. The inputs may be an inventory of notes based upon key, style, et cetera. (Pressing’s cognitive model calls this the “referent.”) My taxonomy is a way of making those inputs clear. 184 Since improvisation (and composition) is fundamentally cognitive and motor selection, then this presupposes a set of things from which to select. One can only select if there are options, choices. Now, it seems that whether a person (agent) is aware (conscious or cognizant of the options (all or even some)), one may always post facto reconstruct the set of choices which were available or present to the agent at the time of selection. By this I mean the set of choices that were available to the agent from an objective point of view. This set has little to do with the actual, individual conscious states of the agent; however, it does involve many specific conditions of the agent and the agent’s environment. For example, a musician S may say that “it never occurred to me to play that B-flat after the A,” even though objectively that choice was available to S. Sometimes, however, we describe others, and even ourselves, as just doing something—no other options presented themselves to consciousness. So, “selection” may seem like an inappropriate term or concept for what is going on in improvisation. It may, however, seem more accurate in composition. When humans perform actions in quick succession, consciously it does not seem like a choice or decision is being made for each separate action. In fact, in some cases it may be difficult to individuate the rapid succession of actions into discrete units. It seems to be a unitary flow of movements. These are half-intentional actions. Beside the (SCI) case, examples of this kind of phenomenon are playing sports, talking, and just mundane actions like walking to the market. From a phenomenological perspective, in some moments the choice or decision aspect can be discerned, while other moments “feel” automatic. Consequently, it is in these seemingly automatic moments that selection may be an erroneous description. But there are several pieces of evidence that suggest that in both cases similar or the same processes are realized. First, it would be impossible to account for talent and skill if some sense of choice or selection or decision was not involved. Indeed, psychologists and others 185 indicate that some people are better than others (usually in some specific domain of behavior) in their speed of thinking, choosing, and moving in situations that require rapidity. In other words, if we cannot attribute responsibility to selection or choice, even in an attenuated sense, training and effort would be diminished or demolished. Why would one train if one could not control the automatic thinking or moving? What would be our understanding of talent and expertise? Second, there is reductio ad absurdam argument that can be given here, analogous to the one Thomas Nagel presents in the classic “Moral Luck” article. One could argue that artistic agents are never responsible for anything they do; they have no agency because all novel thoughts impinge. Humans do not cause their thoughts and selection. My only response is that creativity is still a mystery, and we are not yet epistemically entitled to run this argument to the point of absurdity. Furthermore, cognitive science has informed us that even in these moments sub-conscious motor and kinetic programs or mechanisms are running. Some of these were delineated for improvisation above. This is one reason why a phenomenology needs to be appended to cognitive models and the like. One should also be interested in what is present to the consciousness of the agent, and what is consciously occurring while playing (if anything), not only the underlying processes posited by a cognitive theory, nor what could be going on as argued for in a philosophical theory. David Sudnow is perhaps the best example of a phenomenological approach to improvising. By introspecting on his improvised piano playing and his learning how to play 62 For example, see Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To (New York: Free Press, 2010). 63 Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck” in Mortal Questions, Canto Classics Series (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24-38. 64 David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), and David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: A Rewritten Account, foreword by Hubert L. Dreyfus (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 186 paino and improvise, Sudnow gives excellent descriptions of the process and actions. One of the most important insights he gives is that selection in jazz piano improvisation is in large part about fingering and the way one’s hands and fingers move across the keys. I can attest that the same is true for stringed instruments, like guitar. Often, when I improvise, my attention is on finger patterns that I know work (with embellishments) over certain “changes.” How strongly the phenomenology of playing an instrument comes to play in thinking about creativity and improvisation in particular comes to the fore in this extraordinary account of a conversation with the famous, brilliant pianist Bill Evans. ... I [Gene Lees] kidded him [Bill Evans] about his rocking a finger on a key on a long note at the end of a phrase. After all, the hammer has already left the string: one has no further physical contact with the sound. ‘Don’t you know the piano has no vibrato?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ Bill responded, ‘but trying for it affects what comes before it in the phrase.’ Evans reveals that there are motor selections that do not enter into the perceivable product (in this case sounds) but yet affect properties of that product. Not all selections will be perceivable in the final product (e.g., performance, recording). One should also be aware that selection may be coerced in both a literal and metaphorical sense. External factors such as authorities may constrain what artists do, thereby eliminating or reducing choices. I may only have the resources to learn one instrument. If I only know how to play saxophone, I am not going to pick up a trumpet. At any given time t, the agent (improviser, player, performer) has twelve pitches available in the range physically determined by the instrument. This range is vague because 65 Gene Lees, “The Poet Bill Evans,” in Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now, ed. Robert, Gottlieb (New York: Pantheon, 1996), 424. 187 given certain techniques, which some musicians are able to do and others not, and physical enhancements to instruments, the range can be extended, both to the top and bottom of the frequency or pitch range. But it would wrong to suppose that this complete selection options set is fully available every time, in every context to an improviser. What decreases the possibilities of the selection options group are the constraints that are given and/or accepted by the player, the genre, context, et cetera. Now, the agent may at any point deviate from these constraints (intentionally or otherwise), but she may not deviate from the complete selection options group, unless she changes instrument or technique. The idealized selection options group is coextensive with the set of all physically realizable pitches and all possible durations. This set may be expressed in many ways. For instance, one could simply give the Hertz (Hz) cycles (frequency) of the pitch indexed to a timed duration, such as eight seconds or two seconds. Obviously, this is an infinite set, because the duration of a produced pitch could be infinitely long, and the sound waves, although severely limited by human audibility capacity (even non-human animal audibility) could be infinitely low or high, although there are frequencies which we cease to call sounds. Practically, in Western music theory, the accepted range of pitches is the human audition range (called audio or sonic), 66 I am assuming the agent is using the Western Equal Temperament (ET) tempered system. On the drawbacks of the exclusive use of the ET system that was more or less codified in the eighteenth century, see Ross W. Duffin, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007). Scholars have identified at least 150 different temperament tuning systems in Western art music. Of course, ET does not apply to many non-Western music systems. The locus classicus is J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey, Dover Books on Music Series (n.d., n.p., 1951; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 2004). 188 which is approximately from 20 50 Hz (the lowest pipe organ sounds) to 20,000 30,000 Hz; while the accepted range of durations caps out at 128 notes. Selection is the process of choosing an output. The output may be physically realized or produced sound, or a notation for a realizable sound, or both. A single selection is actually an array of various factors as explicated in Pressing’s cognitive model. In using the term “choosing,” or “choice,” again I make no commitment to a theory of free will. This theory and taxonomy may remain neutral. If free will is false, then the selection process will be a product of some set of causal laws. Those causal laws will still have to operate within the taxonomy. Moreover, ideally a selection may be viewed as a choice of each discrete unit with relevant arrays, even though phenomenologically one may not be aware of all of the arrays. A musical phrase or lick may be played wherein the agent chose to play the lick as a whole. The entire phrase, then, which may consist of several pitches of different durations, dynamics, rhythms, and attacks, is the unit of selection—not each discrete pitch et cetera. Following are the selection options sets for musical sound generation (

The metaphysics of improvisation

The social history of film in the United States is examined to illuminate the ideological and organizational foundations of the valuation of art. Attempts to valorize film as art began in film 's first decades. Thereafter, a series of key events and actions in the late 1950s and 1960s, both inside and outside the film world, resulted in a shift in audiences'perception of film-from a form of entertainment to a cultural genre that could properly be appreciated as art. This shift in perception was made possible by the opening of an artistic niche brought about by changes outside the film world, by the institutionalization of resources and practices within the film world, and by the employment of an intellectualizing discourse by film critics

Intellectualization and art world development: Film in the United States

This paper looks at the evolution of capabilities in the Hollywood movie industry in the aftermath of the transition from a studio era dominated by integrated hierarchies to a post-studio era dominated by flexible hub organizations supplied by networks of resource providers. Adopting a dynamic capabilities perspective we argue that two industry capabilities - mobilizing and transforming capabilities - play a crucial role in assembling and transforming resource bundles into feature films. We further argue that the transition to new organizational forms shifts the co-evolutionary process, with practices and routines that make up mobilizing capabilities changing faster and becoming more important to box office success than practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 400 films split between the studio and post-studio eras. The results support our hypotheses, pointing to the influence of centralized control versus dispersed access to resources. The strategy of integrated hierarchical organizations depends on ownership of resources that reduces incentives to develop mobilizing capabilities, and increases incentives to develop transforming capabilities. The advent of new organizational forms, by contrast, increases returns to new practices and routines that mobilize resources at the expense of returns on exploring practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/joms_417.pdf?abstractid=467760&mirid=2

Capabilities in Motion: New Organizational Forms and the Reshaping of the Hollywood Movie Industry

Brought up to date with an expanded range of selections, extended historical coverage, and a dedicated pluralistic commitment, the third edition of this highly popular text on film aesthetics features major additions of contemporary topics in film theory--including psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist approaches--and new essays on television, horror films, and experimental movie making. Of the 53 selections, 13 are new. The section "Kinds of Film" has been retitled "Film Genres" and concentrates exclusively on the distinctions within a single type of film: classical Hollywood narrative cinema. The final section, now called "Film: Psychology, Society, and Ideology" is substantially revised to take into account film's relationship to its consumers: how films shape or reflect cultural attitudes, reinforce or reject dominant modes of cultural thinking, and stimulate or frustrate people's needs and drives. Throughout the book chapter introductions have been rewritten to reflect today's concerns. Current and comprehensive, the book that The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism called "the best collection available on the disparate comments in the fields of film theory and criticism" is now even better.

Film theory and criticism;: Introductory readings

1. Introductory Assumptions. For Further Reading and Viewing. 2. Birth. Frames per second. Pictures on Film. Speed. Flicker and the Continuous Signal. Persistence of Vision and Other Phenomena. Seeing with the Brain. Visual Masking and Retinal Retention. Early Observations. Separating and Integrating Frames. The Phi Phenomenon and Beta Movement. Short-Range Apparent Motion. Constructing Continuity. Scientific Toys. Aemile Reynaud. Photography. Muybridge and Marey. Thomas Edison. W. K--L. Dickson and William Heise. Early Cameras and Films. The Kinetoscope. A Sound Film and Studio. Projection. The Magic Lantern. The Loop and Other Solutions. The Lumiere Brothers. R.W. Paul. The Vitascope. The First Films. For Further Reading and Viewing. 3. Film Narrative, Commercial Expansion. Early Companies. Narrative. George Melies. Cohl and Others. Edwin S. Porter. From Brighton to Biograph. Business Wars. The Film d'Art. For Further Reading and Viewing. 4. Griffith. Apprenticeship. Biograph: The One-Reelers. Two Reels and Up. The Birth of a Nation. Intolerance. 1917-31. Broken Blossoms and Way Down East. The Struggle. For Further Reading and Viewing. 5. Mack Sennett and the Chaplin Shorts. Krazy Keystones. Charlie. For Further Reading and Viewing. 6. Movie Czars and Movie Stars. Stars over Hollywood. The First Stars. California, Here We Come. The Emperors and Their Rule. Major Studios. Movie Palaces. Morality. Sermons and Scandals. The Hays Office. Films and Filmmakers, 1910-28. Thomas Ince. Douglas Fairbanks. DeMille and von Stroheim. Greed. Henry King. Oscar Micheaux and the Race Movie. Webber and Watson. Weber and Women. King Vidor. Lubitsch and Others. Flaherty and the Silent Documentary. The Comics. Laurel and Hardy and Hal Roach. Harold Lloyd. Harry Langdon. Buster Keaton. The Gold Rush and The General. Hollywood and the Jazz Age. Modernism. Jazz, Booze, and It. For Further Reading and Viewing. 7. The German Golden Age. Expressionism, Realism, and the Studio Film. Fantasy. Caligari. Destiny and Metropolis. Nosferatu and Others. Psychology. The Last Laugh. Pabst and die neue Sachlichkeit. The End of an Era. Beyond the Studio. Exodus to Hollywood. Using Sound. Lei Riefenstahl. For Further Reading and Viewing. 8. Soviet Montage. The Kuleshov Workshop. Sergei M. Eisenstein. Battleship Potemkin. October. Sound and Color. Vsevolod I. Pudovkin. Mother. Later Works. Other Major Figures. Alexander Dovzhenko. Dziga Vertov. Socialist Realism. For Further Reading and Viewing. 9. Sound. Processes. Problems. Solutions. For Further Reading and Viewing. 10. France between the Wars. Surrealism and Other Movements. Gance and Dreyer. Abel Gance. The Passion of Joan of Arc. Rene Clair. Jean Renoir. Grand Illusion. The Rules of the Game. Vigo and Others. Jean Vigo. Carne and Prevert. For Further Reading and Viewing. 11. The American Studio Years: 1930-45. Film Cycles and Cinematic Conventions. The Production Code. Cycles. Studios and Style. The Comics. Late Chaplin. Disney's World. Lubitsch and Sound. Frank Capra. Preston Sturges. George Cukor. The Marx Brothers. Mae West. W.C. Fields. Masters of Mood and Action. Josef von Sternberg. John Ford. Howard Hawks. Alfred Hitchcock. Orson Welles. For Further Reading and Viewing. 12. Hollywood in Transition: 1946-65. The Hollywood Ten and the Blacklist. 3-D, CinemaScope, Color, and the Tube. Films in the Transitional Era. Freedom of Speech, Preminger, and the Blacklist. Message Pictures: Kazan and Others. Adaptations and Values: John Huston and Others. Film Noir and Other Genres. The Freed Musicals. Surfaces and Subversion. Samuel Fuller . Late Hitchcock. Nicholas Ray. Late Ford. Douglas Sirk. Finding the Audience. For Further Reading and Viewing. 13. Neorealism and the New Wave. Italian Neorealism. Roberto Rossellini. De Sica and Zavattini. Luchino Visconti. Romantics and Antiromantics. Federico Fellini. Michelangelo Antonioni. Pasolini and Bertolucci. Germi, Leone, and Others. France---Postwar Classicism. Cocteau and Others. Max Ophuls. Robert Bresson. Tati, Clouzot, and Clement. 1959 and After. The New Wave. Francois Truffaut. Jean-Luc Godard. Alain Resnais. Chabrol, Rohmer, and Rivette. Varda, Marker, and the Documentary. Malle and Others. For Further Reading and Viewing. 14. National Cinemas: 1945-. Sweden and Denmark. Ingmar Bergman. England. Postwar Masters. Another New Wave. From A Hard Day's Night to Masterpiece Theatre. Central and Eastern Europe. The Czech Golden Age. Poland. Hungary. The Balkan States. Cinemas East. Japan. India. China. Taiwan. Hong Kong. Korea. For Further Reading and Viewing. 15. Hollywood Renaissance: 1964-76. The New American Auteurs. John Cassavetes. Woody Allen. Robert Altman. Francis Ford Coppola. Martin Scorsese. Malick, De Palma, and Others. Stanley Kubrick. The Independent American Cinema. Early History. The New Film Poets. For Further Reading and Viewing. 16. National Cinemas 2: 1968-. Das neue Kino. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Werner Herzog. Wim Wenders. Von Trotta and Others. Third World Cinemas. Emerging Cinemas, Emerging Concerns. Instructive Dramas. Documentaries. Alex and Sembene. Other English-Language Cinemas. Australia. New Zealand. Canada. Ireland and Elsewhere. Russia and the Former Soviet Union. Paradjanov, Tarkovsky, and Others. Glassnost and After. Iran. The New Internationalism. Luis Bunuel. For Further Reading and Viewing. 17. The Return of the Myths: 1977-. Star Wars and the New Mythology. Supermen, Slashers, and Cops. Feelgood Movies and Bummers. Popular Heroes and Postmodern Irony. Leading Directors. Lucas and Spielberg. Dark Satire: Lynch, Waters, and Others. The Comic Edge: Burton, Zemeckis, and Others. Politics, Insight, and Violence: Lee, Carpenter, and Others. For Further Reading and Viewing. 18. Conglomerates and Cassettes: 1975-. It's A Wonderful Deal. Sequels and Blockbusters. Conglomerates. For Sale: Studio. The Budget Explosion. Executive Decisions. Theatres. Studio Shake-ups. Movies in the Age of Video. Tape and Videotape. Analog and Digital Information. Sampling and Conversion. Videotape Recorders. Cassettes and Discs. DVDs. Out of the Vaults. Pixels and Lines. Film and Video Frames. Changes on the Set. Nonlinear Editing. Copies and Originals. Colorization. Electronic Cinema. For Further Reading and Viewing. 19. Digital Cinema: 1999-. Doing without Film. Beginnings. Production and Distribution. The Look of the Future. For Further Reading and Viewing. Distributors. Glossary. Acknowledgments. Index.

A Short History of the Movies

This book has become established as a classic in its field. The new edition contains additional material on recent significant developments in cinema.

A short history of the movies

Although books on the comedies of the silent era abound, few have attempted to survey film comedy as a whole?its history and evolution, how the philosophical visions of its greatest artists and directors have shaped its traditions, and how these visions have informed both the meaning and manner of their work. Blending information with interpretation, description with analysis, Mast traces the development of screen comedy from the first crude efforts of Edison and Lumiere to the subtlety and psychological complexity of Annie Hall. As he guides the reader through detailed discussions of specific films, Mast reveals the structures, the values, and the cinematic techniques which have appeared and reappeared in comic cinema. The second edition of The Comic Mind treats the comic developments of the 1970s in terms of the traditions of film comedy set forth in the first edition, including a discussion of the evolution of Jacques Tati and the emergence of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen as the two greatest American comic stylists of the seventies. "The most comprehensive study of film comedy yet written in English. . . .The book's extensive index with references to companies from which 16mm prints of many of the cited films may be rented will be of great value to the film teacher and audiovisual librarian."?Choice

Gerald Mast

Papers

Film theory and criticism;: Introductory readings

A Short History of the Movies

A short history of the movies

The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies

Can't help singin': the american musical on stage and screen