How Spielberg Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels
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.
DUEL ($450,000)
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.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ($20 Million)
After the success of Star Wars, Spielberg met up with George Lucas in Hawaii who mentioned that he had a concept for a story, Raiders Of The Lost Arc. 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.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN ($70 Million)
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 age-ing 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.
CONCLUSION
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.