Research project

STUDIOTEC - Infrastructure,Culture, Innovation in Britain, France, Germany and Italy 1930-1960

Project overview

The project will create new understandings of how the collaborative and material environments of studio spaces and technologies shaped film production and cultures.

By emphasising the studios’ key role in the history of film making, STUDIOTEC’s four-themed, comparative design reflects the primary arenas that have hitherto eluded extensive investigation.

These involve analysis of studio architectures; the development of technologies, cultures of innovation and production design; political and economic contexts; labour relations and production practices.

Studios generated a vast range of documentation, contemporaneous commentary, photographs and other visual records, including non-fiction and fiction films. The team’s historical research will draw on these sources and data, enabling an active, comparative framework to inform an interrogation of the studios’ structural foundations and changes over three decades.

The data will inform the project’s outputs including a book, articles and video essays; a visualisation of the archival material and virtual reconstruction of a studio, and an exhibition.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Tim Bergfelder

Professor of Film Studies

Research interests

  • Film history in Europe and Asia
  • Film industries 
  • Reception Studies
Connect with Tim
Other researchers

Professor Fraser Sturt

Deputy Director SMMI

Research interests

  • Maritme Archaeology
  • Geomatics
  • Evaluation methods
Connect with Fraser

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs