"You're gonna need a bigger boat."
We're going to tell you about
the 14 most important director trademarks
of cinema titan Steven Spielberg,
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Now let's talk about Spielberg.
You know it's Steven Spielberg if...
You see what Kevin B. Lee dubbed
“the Spielberg face” --
a track or a dolly zoom in on a character
who's reacting to something off camera
with shock or awe.
The Spielberg face is a way of subtly manipulating
our emotions.
We watch the character staring, gaping,
and we’re already filled with wonder
before we even see what’s so wondrous.
So by the time we get to view
what the character is looking at,
our emotional response is exactly
what Spielberg wants it to be.
This shot is also a way of strongly identifying
us
with the person --
we focus on what they feel
so it’s almost like we become them.
And even in moments when the character
isn’t feeling shock or awe,
Spielberg uses that dramatic track in
to create awe in us.
Like in The Color Purple when Celie finally
stands up to her abusive husband.
“Everything you done to me,
you already done to you.”
Or in Amistad, when Cinque strings together
the few English words he knows
to speak up for his freedom.
“Give...us free.”
In these scenes the track in symbolizes
the character’s growing power
as they take agency in their situation.
There’s a sweeping score that gets stuck
in your head.
It's probably written by composer John Williams.
Spielberg often features what he calls
“wall-to-wall music.”
So this guides our emotion,
urging us to feel a certain something --
which is similar to what he’s doing
with the Spielberg face.
Think of how the ominous motif from Jaws
makes us tense up using just two notes.
Williams has said that he believes the motif’s
power
comes from its simplicity.
And you could say that about
Spielberg’s filmmaking overall --
his tactics are overt and uncomplicated,
easy to grasp, but masterfully applied
to play our emotions like a fiddle.
And through these techniques,
the film tells you exactly how to feel.
Spielberg is a master of emotional manipulation.
He uses all the tools in his toolbox to scare
us,
move us, and get us to that place of catharsis.
So we can sit back and enjoy the ride
as we’re seamlessly ushered along
from emotion to emotion.
The narrative equivalent of the Spielberg
face
is the way the director sometimes creates
sentiment
before we know why we should care about something.
In Saving Private Ryan, he bookends the movie
with elderly Private Ryan at the American
cemetery
in Normandy,
so there’s all this emotion directed at
what we’re about to see,
even before we experience the plot.
Ordinary people are caught up in
extraordinary circumstances.
“He says these are ordinary people
under extraordinary circumstances.”
The events seem even more momentous
because the people involved aren’t used
to
this kind of danger, excitement or challenge.
So we feel like it could just as easily be
us,
on this thrilling roller coaster ride.
As we saw the Spielberg face helps us identify
with the character --
and throughout the story, Spielberg is putting
us
in the character’s emotional shoes.
Often he is showing us how normal people
can be tremendously brave and resourceful
when they need to be.
So, we feel, maybe we can be those things,
too.
There’s an emphasis on childhood.
“Grownups can’t see him.
Only little kids can see him.”
The film may highlight kids’ agency and
openness
to the world.
And there’s a suggestion that the adults
are out of touch with what really matters.
In E.T., we don’t see any adult characters’
faces
besides Elliott’s mom until late in the
film,
so they seem dark and intimidating.
Even Elliott’s loving mother comes across
as oblivious.
"Here he is!"
"Here's who?"
"The man from the moon.
But I think you've killed him already."
His films often tell stories of lost innocence
or children getting caught up in complicated
or dangerous circumstances.
In Schindler’s List the girl in the red
coat
is almost a transcendent presence.
She’s the one of the only uses of color
in the black and white part of the film,
a visual beacon of innocence and purity
in the darkest times.
And this makes the later shot of her dead
body
all the more horrifying.
So Spielberg’s message tends to be
that childhood is a beautiful time
that needs to be preserved as long as possible,
but also that that age of innocence inevitably,
and sometimes tragically, has to end.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the
world.”
Still, we can maintain a childlike sense of
wonder
and possibility as adults.
Spielberg’s films make us feel you’re
never too old
for adventure and discovering something new.
"A whole virtual universe."
The nuclear family is fractured.
“Your father and I are getting a divorce.”
This might mean a single parent home,
"My husband and I just separated recently...
and it hasn't been easy on the children."
grief or trauma,
"He died when I was a kid."
or characters with daddy issues.
“If you’d been an ordinary, average father
like the other guys’ dads,
you would have understood that.”
Spielberg is famously preoccupied with fatherhood.
And this comes from his own experience --
he was very affected by his parents’ divorce
and he had an estranged relationship
with his father for many years.
He’s said E.T. is about his parents’ divorce.
“Remember when he used to take us out
to the ballgames
and take us to the movies
and we’d have popcorn fights?”
Elliott’s anxiety about E.T. leaving him
makes sense --
because it’s like he’s dealing with his
father
leaving all over again.
“You could be happy here.
I could take care of you.”
In other Spielberg films the father character
might be a workaholic, emotionally distant,
or even horribly abusive.
Spielberg has said that after reconciling
with his father and having children of his
own,
he started presenting more heroic father
characters onscreen.
He’s said that he couldn’t imagine
making Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
where Roy abandons his family,
after he became a dad himself.
We also see Spielberg holding out hope
that childless men or imperfect fathers
can grow into the role.
“I wish I had a dad like you.”
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,
Indy meets back up with his estranged father.
“I respected your privacy
and I taught you self-reliance.”
“What you taught me was that I was less
important
to you than people who had been dead
for five hundred years in another country.”
And as adults they’re able to start repairing
their relationship.
“Let it go.”
Spielberg also celebrates the value
of a surrogate father or a surrogate family.
“And I was with the only brothers I have
left.”
In other films we see a man who’s forced
into the role of protector
in the scariest possible circumstances,
and ends up being pretty good at it.
So Spielberg suggests that fatherhood is something
that has to be earned,
rather than an innate instinct.
We also see the positive impact of protective
patriarchs
on communities at large.
"They say your factory is a haven.
They say you're good."
Spielberg has even said that he sees Abraham
Lincoln
as “the father of the nation in need of
repair.”
“Abolishing slavery by constitutional provision
settles the fate for all coming time.
Not only of the millions now in bondage
but of unborn millions to come.”
The characters discover a mysterious dimension
that exists alongside their stable, ordinary
lives.
Spielberg sets exciting adventures in
suburban, middle-class communities.
So this is similar to his tactic of showing
ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances
--
here we see the extraordinary in ordinary
settings.
So Spielberg is channeling that curiosity
kids have
for their environments and making us feel
the ordinary places we know are magical.
This appealing combination of weirdness and
the everyday
has been copied a lot --
for example, in a show like Stranger Things.
And these movies tend to end with an affirmation
of wholesome middle-class values
and “normal” American life.
Jaws validates middle-class masculinity
through the fates it gives to male characters
from different classes --
in the end it’s the humble, middle class
family man
who comes through.
It might be the story of the struggle to survive.
"The list is life.
All around its margins lies the gulf."
The survival theme might also be tied
to a character’s journey of going home.
“E.T. phone home.”
In The Color Purple, Celie’s whole life
is a survival story
as she deals with an abusive marriage
and the hardship of being a poor, black woman
in the Jim Crow South.
But Spielberg shows that survival isn’t
just an individual thing --
it’s also about helping others live.
“Whoever saves one life saves the world
entire.”
Spielberg infuses all of these survival stories
with hope.
He sends the message that life
is worth fighting for,
no matter what.
"Earn this."
There’s a reflection shot.
Jacob Oller at Film School Rejects argues
that this shot is often a way
of visually symbolizing
the characters’ own self-reflection.
And naturally it also makes us stop
to consider who the character is
and how we see them.
“I pardon you.”
Like at the end of Schindler’s List
when Schindler looks out the car window
at the Jews that he’s saved.
These people are transposed
onto the image of Schindler,
So the picture emphasizes how interconnected
all of these lives have become.
In other cases, the reflection shot might
represent
that the character is fixated on something.
There’s a long, unbroken take
that Every Frame a Painting has named
the “Spielberg oner.”
Unlike other filmmakers, Spielberg usually
uses
long takes in an extremely natural way
that doesn’t draw a lot of attention.
Light is used to suggest mystery and the unknown.
Roger Ebert has pointed out that where most
filmmakers
would use darkness to represent the unknown,
Spielberg uses bright or glowing lights.
And this often makes the unknown seem wondrous
rather than purely scary.
The light suggests potential to be discovered.
The film might show a shooting star.
Spielberg has been fascinated
with stars and the night sky
ever since he witnessed a meteor shower as
a kid.
But the story goes that the first time
a shooting star appeared in one of his films
it was actually a happy accident.
Only after Jaws he made it a motif.
Spielberg’s work is all about spectacle.
He’s the highest grossing director of all
time
and is credited with inventing the modern
blockbuster.
And perhaps no one has surpassed him
in showing just what a blockbuster can really
do.
Spielberg has given us some of the most epic,
awe inspiring shots in all of cinema,
while also evoking personal feeling
and intimate connection.
Sometimes Spielberg can get looked down on
for being sentimental
or spelling out the message too clearly.
"Tell me I'm a good man."
"You are."
But in a world where many of us
can’t agree on anything,
the universality of a good blockbuster
becomes an exceptional power.
Spielberg has that rare talent for summoning
the emotions of every moviegoer,
no matter who you are.
He knows exactly how to make you feel
what he wants you to feel.
“I’ll be right here.”
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