Open Access

Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production

by Kevin Sanson (Author)
February 2024
First Edition
Paperback
$34.95, £30.00
Title Details

Rights: Available worldwide
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9780520399006
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.177
Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.5
Illustrations: 10 color illustrations

About the Book About the Author Reviews Related Books

About the Book

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Contemporary film and television production is extraordinarily mobile. Filming large-scale studio productions in Atlanta, Budapest, London, Prague, or Australia's Gold Coast makes Hollywood jobs available to people and places far removed from Southern California—but it also requires individuals to uproot their lives as they travel around the world in pursuit of work. Drawing on interviews with a global contingent of film and television workers, Kevin Sanson weaves an analysis of the sheer scale and complexity of mobile production into a compelling account of the impact that mobility has had on job functions, working conditions, and personal lives. Mobile Hollywood captures how an expanded geography of production not only intensifies the often invisible pressures that production workers now face but also stretches the parameters of screen-media labor far beyond craftwork and creativity.

About the Author

Kevin Sanson is a Professor of Media Studies at Queensland University of Technology and a coeditor of Voices of Labor: Creativity, Craft, and Conflict in Global Hollywood and Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor. He is a cofounder and the editor of the academic journal Media Industries.

Reviews

"Mobile Hollywood persuasively encourages major rethinking of how we understand the dynamics of transnational film and television production. Crucially, Kevin Sanson's attention to the lived experiences of media workers illuminates the everyday employment conditions, invisible logistical coordination tasks, and practical organizational frictions inherent in creating screen entertainment across global space."—Paul McDonald, author of George Clooney

"Mobile Hollywood deftly excavates the trend toward footloose production in the media industries. In this richly researched and theorized volume, Sanson explores how media workers around the world have adapted to transnational production demands. Every course in global media, media industries, and production studies should adopt this book."—Timothy Havens, author of Black Television Travels: African American Media around the Globe

"Mobile Hollywood examines a conspicuous yet taken-for-granted characteristic of contemporary Hollywood: that the industry can be defined by its extraordinary mobility. Based on extensive fieldwork, Sanson provides a fascinating portrait of mobile film and TV productions and how mobility has reshaped Hollywood jobs, craft practices, and workers' lives."—Daniel Gómez Steinhart, author of Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting

"The first monograph to articulate a perspective on Hollywood as international and mobile through a production studies lens, Mobile Hollywood takes on a critical question in the discipline: Are media industries best described as place-based or global? Engagingly written and sharply observed, Sanson's latest book—firmly grounded in the experiences of film workers themselves—will be an invaluable contribution to the field."—Jade L. Miller, author of Nollywood Central: The Nigerian Videofilm Industry