JustArts: Could you tell me about how you got interested in cinematography? Steven Poster: I got interested in photography when I was 10 years old just as a hobby. By the time I was 12, I was serious enough about it that I knew that somehow photography was going to be my life's work. When I was 14, I was living in Lincolnwood, [Ill.] already, and there was an empty lot next to our house. I was sitting in the living room one day and a car drove up: an old Jaguar. The guy got out, had a cap on and a beard, smoked a pipe and had a light meter on his belt. I ran outside and I said, "Gee, I'm Steve, I live next door here. What kind of light meter is that?" He said, "We'll have a lot of time to talk about that, son, because I'm building a house next to you." And he became my mentor, but what happened was, the day I met him, I thought he was the coolest person I'd ever seen, and I said, "Well, I want to do what he does." And he was a newsreel cameraman who also owned the film lab that processed all the news film in Chicago. . From that point on, I knew what I wanted to do. I was one of the lucky ones.

JA: So when you went to school you knew you wanted to study photography?

SP: I went to school specifically to study photography. There was very little of it in high school, but I made my way through it. But my mentor, Morrie, insisted that I study film photography because at that point there weren't really any great cinematography schools. . I went to Southern Illinois University for photography. They had a basic course in photography, but it wasn't very deep. It was mostly how to shoot weddings and things like that. After about two years of that I got out and went to what is now the Pasadena Art Center College of Design. I learned my craft of photography and mostly how to see light and work with light. Then I came back to finish up my education at the Institute of Design in Chicago, which was the American Bauhaus and got another perspective to it all. In my senior year . I went for a job to a little commercial company that looked at a little film I shot in school. . They said, "We're going to hire you as a cameraman." . Within a week later, I shot my first national commercial and I never looked back.

JA: How do you balance your passions for still photography and cinematography?

SP: For me it's still the same emotional quality when I make the image. However, when I do it for film, I usually have a lot more help. That's a big part of the difference. . I have a whole crew. It's like being a muralist. You have a whole studio of helpers to do the physical labor.

JA: Do you usually work with the same people?

SP: If you find people that you like working with and you're working consistently enough, then it's not hard. Very often our work is more sporadic than that, so it's very hard to keep a good crew. But yeah, I have people that I've worked with for years.

JA: Could you tell me about your favorite experiences working on movies?

SP: In terms of great moments, [in] every film there's some great moments. One of the great moments of my career certainly was doing Donnie Darko because of the unique nature of that movie. And Richard Kelly was 23 years old when we were doing that. And we partnered in a way that is almost rare in the motion picture business. We created a cult classic with that. I think we're going to create something similar with the movie The Box.

JA: Were there any particular challenges or advantages to shooting a thriller?

SP: From the very beginning of my career I shot some horror films. My first two feature films were Blood Beach and Dead and Buried. I did some thrillers too along the way. . Someone To Watch Over Me, that was a thriller with director Ridley Scott.