BEN: Hey there, Little Fox readers, and welcome back to People in the News. Today Olivia is going to report on Steven Spielberg, one of the world's greatest filmmakers.
OLIVIA: Steven was born on December 18, 1946, and he saw his first movie when he was about six years old. It featured a huge train crash, which Steven thought was really cool. Attempting to recreate the dramatic crash, Steven borrowed his father's home movie camera and filmed his own model trains crashing into each other.
As a kid Steven went on to make more short films, using his sisters and friends as actors. He didn't have money for special effects, so he had to invent creative ways to simulate explosions and airplanes in flight. When Steven saw how much his friends and family enjoyed watching his finished movies, he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life making films.
At the age of 16, Steven borrowed $500 from his father and made his first full-length movie, Firelight, about aliens arriving on Earth. A local theater owner agreed to show it one night, and, through ticket sales, Steven earned back the $500 he had borrowed, and he even made a profit of one dollar!
But Steven wanted to learn more about making real movies. So one day, while he was on a tour of a film studio, he sneaked away from the tour group and spent the rest of the day snooping around the lot. Steven returned each day that summer, saying "hi" to the security guard on duty, and pretending to be a film studio employee. He was able to watch some famous Hollywood directors as they worked, and he met film and sound editors, learning more about the technical aspects of filmmaking.
Steven planned to enroll in film school after high school, of course. But unfortunately he wasn't able to get into any colleges that offered film programs.
BEN: That doesn't make sense. He was obviously talented, so why couldn't he get into a film school?
OLIVIA: Even though Steven is a smart guy, his grades were terrible. He had neglected his schoolwork because he was so busy making movies!
Steven was not about to give up his dream of becoming a filmmaker though. He continued to make short films and hang around the film studio. Finally, one of his movies caught the attention of some executives, and Steven was offered a job directing television shows. He proved to be very talented, and was soon promoted to directing movies.
Eventually Steven was offered the opportunity to direct Jaws, a thriller about an enormous, bloodthirsty shark that terrorizes beachgoers. Steven told the film's producers that he didn't want to show the shark too much. He believed Jaws would be a lot scarier if he just focused on the water and used scary music. The producers said no, but Steven wound up getting his way. That was because the mechanical sharks he was using kept sinking; he had to shoot most of the movie without them anyway!
Jaws was released in the summer of 1975, and Steven's technique worked; audiences were terrified by the movie. In fact, many American beach towns reported a decline in tourism that summer because so many people were now afraid to go in the ocean! Jaws made more money than any other movie at that time, and its success gave birth to a new trend in Hollywood: the summer blockbuster—that's a fast-paced, entertaining movie accompanied by lots of merchandise and advertising.
Steven went on to direct many more blockbusters. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is about a young boy who befriends an alien who is stranded on Earth. The action-packed Indiana Jones movies follow the adventures of a treasure-hunting archaeologist. Steven also made Jurassic Park, a scary movie about a scientist who discovers a way to clone dinosaurs and bring them back to life. That film used cutting-edge computer technology to depict very realistic-looking dinosaurs.
Despite the commercial success of many of Steven's movies, some film critics believed he could only make action movies with fancy special effects, not serious films.
BEN: Did that bother Steven?
OLIVIA: Yes, but he soon had an opportunity to prove those critics wrong with Schindler's List, a film that came out late in 1993. It was based on the true story of a factory owner who saved the lives of about 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. The movie looks nothing like Steven's other movies; it is in black and white, and it contains no special effects at all. It was a critical success, winning lots of awards and establishing him as a director who could handle serious topics.
And get this, Ben: Even though Schindler's List made a lot of money, Steven didn't keep any of it. Instead he used the film's profits to establish two foundations: Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which records video testimonies from Holocaust survivors, and the Righteous Persons Foundation, which provides grant money to organizations dedicated to promoting Jewish identity.
Since then, Steven has continued to make a wide variety of movies, including The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse. Steven doesn't just direct movies; he's also involved in the business side of the film industry. Through his two production companies, Amblin Entertainment and Dreamworks Studios, he has produced quite a few highly successful movies from other directors. Some of Steven's movies are serious and explore complicated subjects, but others are more like his early movies—good, plain fun!
BEN: Thanks, Olivia. It sounds like Steven hasn't changed much since he was a kid; he still loves to entertain people.
Thanks for tuning in, Little Fox readers. See you all next week!