Steven Spielberg Essay Research Paper In today

Steven Spielberg Essay, Research Paper

In today’s society, there are many people that have made many contributions to the world. The person I feel who has a major impact on today’s society is Steven Speilberg. I chose him because he is a famous Jewish American film director and because I am related to him.

I am a Jewish, white male who was born and raised in America. My family’s heritage originates from all over Europe. They moved to America during the early 1900’s. My great-grandparents were the first to come to America. They started a family in the Bronx. My parents were the first to move out of the Bronx and bought a house in Orange County. And, I have been living there all my life.

The Jewish people’s homeland is Israel. They have been fighting to keep Israel as their homeland for thousands of years. Israel is a very small country that you can find in the Middle East, in Europe. Israel was established in 1948, which is located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is bounded on the north by Lebanon, on the northeast by Syria, on the east by Jordan, and on the southwest by Egypt. Israel covers 21,946 sq. km (8473 sq. miles). Jerusalem is Israel.s capital and largest city. Inside of Israel, there are many different ethnic groups living there. Israel is a very beautiful country. There are many places that one would have to visit, while they are in Israel. (Encarta 95)

Steven Spielberg was born on December 18, 1947, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parent.s names were Arnold and Leah (Posner) Spielberg. He had three younger sisters, Anne, Nancy, and Sue. Soon after the birth of Steven, his parents moved from Cincinnati to Haddonfield, New Jersey. Arnold Spielberg was part of a team of scientists who designed some of the first computers. Leah Spielberg was a classical pianist, played in a small chamber orchestra, and was involved in cultural and artistic pursuits. He introduced his son to technology at an early age, and this technical knowledge would greatly influence Steven when he began to make films. (Ferber)

When Steven was nine, his family moved from New Jersey to the sunny desert setting of Scottsdale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Many people believe that the years he spent in Scottsdale, from the ages 9 to 17, left some of the most lasting impressions on him. The asphalt-lined streets and driveways and the neighborhoods of houses built closely together look strikingly similar to the communities Spielberg would later include in his films Poltergeist and E.T. Steven felt bored in the dull, quiet suburban world of his childhood and made movies to fight this boredom. He soon discovered, he later said, that he .could do anything or live anywhere via [his] imagination, through film.. (Ferber)

His interest in space, stars, and extraterrestrial life began when he was six and his father woke him up one night to witness a meteor storm in a nearby field. His father tried to explain the technical aspects of what was happening, but all Steven could do was watch in amazement at what he imagined were falling stars. A few decades later this scene from his childhood appeared in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind almost exactly as Steven remembered it. (Encarta 95)

Steven Spielberg claims that by the age of 12 and 13 he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. His first fully scripted film was a 40-minute war story entitled Escape to Nowhere, which he made in 1961 when he was nearly 14. In high school Steven had no less than 15 short films to his credit, and a local newspaper, the Phoenix Gazette, published a story about the aspiring filmmaker. (Ferber)

Steven Spielberg graduated from Saratoga High School, in California in the spring of 1965. He then headed to California State University at Long Beach that fall. His first film was Amblin., which was a 22-minute film. It was a silent film about a girl and a boy who hitchhike from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific Ocean, it took Spielberg 10 days to shoot. Whereas movies often take a few weeks or months to shoot, the preproduction and postproduction work can add many more months to the project. His friend at Universal, Chuck Silvers, showed Amblin. to a number of top executives, including Sidney J. Sheinberg, head of Universal.s television production. Sheinberg immediately offered Spielberg a seven-year contract to direct television programs for the studio, saying, .Sir, I liked your work. How would you like to go to work professionally.. Spielberg left college so quickly that he did not even have time to clean out his locker. Although he feared his father would be angry, Spielberg believed he was making the right decision for himself. Spielberg, like many other directors, such as Robert Altman and Arthur Penn, never finished college. Spielberg was even more confident that he had made the right decision when Amblin. won the Atlanta Film Festival award and an award at a festival in Venice, Italy, in 1969. His 22-minute film was also nationally distributed in 1970 with the Paramount film Love Story, which became a box-office hit and was nominated for several Academy Awards. (Ferber)

During the early 1970s, he directed three films for Universal; the first, and most successful, was Duel. The 73-minute film was first telecast by ABC on November 13, 1971, and was so popular on American television that Universal Studios decided to release it in European theaters, wh