Kirsner Essay and Mathers Reply

[James Mathers]

Reprinted from DCS eNewsletter of August 5th, 2008:

One DCS Member’s Perspective

Please note that the opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Digital Cinema Society; (see James Mathers’ commentary which follows). We encourage an open dialogue on all topics related to Digital Cinema and Entertainment Technology, and DCS members are invited to share their views on our forums.

"Inventing The Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo”

by Guest Essayist, Scott Kirsner

Whenever you buy a ticket to see a movie on a Saturday night, the secret technological history of Hollywood is included free with the purchase price.

When you walk the downward-sloping aisle to pick out a good seat, you're doing something that Thomas Edison was convinced would never happen; although Edison was among the first to capture motion on film, he was sure it'd be more profitable to charge individual viewers to watch movies at personal viewing stations - Kinetoscopes - rather than projecting images on a screen for a large audience. “Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” Edison said about his successful Kinetoscope business.

The movie has sound because the Warner brothers, despite several disastrous attempts to improve the silent film experience by adding a soundtrack, tried one more time, and happened to hire an ebullient vaudeville performer named Al Jolson to star in one of their first talkies. Unless you're a classic film buff, the movie you're seeing is likely in color, and that wouldn't be the case were it not for a chance meeting at the Saratoga Race Track between Herb Kalmus, the foun der of Technicolor, and Jock Whitney, a wealthy playboy who wanted to make movies. That encounter kept Technicolor from running out of money, and led to the making of Gone With the Wind, the 1939 blockbuster that finally convinced Hollywood to switch over to color.

Even if you decide to stay in on Saturday night and watch a movie, that's a choice that's linked to Hollywood's hidden technological history, too. Walt Disney and William Boyd (who played Hopalong Cassidy, the righteous cowboy) were among the first people in Hollywood to understand that television might actually represent a new business opportunity, rather than just a threat to ticket sales. Recorded movies on tape and DVD exist thanks to the patronage of Bing Crosby, who paid a team of engineers in the 1950s to develop the first prototype video recorder.

The story of how new technologies enabled Hollywood to become America's dominant culture factory, and remain in that role for more than a century, hasn't been told before. How does innovation ever prevail when just about everyone working in a given field would prefer that things remain the same?

Delving into that question is why I felt compelled to write the new book Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo. Innovators, like the members of the Digital Cinema Society, rarely win on the merits of their idea alone, or on personal charisma. New ideas always encounter stiff headwinds. Some succeed, while others flicker and fade.

Hollywood is one of the best examples of an established industry (and the movies an established art form) that, like every established industry, relies on innovation for its survival, but resists innovation at every turn. That makes it an ideal place to explore the obstacles that innovators face, and the persistence, luck, and cleverness required to vault past them. It also offers insight into the minds et of those who fervently defend the status quo.

One of the best ongoing examples of this battle between innovators and the group that I call preservationists (people who'd prefer to preserve the status quo, not film preservationists) involves digital cinematography.

At least since 1972, there have been discussions in Hollywood about the benefits of using electronic cameras on the movie set. One of the pioneers was Lee Garmes, who had begun his career in 1918 as a camera operator for silent films, cranking the camera by hand. As a cinematographer, Garmes had shot the original Howard Hawks Scarface in 1932, and a large portion of Gone With the Wind. He'd also won an Academy Award for Shanghai Express, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich.

In 1972, at a gathering at the American Society of Cinematographers clubhouse in Hollywood, Garmes, a past president of the group, announced that he'd just finished shooting a feature on videotape, and “hoped never to see another piece of film.” The movie was Why, a drama about teen suicide, commissioned by Technicolor as an experiment in transferring material shot on videotape to 35-millimeter film for theatrical release. But Garmes may have made shooting with video sound too easy for his peers' liking, as when he told American Cinematographer magazine, “Looking at the monitors, the job was so easy. I could have phoned it in.” Most cinematographers preferred for their work to seem complicated, mysterious, magical.

Into the 21st century, proponents of digital cinematography - most notably George Lucas - have continued to face skepticism. When the cameras weren't “good enough,” cinematographers knocked them without trying them. Cinematographers and directors argued that they didn't have enough time between projects to experiment with new cameras, so they stuck with their tried-and-true gear. They feared that they'd look like no vices on the first project where they used a digital camera, or somehow slow down the shoot. They worried that digital would reduce the size of the crew they needed - and thus their status on the set. They wanted to stick with the art form they'd grown up with, and that their mentors had worked in. Steven Spielberg told me, “If it was good enough for Hitchcock, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, and Akira Kurosawa, it's good enough for me.” Spielberg even likes the limitations imposed by the length of film that could fit in a cartridge. “I'm nostalgic about having a camera operator turn to me and whisper, 'we're about to roll out.' I do love having to reload. It reminds me of the days when I had to reload my little eight millimeter Bell and Howell camera.”

In another interview, director of photography Roger Deakins waxed equally eloquent about film. “There's a sense of mystery, because you don't know what's going into the magic black box camera until you send the film to the lab. With digital, it's all very businesslike. We're not businessmen. We're artists and magicians.”

That tension between the art and business of making movies… and between innovators who want to push things forward and the preservationists who are not so gung ho about change (and who often want to hold on to the past for nostalgic reasons) is what, to me, makes the technological history of Hollywood so fascinating.

We all confront new ideas - whether it's digital cinematography, movies delivered over the Internet, or video viewed on the screen of an iPod or mobile phone - in different ways. Sometimes we are innovators - a new technology seems to open up new artistic possibilities, or make shooting so much easier - and sometime we are preservationists, sticking to a much-loved tool.

But I'd argue that it's those moments when we're innovators, experimenting with something new, figuring out how it fits into our work, when we move the business and the art form of cinema forward.

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Scott Kirsner is the author of the new book Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Movi...dp/1438209991/ click here He edits the blog Cinematech: http://www.cinematech.blogspot.com click here and also writes for Variety. Scott is also one of the founders of a new event being held in the San Francisco area this fall, The Conversation: http://www.theconversationspot.com click here which will explore new technologies changing the entertainment industry.

Commentary on the above essay from James Mathers, Cinematographer and President of the Digital Cinema Society

I’m currently well into Scott Kirsner’s book, enjoying it a lot, and seeing many similarities in Hollywood’s technological history to the modern Innovators on the scene today. However, I can’t abide by statements which seem to suggest that Cinematographers are interested in maintaining the status quo only to make their work seem “complicated,” or for fear of looking like “novices,” or only in an effort to maintain their status on set by requiring an unnecessarily large crew.

Modern Cinematography is indeed complicated, whether captured on film or new digital formats. Why should we Cinematographers seek out new technology only for the sake of being on the bleeding edge? If we have tried and true tools that have reliably stood the test of time, why jettison them before better tools arrive to serve our purposes? And nothing makes the hair on a Cinematographer’s neck stand up faster than the implication that with Digital less crew and equipment are needed, because somehow you don’t have to light as much. We are constantly in search of the best tools, not just the newest; and it’s only fear of Producers buying into this type of fantasy that truly worries us. These misplaced attitudes could rob us of the resources we need to do our jobs in controlling light and shadow while serving as the visual guardians of the motion picture image. Those are my thoughts -- lets hear yours. Visit the Digital Cinema Society Discussion Board -- Letters To The Editor Forum: http://forums.digitalcinemasociety.org click here

[James Mathers]

Copy of note sent to James Mathers from Steven Poster, ASC, past President of that group, and current President of the International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE, Local 600:

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James,

What do you know about this guy Scott Kirsner? He obviously sounds like an academic who doesn't know much about cinematographers. I know that you are aware of my position. And I appreciate your support.
You can tell him my feelings about this. And if he doesn't want me to write criticism of his book that will not be favorable he should learn the true nature of the cinematographer as the earliest adopters of the newest technologies throughout the history of the medium.
You can remind him that it was my vision that started the New Technology Committee at the ASC.
You can even post this exchange if you care to.
Steven
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