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Steven Spielberg is the king of the original blockbuster and has found both financial and
critical acclaim across a variety of genres over a long career.
I think the key to his success stems from his ability to craft movies which on the one
hand are very entertaining with mass appeal yet on the other hand still contain more depth
than just a regular popcorn flick.
Spielberg deliberately constructs his films visually so that, no matter the subject, they
produce a strong and visceral response from the audience.
In this video I’ll break down three of his films which he produced at three increasing
budget levels: Duel, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Saving Private Ryan, to see the similarities
in his work and how the movies he has directed have evolved throughout his career.
Spielberg was drawn to making movies at a young age. At around 10 he began making adventure
films using an 8mm camera.
He taught himself the basics through making these short films and consuming as many movies
as possible at the cinema.
At 17 he made his first 140 minute independent sci fi feature film, Firelight, on a budget
of around $500 from his father.
Despite having an astounding reel, he was rejected from USC’s film school due to bad
academic grades.
“I didn’t go to film school so my only film school was a couple of summers hanging
around on the Universal lot unofficially, then getting jobs directing TV and I guess
you would call it on-the-job training.”
“I was an ambitious lad at the time, and I just wanted to be a movie director. I looked
at every television episode I directed as a stepping stone to getting someone to hire
me to direct a feature.”
Based on the strength of the episodic TV episodes he directed in his early 20s, he was able
to strike a deal to direct a TV film with Universal which would air as part of broadcaster
ABC’s Movie Of The Week.
Spielberg was drawn to the idea of Duel after reading a short story by Richard Matheson,
who later adapted it into a screenplay.
Duel is about an anthropomorphised truck which chases down a protagonist, trying to run him
off the road. Spielberg has described how his own experience of being bullied as a child
drew him to the material.
The truck was specially selected due to having features which resembled the human face.
Spielberg cut around 50% of the dialogue in the script and instead opted to tell the story
visually rather than through speech.
He had to work off a modest budget of $450,000, with a $5,000 director’s fee. This only
allowed for a ridiculously tight 11 day shooting window.
Spielberg overcame this lack of production time and budget by thoroughly planning out
the film in pre-production, a technique he’d picked up from working in TV.
“I had a shot list for all the television I ever directed. You had to. They give you
very few days. They give you six days for an hour. And I had something like 12 on Duel
for 74 minutes.”
“I had my shots organised and it’s the only way to get ten pages shot a day.”
To shoot so much material in such a short space of time Spielberg collaborated with
experienced cinematographer Jack Marta, and a skeleton crew, carefully placing as many
as five cameras to cover the action.
One camera would be mounted inside the car, while some of the cameras would be filming
run bys, for example filming the truck from right to left. They could then maximise their
coverage by simultaneously mounting the remaining cameras on the blind side of the vehicle to
pick up extra details.
This minimised the number of takes required on complex sequences and ensured Spielberg
had the coverage he required to edit the film.
Part of what makes Duel so engaging, frightening and almost supernatural comes from the visual
language, combined with the fact that the driver remains unseen the entire time.
This technique of increasing tension by not showing the threat, was one he would use again
on Jaws.
Spielberg and Marta also used the constant motion and rhythm of the camera moving forward,
backwards and panning with the action on an operated head to add tension to the story.
Duel was shot in the more affordable spherical format with Panavision and Arriflex cameras
on Panavision Super Speed lenses, which come in a wide selection of focal lengths from
14mm to 180mm at a fast stop.
However it does appear as though Marta largely shot the film at a fairly deep stop.
This both sharpened up the image, made pulling focus easier and allowed the audience to see
more of the background, which included the menacing chasing truck.
Duel ended up as an incredibly engaging, genre blending early feature for Spielberg, especially
considering its low budget and limited production time.
He extensively shot listed the film in pre-production, used five cameras to increase coverage, over
a limited 11 day shooting window, and focused on telling a simple, concept-based story visually
by crafting a dynamic visual language, full of movement.
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After the success of Star Wars, Spielberg met up with George Lucas in Hawaii who mentioned
that he had a concept for a story. Spielberg was excited about
the idea as he had been wanting to make a James Bond style adventure thriller.
Raiders had all those Bond qualities, without the gimmicks and technology, and with added
supernatural characteristics which was right up Spielberg’s alley.
However, Philip Kaufman had already been attached to direct.
When Kauffman dropped out Spielberg jumped on board.
He set the goal of wanting to make a medium budget film which looked more expensive than
it actually was.
“I really wanted to make Raiders economically and make it look like $40 million and, in
fact, spend only $20 million - which was the original intended budget.”
“The $20 million actually would pay for 87 days of shooting, but I had devised a second
schedule of 73 days that very few people knew about - Paramount Pictures, for one.”
73 days was the schedule which he stuck to.
He finished the film on the short schedule by: minimising the amount of takes by shooting
between three to five, and by storyboarding almost the entire film in advance.
Spielberg felt that minimising takes led to more spontaneity and less self-indulgence.
Not only did he storyboard all the sequences involving fights, chases and effects but he
even storyboarded more traditional dialogue and performance based scenes.
Again he employed an experienced cinematographer to execute his vision, this time British DP
Douglas Slocombe. Like Duel they opted to shoot with multiple cameras to speed up production.
Slocombe brought on a large British technical crew who worked quickly and were accustomed
to working in tough, remote conditions, and building large studio sets.
“We had almost $4 million in sets alone, and when you multiply that against $100,000
per shooting day on a distant location, and everybody's salaries, and what it costs today
to shoot a movie internationally, you start to see why the film cost $20 million.”
Spielberg described the cinematography as a combination of what he wanted to do and
what the DP wanted.
Initially Speilberg wanted the lighting to be moodier, like a noir, using backlight with
no fill, but Slocombe convinced him to use some fill light to create a richer, contrasty
negative with the Eastman 5247 100T film stock.
For example, in the bar scene Slocombe used a large carbon arc lamp as a backlight. Instead
of using a fill light he allowed the light which hit the cream wall and bounced back
to fill in the face.
In other cases he brought in an old school basher light which comes with a 1,000W tungsten
bulb and covered it with lots of diffusion for a soft fill.
Slocombe’s lighting notably mixes both hard light with strong shadows and soft, wrapping
light. He also mixed cooler and warmer colour temperatures. These techniques created interesting
visual contrasts in the frame.
Like the story of Indiana Jones itself, the cinematography mixed a naturalistic feel at
times with a more elevated, fantastical look.
For example in an adventuring scene in the jungle, using lots of smoke and hard light
evoked a more magical, fantastical feel.
Whereas in the more realistic, normal world of the university his lighting is a little
softer, more natural and conventional.
Spielberg also mixed practical effects, such as a scene where a fibreglass and plaster
12 foot boulder chases down Harrison Ford, with special effects in post production done
by overlaying optical composites.
Like Duel, Slocombe also shot the film at a slightly deeper stop, far from wide open.
This allows us to see more background information, sharpened up the Panavision C-Series anamorphic
lenses and minimised optical falloff.
Like in many of Spielberg’s films he employed traditional grips equipment, mainly a dolly,
to execute smooth, cinematic and dynamic movement.
In the end he delivered Raiders on its medium-sized $20 million budget, which was shot in four
different countries in remote locations, with expensive set builds, numerous special effects,
lots of extras and a famous leading man, yet over a short production window.
By the late 90s, World War II had become a period that Spielberg was fascinated with
examining in his films.
The premise and approach he took to Saving Private Ryan however differed from his previous
treatments of the time period.
In order to tell this large scope but personal, visceral, on the ground war film he was able
to secure a sizeable $70 million budget.
To prepare his team of actors for the more realistic style of filming which they would
be undertaking he sent them on a gruelling boot camp to acclimate them to the army’s
physical labour and difficult living conditions.
He also made sure that the bags and gear they carried on screen were realistically weighted
and made them carry real guns.
He joked that after two weeks the actors didn’t need aging makeup as they were really physically
exhausted.
Spielberg teamed up with cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, who by this stage had become a
regular collaborator of his, to execute the photography based on his vision of realism.
"When I read a script and like the story, I respond to it on an emotional level."
"I have a concept of who the characters are and where the story is taking us, and I then
imagine how I can enhance the storytelling through visuals. The story automatically dictates
how I’m going to light it.”
Kaminiski narrowed down the look he wanted through a process of elimination by first
dismissing photographic styles which didn’t suit the project.
He then did research and came up with sources of inspiration such as Robert Capa’s visually
chaotic photographs of the invasion of Omaha Beach.
After he had an idea of the look he wanted Kaminski conducted various camera tests to
find the correct combination of film stock, processing techniques and lenses which most
aligned with his vision.
He settled on Eastman’s 200T film stock, pushed by one stop, Panavision Super and Ultra
Speed lenses and a film development process called ENR which both desaturated the stock
and sharpened up the look of textures, such as clothing.
To get the lenses closer to emulating the vintage glass of World War II, he got Panavision
to remove the coating from them. This decreased contrast, increased flares and fogged the
lens more when it was hit directly with light.
Probably the most well known sequence in the film is the brutal landing. The idea behind
this scene was to create the illusion that the action was being captured by several combat
cameramen on the ground.
To achieve this they shot almost entirely with a handheld camera.
To further push the visually chaotic camera movement, Kaminski employed Clairmont Camera’s
Image Shaker.
This is a device which can be mounted onto the front bars of the camera and vibrates
at a controlled level with vertical and horizontal vibration settings.
They used this to mimic the effect of explosions happening around the soldiers and to increase
the visual tension with vibration.
Another trick Kaminiski used to create a sense of urgency and reality was shooting with a
shutter angle of between 45 and 90 degrees, instead of the standard 180.
Shooting with a narrower shutter angle sharpens up the motion, making the camera movement
feel more jittery. For explosions it also sharpens up the particles in the air so that
you can see grains of sand getting blown around.
To enforce a feeling of realism Kaminski also largely relied on natural light. Only using
an occasional white or silver bounce if he needed fill.
However for other scenes which weren’t daylight exteriors, such as one in an office, he did
decide to use artificial light.
He created his own sun by getting his team to rig 18 18K HMIs onto a truss outside the
window and added a ¼ CTO and CTS gel to them to warm up their colour temperatures.
For another night scene which took place by candle light he used a tungsten china ball
placed below the actors as a key light. He then used a flag to block some of the light
so that half of the soldier’s face remained in shadow.
So, Saving Private Ryan used its larger budget to employ a cast of stars, execute huge scale
war set pieces, with loads of extras, costumes and production design builds over a longer
production window.
Going over Spielberg’s filmography it becomes apparent that he doesn’t have just one style,
preferred genre, or tone.
As we’ve seen the visual language which he uses changes depending on the story, from
a fantastical, lighter adventure film to a rough, dark, realistic portrait of war.
However what does remain consistent is that the camera is always an active participant
in his storytelling process.
Despite using different visual styles, Spielberg has an incredible ability as a director to
strongly translate an emotion or feeling to the audience. This is a rare skill to possess
and acquire, yet one which is absolutely crucial to effective storytelling and which has made
him the king of the original blockbuster.
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