John P ‘Jack’ Beckett became Director of Photograpy  of Beckett Motion Picture in 1961 and continues his great work as an entrepreneur at Innovatrs.

His company grew into a full service provider of Motion Picture on TV equipment. And not just any old bit of TV equipment- they’ve built the fastest Motion Picture Film Scanner in the world. This is the only machine that can digitize 35mm film in its original resolution and dynamic range fast enough to deal with the billions of feet of film rotting in vaults all over the planet.

Jack is one of the more respected names in the field of motion picture and television technologies and production. Check out his early steps into the profession …

Innovatrs: What made you do it? Why did you take the plunge, give up that cosy corporate job and become an entrepreneur?

Jack: Unlike most people that enter the film business, filled with dreams of being a great director, I came in kicking and screaming. My father, a motion picture Director of Photography, put me in the business as punishment for not becoming a dentist. “You’ll end up just another sprocket-jockey like me”, he would say. Coming from the man that lit Citizen Kane, these statements reflected extreme bitterness at a business he viewed as arbitrary and heartbreaking. Feeling as if I were being scourged to the dungeon and with head-hung like a quarry slave, I had my first day at Disney in 1956. I remained a bitter, angry cynical narcissist, becoming a director of Photography along the way; until one day in Paris. I was on a movie and eating in one of those all-you-can-eat for nine thousand dollar places and had this epiphany. ‘Why don’t you stop being a jerk, Jack, and get your arms around this Cameraman thing?’ That was forty years ago.

It is in the nature of the independent film business to be ones own boss. Everyone in film is a private contractor, more or less, and that gives one the mind-set to think entrepreneurially. I can remember the exact minute that I decided to enter this race to build the first Motion Picture quality digital camera, It was 1991 and I was sitting on my couch watching the news and like a bolt of lighting…wow I bet I could ….and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life.

Innovatrs: What was the original @ha Idea and how has it evolved?

Jack: I wish I could say that it was through exhausting study, research and personal insight that I came to this, but unfortunately, armed with ignorance, complete naïveté and a limited experience with CCDs from building telescopes as a hobby, I thought… Gee, why can’t I find a sensor, put it in an existing motion picture camera, get rich and live at the beach. Well, it turned out to be a little more complicated than that.

Innovatrs: What were your first steps after you fleshed out your @ha idea ? What was your first crisis or hurdle?

Jack: I could not get this idea out of my mind. I began to feel building this advanced camera would be personally defining, making me the George Eastman of the 21^st Century. Ego plays a huge part in entrepreneurialism, I feel… but life will disabuse you of this notion soon enough. At the time, I was the VP of a camera rental company in Hollywood and I made a passionate presentation recommending they take this paradigm changing project on. They pondered it for over twenty minutes and told me to take my “Star Wars” s**t down the block. . . I quit. I remember walking out of the building and thinking, Now What?

I had written a tear jerking letter to the DOD wishing to join a program called The Tech Affiliate Program. Back in 1991 there was an effort to commercialize military technology by offering private companies access to various technologies for license. My letter went on about how America was arguably the entertainment super power and all the trick cameras were made in Europe and I wanted to bring back entertainment image capture to this country. It worked. They invited me to be a “Technical Affiliate” with full access to JPL. All I needed was a Company and $250,000.00 to join their exclusive group of merchants of death. At that time, I unfortunately had neither.

Innovatrs: Is this your first business? Did any past experiences or good advice help you navigate the entrepreneur’s road to masochism?

Jack: I was the son of a famous Cinematographer who taught me in the manner of an indentured servant. The old school, depression era mentality of work hard, learn fast, keep your mouth shut and never be late was always the rule. It was the keeping-the-mouth-shut part that was a problem for me. Growing up in the film business, shooting movies and providing production solutions had given me a unique viewpoint that I felt could be harnessed and leveraged into income, so when that bolt out of the blue came to me on my couch… I was ready.

Innovatrs: Have you experienced any great failures in the past and if so, how have they helped you get to where you are today?

Jack: Failures? You bet plenty.. huge. No one learns anything from success, they say, and I was no different. All the while I was rubbing shoulders with the greats and globe trotting glamorously shooting movies, I slowly slipped into a death spiral of alcoholism. I lost everything and ended up in a dumpster behind Paramount Studios. This irony was not lost on me or the few friends that attempted to rescue me.

Failures are only failures if allowed to persist. The other side of this is the greatest achievement in my life. Far more important than the awards won for photography or gains measured through business successes, I celebrate my 22 years of sobriety as the greatest thing I have ever done.