Culture news “I have to do it every time” Steven Spielberg has a very particular ritual before making a film
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Everyone has little “knocks”, these gestures and reflexes that we repeat over and over again when we are about to do something (often stressful)! Everyone, including Mr. Spielberg.
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It is often said that making a film – or a game for that matter – is almost impossible… After all, the parameters to be managed to carry out such a project are so numerous: constraints of time, money, weather hazards, whims of the actors… In doing so, you can imagine that some filmmakers have developed techniques to take a good breath before taking out their camera. Among these directors, there is notably Steven Spielberg who has his favorite little ritual. And this is what it is!
A good western and here we go again
This is in a 2013 interview with the American Film Institute (now reported by Pure Break) that Steven Spielberg reveals his secret. “I go to see a John Ford film (a great western director from the classic Hollywood period, editor's note), one or two, before each film,” he explains. A meeting which is not specifically for him to relax, but more to “get inspired”. “I am very sensitive to the way he uses the camera to paint his images”, continues Spielberg. “The way he sets the scene and blocks out people, often keeping the camera static while people give you the illusion that there's a lot more movement. But this is not the case. In this sense he is like a classical painter. It celebrates the setting, not just what happens inside”.
The Prisoner of the Desert above all
More precisely: before a shoot, Spielberg watches Prisoner of the Desert, directed by John Ford in 1956 (with John Wayne in the lead)… A film which tells of Ethan's quest to find his brother's two children, kidnapped by the Commanches, and which the director watches “almost every time”. In short, Indiana Jones' dad has unconditional love for the career of Ford, a western director who even made an appearance on Fabelmans – an autobiographical story where Spielberg pays homage to his parents | to his love of cinema. Towards the end of the film, the hero meets John Ford (David Lynch), who teaches him how to capture better images!