Nick Finan

12/12/15
Lajoie
Spielberg
Steven Spielberg will perhaps be most widely revered as the father of
Hollywood Blockbusters, yet his influence on contemporary filmmaking runs
well beyond box office bombshells. The most common theme in all his stories
is of the connections of people, and it is this wide treatment of human
relationships that has so influenced contemporary film. Unlike other directors
who often have a specific agenda to push, Spielberg has devoted his films,
across genres, to representing how people interact, love and sometimes war.
He allows his actors to choose how they want their character to act so its
more natural, uses amazing camera skill, parallel editing, was the first use
CGI, and with the help of John Williams created some of the most notable
movie music of all time. Spielberg was a pioneer in the movie industry.
One example of how he allowed his actors to take control of their roles
is Daniel Day-Lewis, and his role as Abraham Lincoln in Spielbergs Lincoln.
Daniel Day-Lewis was faced with the paradoxical challenge of portraying a
man whom everyone and no one knows at once. Lincoln is near enough that
we can look at the light that fell upon him. He was the first U.S. President to
be photographed extensively, but not so near that we can hear his voice or
see his odd, flat-footed walk. He is ubiquitous but unknowable, frozen in
marble or granite, flattened into currency. Try making him talk or move and
you risk creating an animatronic character at Epcot Center, as Spielberg

puts it. Thats exactly what we didnt want. (McGrath). Producer Kathleen
Kennedy described Day-Lewis' performance as "remarkable" after 75% of the
filming had been completed, and said, "Every day you get the chills thinking
that Lincoln is sitting there right in front of you." Kennedy described DayLewis' method acting immersion into the role: "He is very much deeply
invested and immersed throughout the day when he's in character, but he's
very accessible at the end of the day, once he can step outside of it and not
feel that I mean, he's given huge scenes with massive amounts of dialogue
and he needs to stay in character, it's a very, very performance-driven
movie."(McGrath). His performance as Abraham Lincoln earned him his third
Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the only actor who has won
three Oscars in the leading actor category. If Spielberg told him how to
portray Lincoln, none of this wouldve happened.
One movie that comes to mind when you think of a directors vision
coming to life with the use of camera work to make a movie come alive is
Saving Private Ryan. The harrowing 25-minute dramatization of World War
IIs D-Day invasion that opens Steven Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan is one
of the most realistic battle scenes ever depicted on film. Shot over four
weeks on a $12 million budget, the sequence used more than 750 extras and
a cast led by Tom Hanks to recreate the Allies initial massacre and ultimate
victory at Omaha Beach in Northern France. The remarkably graphic and
haunting set piece helped Spielberg win the DGA Award and Oscar for best
director in 1999. Because of restrictions and new construction at the actual

historic site, the invasion was staged at Curracloe Strand on the east coast of
Ireland. Striving to recreate the jarring, blurred look of 1940s photographs
and newsreels, Spielberg and his longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski
shot most of the picture using handheld cameras and came up with various
tricks to give the scene a low-tech, documentary feel. In fact, the original
script condensed all of the D-Day action into about seven pages, without
including too many specifics. "I had to shoot this sequence one step at a
time because thats the way the Rangers took the beach one inch at a time.
As a result, I was able to make up this whole sequence as I went along," says
Spielberg. I dont mean the whole history or the narrative of what happened
on June 6, 1944, but literally to come up with shots on the spur of the
moment and not a month ahead of time. It helped make things a little more
chaotic and unpredictable."(Steven Spielberg Film Techniques). He wanted to
give the audience a feel of what it was like to be on the beach, not just to
see what happened. During a private screening of the movie, many of the
WW2 and Vietnam veterans had to leave the theatre before the opening
scene was over because it was too real and brought back some unwanted
memories or PTSD.
Spielberg uses parallel editing, or crosscutting, a cinematic convention
in which two or more concurrent scenes are interwoven with each other,
throughout Schindlers List. Parallel editing illuminates the stark difference
between the hardships of the Jews and the comfort and optimism of
Schindler and the Nazis in Poland. In the broadest sense, it demonstrates the

powerful contrast between happiness and sadness (Schindlers List). Two

scenes in particular demonstrate the powerful impact of parallel editing that
a linear presentation of the story could not have produced. In the first scene,
Schindler moves into his luxury apartment in Krakw soon after the Jewish
owners are evacuated by the Nazis and sent to the Krakw ghetto. In the
second and perhaps the most powerful crosscut scene in the film occurs
when Schindler celebrates his birthday with a group of Nazis in a nightclub.
Here, Schindlers wantonness rises to new heights as he and the Nazis hold a
party in the midst of the evil of the Holocaust surrounding them. But even in
dire situations, a celebration proves that hope persists, as Spielberg shows
us by splicing this scene with the wedding in the labor camp. But yet a third
line of action is cut into this scene, its brutality contrasting with the hope and
joy of the wedding and birthday celebrations, Goeth brutally beats Helen
Hirsch in her basement room after attempting to seduce her. The contrast
between Helens desolation and the happiness of the participants in the two
celebrations forces viewers to confront the reality of the Jewish situation
during the Holocaust, when violence and death were always just around the
corner.
When Jurassic Park was released in 1993, CGI was still largely unproven
both in the industry and at the box office. Hollywood was hesitant to gamble
on high-tech special effects in the wake of the financial costs and middling
returns for of Tron. Film critic J. Hoberman, in his book Film After Film, gives
that one movie the dubious distinction of being "credited with (or blamed for)

delaying CGI-based cinema for a decade."(Huls) The result being, as industry

expert Ron Miller tells us in Special Effects: An Introduction to Movie Magic,
that even into the early '90s "directors were still wary of computer-generated
special effects,"(Huls) in spite of better and better technology. Part of this
was because moviegoers had yet to accept CGI as anything more than a
novelty. For effects to truly break, their creators had to advance the
technology to the point where the seam between illusion and reality
completely disappeared. Jurassic Park did that. Spielberg told Tom Shone
that when he saw Industrial Light and Magic's first test shots of the
dinosaurs, he felt as though he was "watching our future unfolding on the TV
screen"(Huls). George Lucas, who was also there, recalled "it was like one of
those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first
telephone call... A major gap had been crossed and things were never going
to be the same(Huls). He was right. Without Spielberg taking the risk and
using CGI, movies today would not be what they are.
One of the most popular and successful American orchestral
composers of the modern age, John Williams is the winner of five Academy
Awards, 17 Grammys, three Golden Globes, two Emmys and five BAFTA
Awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He has written
the music for what seems to be all of Spielbergs movies. Best known for his
film scores and ceremonial music, Williams is also a noted composer of
concert works and a renowned conductor. Williams scores for such films
as Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler's List, as well as the Indiana

Jones series, have won him multiple awards and produced best-selling
recordings, and his scores for the original Star Wars trilogy transformed the
landscape of Hollywood film music and became icons of American culture.
Williams has composed the music and served as music director for nearly
eighty films, including Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Seven Years in
Tibet, The Lost World, Rosewood, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's
List, Jurassic Park, and Jaws (The John Williams Web Pages).
Spielberg and Williams met in 1972, the composer had nearly 20 years
of film and TV scoring behind him; he had collected an Oscar for adapting
"Fiddler on the Roof" to the screen and had just scored a giant commercial
hit, "The Poseidon Adventure." Spielberg was a 25-year-old television director
about to shoot his first theatrical feature. The young filmmaker had listened
to a record of an Americana-style score Williams composed for "The Reivers"
so many times that he had worn it out, and he wanted a similar sound for his
feature debut, "The Sugarland Express." At Spielberg's request, a Universal
executive arranged a meeting. "Steven took me to a very fancy restaurant in
Beverly Hills for lunch, in the days of these martini lunches," said Williams.
"It was like going with a teenager who had never ordered wine before and
didn't quite know what to do with the silver. He was so young, a little older
than my children but not a whole lot. And seemed to know more about my
music than I did. He would sing third themes from some remote western."
Impressed by the script and charmed by the boyish enthusiasm of its
director, Williams agreed to work on the movie, and arguably the most

successful film music partnership in Hollywood history was born (Keegan).

Williams has been awarded several gold and platinum records, and his score
for Schindler's List earned him both an Oscar and a Grammy. In 2000, at the
ShoWest Convention USA, the National Association of Theater Owners
honored him as Maestro of the Year.
Spielberg is one of the most decorated and respected directors and
producers of all-time. He allows his actors to portray their characters on how
they want to so they are more comfortable. His camera work is so life like,
people feel like they are watching a home video. His use of CGI changed
Hollywood Blockbusters forever. His use of parallel editing makes audiences
feel so many emotions in one scene and with the help from John Williams,
changed how people view movie music. Without Spielberg, the movies we
know and love today would never have been possible.

Work Cited
Huls, Alexander. "The Jurassic Park Period: How CGI Dinosaurs Transformed
Film Forever." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 4 Apr. 2013. Web.

12 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/04/the-ijurassic-park-i-period-how-cgi-dinosaurs-transformed-filmforever/274669/>.
Keegan, Rebecca. "John Williams and Steven Spielberg Mark 40 Years of
Collaboration." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 8 Jan. 2012.
Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/08/entertainment/la-ca-johnwilliams-20120108>.
Mcgrath, Charles. "Abe Lincoln as Youve Never Heard Him." The New York
Times. The New York Times, 3 Nov. 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/movies/daniel-day-lewis-onplaying-abraham-lincoln.html?_r=0>.
"Schindler's List." SparkNotes. SparkNotes. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.sparknotes.com/film/schindlerslist/section3.rhtml>.
"Steven Spielberg Film Techniques With Pretty Pictures!" Free Online Film
School: Learn Filmmaking. LA Filmakers, 3 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Dec.
2015. <http://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmaking/steven-spielbergfilm-techniques.html>.
"The John Williams Web Pages: Biography." The John Williams Web Pages:
Biography. 5 June 2006. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.johnwilliams.org/reference/biography.html>.