As Hollywood weathers uncertainty and rapid changes, Steven Poster ASC reflects on past golden ages, digital disruption and the creative resilience needed for what’s next. 

It is such a difficult time around the globe right now. I have been thinking about time in relation to thought. To be direct, yes, some places have more work than others. But because I live in Hollywood, a name that is synonymous with many ‘Golden Ages’, I love it when somebody refers to “the good old days!” The good old days for me were around 20 years ago when I was shooting back-to-back features mostly on film and digital was still in its infancy.  

I’ve heard so many people talk about how good this industry was long ago. For instance, in my last column I talked about Jim Plannette, my gaffer on many shows. I mentioned his legendary Father, Gaffer Homer Plannette who worked on so many important movies from the ‘30s to the late ‘60s. Jim talked about the working conditions and hours worked back then. He said that there were many weeks that they worked so long that his Dad would leave the house on Monday morning and didn’t come home until Saturday morning. He would catch a few hours of sleep in the back of his car. Sounds great doesn’t it. How great were those old days? And how many of us have complained about long hours on set in contemporary times. 

Someone who has just started to work in 2019 faced the pandemic, then the strikes, and then the current slowdown, must feel very different and probably undecided about the direction of their lives. 

The longer we are in this kind of period, many of us without work, the harder it gets to see, hear, or even feel a solution. I have faith that “it’s” coming back. Hollywood will have more Golden Ages. But so will the rest of the world. I don’t know when that sorting will be or what it will look like. But I do know the public has a voracious appetite for entertainment. 

From celluloid to cellphones

The worlds of entertainment and information will be something else very soon. Communication is instantaneous and global. The effects of each catastrophic event is known immediately and felt globally. Those are conditions we live with. It’s impossible to be off the grid. We are all part of it.  

However, I believe there will be a place for us. Yes, I think there will be a hot AI phase. I think there will be a burn-through period where AI “Stories” will be flooding the market to say “See, I can tell a story.” But how many can? What do we see even now? How many great scripts get machine written?  

I’m not against AI. But there will come a time when it is integrated with our craft and our talents. That could be a real golden age. Even vertical movies seen on an iPhone need a good story and a great script to make something worthwhile.  

For many years I was a finalist judge for the Nicholl Fellowship at the Motion Picture Academy. Every year the finalist 10 scripts are given to the judges to read.  And believe me, if there were three good scripts out of the 10 that was a lot. It’s really hard to tell a good story. 

The era we are in now has phrenetic qualities in a way that might be comparable to any major burst of technological development; the wheel, Gutenberg’s printing press, The industrial revolution, flight. Except, where we are concerned, like every other technology breakthrough the transition to digital started slower in the mid-‘80s when scientists, engineers, and manufactures started the development of what became the first wave of systems, components, tools and standards that marked the beginning of the coming digital age.  

I had nothing against the transition to digital imaging. We’re way past that stage now. But, because I was a voice for “it’s not good enough, yet” I got a reputation for being negative about digital (not a pun). But finally, after a few painful years of development it did get good (enough). Now it’s way beyond that. 

I was dragged reluctantly (but as it turns out fortunately) into the nascent technologies by being asked to shoot a test for Panavision, Sony and NHK, the giant Japanese network that always had an early hand in the development of ‘better’ TV. Sony and Panavision had assembled what was called a “High Vision” camera out of a Panavision front end and a Sony analogue (tube) capture back end. The recording system was still off-board. So, we were connected by a 2” cable to a small bread truck that had a 4” quad Sony Analogue video tape recorder onboard. The whole rig was very cumbersome. But we made a little movie about a bicycle race on the Pacific and a journalist with a romantic connection to the team captain. However, all of that is truly ancient history. 

We are so far beyond the developmental stages. New systems and tools are being developed so rapidly that their adoption in the visual narrative arts will be fully integrated in a flash.  

And now we are threatened by the technology that has become ubiquitous, AI and machine learning. But I have a strong feeling that stories told by non-humans will quickly loose touch with who the real audience is. And the stories that are written and crafted by real people with the tools given to us by new and newer technologies, will stand on their own to become the entertainment of tomorrow. 

Now is the time to learn! Yes, learn to use the tools so that you can put your own creativity to work. That’s how we may still have our places in the next golden age.