ABSTRACT
Founded in 1916 during film’s infancy, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) and its members proved critical to the birth and development of the post-production system and thus filmmaking itself. Engineers’ efforts toward standardization provided the necessary foundation for the post-production system, notably under the aesthetic demands of continuity editing, a system which requires an exacting discipline of technique and technology, both in the manufacture of equipment and its use on the film set. In 1916, the SMPE’s initial membership of 125 film engineers convened at the request of the United States National Bureau of Standards for the express purpose of creating standardization processes for film technique and technology. Moving beyond technical discourse, the examination of the journals of motion picture engineers published during the 1920s interestingly reveals an underlying “evolutionary” logic, thereby revealing an influence of Darwinian thinking.
