From invention to standardization: Early cinema, sound, and digital image

Cinema represents a unique institution for examining technological development. Unlike many other modern technologies, cinema achieved its standardized form in an extraordinarily brief period of time. The Hollywood classical style was not only established in cinema's first 20 years, but continues as the dominant film style even today. Moreover, cinema has routinely assimilated competing technologies like sound or digital images with almost no long-term change to its formal style. In an age characterized by technological "revolutions" and paradigm Aft how has Hollywood maintained its stylistic continuity for nearly 90 years?;To answer this question, this work examines cinema's major technological integration. In general, recent cinema studies have focused on cinematic technologies' determining factors. This work differs: it asks, how do cinematic technologies once introduced, standardize themselves? Is there a pattern to standardizing cinematic technologies? Does a technology's form and function change from introduction to standardization? What variables delay or accelerate this process? And moreover, how does the cinematic institution choose between technological options?;To investigate these questions the dissertation overlays three specific technological transitions in film history: cinema's "invention" in 1895, sound's integration during the 1920s, and the contemporary usage of cornputer-generated images. At each stage in film history, the dissertation argues that cinematic technologies follow a similar pattern of standardization. Moreover, this work analyzes film texts specific to each transition to demonstrate that the pattern of standardization seen in cinematic technologies also manifests itself in film style.;The dissertation uses two theoretical models to explain cinema's adoption of certain technologies: James Beniger's concept of a "control revolution" and Brian Arthur's and Paul A. David's economic theory of "path dependence." The dissertation hypothesizes that cinema's inherently chance nature predisposes it toward technologies offering higher levels of control over the production and reception of film texts. Path dependence explains how cinematic technologies change from introduction to standardization. The dissertation demonstrates that in each technological assimilation, cinematic technologies and their associated film texts must resolve a series of recurring tensions before a technology standardizes.