“Making-of Videos: Of Placeless Studios and Pioneering Music Directors,” by Associate Professor of Literature Pavitra Sundar, appears as a chapter in Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India. The book, edited by Monika Mehta and Madhuja Mukherjee, was recently published by Routledge.
“Making-of Videos” examines a genre that visualizes the behind-the-scenes process of producing film songs. Sundar argues that the figure of the music director (composer) and the space of the studio are shown to be key nodes in the production process, i.e. as sites through which the traffic in music and sounds passes. She says “the gender and ethnicity of the music directory also shapes how their musical labor is represented on screen.”
“I have a special place in my heart for this piece because it was the very first abstract I drafted since arriving at Hamilton,” Sundar said. She presented an early version of the paper at the American Comparative Literature conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, and drafted the longer version during a summer fellowship at the National Humanities Center.
Sundar will participate in “Thinking Through Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India,” a public seminar about the book on Saturday, Jan. 30, at 10:30 a.m. The free event will be available using Zoom (meeting ID: 954 8846 9859).
