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1. Blockbuster.
How Spielberg Films Evolved Movies As We Watch Them
Steven Spielberg holds the Guinness World Record for the “First Summer Blockbuster” thanks
to the 1975 horror, “Jaws”. The reason for why it is known as the first ever is because of the
fact that it was the first film in the history of the industry to reach $100,000,000 at the box
office. As Jaws had advanced film back in the 70s, so has Spielberg himself. He started out in
a time when CGI hadn’t even debuted on the silver screen yet, using animatronics to create
realistic practical effects, moved to using both CGI and practical effects in films like Jurassic
Park and then to films that are more like 90% CGI, like Ready Player One. Spielberg is the most
financially successful director of all time for a number of reasons. The main reason being, in
my opinion, due to his ability to adapt to the new VFX techniques whilst still retaining his
trademark immersive storytelling.
Jaws
With abudget of $7,000,000, Jaws was the firstfilmever to hit $100,000,000 at the box office,
as previously mentioned. Spielberg managed this with VFX entirely made up of practical
techniques and methods. One of the first recorded 3D CGI used in a filmwas debuted in 1976
(one year after the release of Jaws), in a film called “Futureworld”. The effects were created
by two University of Utah students, Fred Parke and Ed Catmull, the latter of which going on
to co-found Pixar Studios.
The practical effects were made up of footage from real cage dives with Great Whites off the
coast of Australia, using a 4’ 11” diver in order to make the 15-foot real shark look more like
the 25-foot animatronic sharks that Spielberg also used on set. The 3 animatronic sharks, all
nicknamed ‘Bruce’, after Steven’s lawyer, Bruce M. Ramer, were made up of steel skeletons
to encase the electronics and air-powered mechanisms that provided movement, then
covered in a rubber skin. They cost around $500,000 to produce all three and worked
perfectly on land. As soon as they were submerged in salt water, the tubes containing the
electricals that controlled movement were flooded and became majorly unresponsive for the
majority of the shoot. The shoot was originally scheduled to be 55 day long, but ended up
being 159 altogether. One animatronic sank to the very bottom of Martha’s Vineyard in
Massachusetts, where they shot the “at sea” scenes, and was recovered and brought back
onto land much later on, causing even more delays to the production than they were already
experiencing at this time.
Although, when actually working, the sharks looked incredible on camera, Spielberg’s
intuition was what really made the film’s effects work so well. He and the crew decided to
work around the animatronic issues by filming scenes…without any shark at all. Spielberg
played on the audience’s animalistic instincts, allowing the audience to create their own
images of the shark using their imaginations. For example, the very first scene of the filmends
with a shark attack, with one young woman being eaten alive. The scene contains no actual
shark whatsoever. Instead, the camera is used to fill in the gaps and acts as the POV of the
shark, swimming through the water and stalking the skinny-dipping prey. Using no shark
allowed the film to build tension all the way up until the shark actually shows up in full form
during the film, making it far more horrifying.

2. Cosmavoid. (2018). The Time the Animatronic Shark Nearly Ruined Jaws. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfR1dFXhP44. Last accessed 2019.
Jack's Movie Reviews. (2016). Jaws - How Spielberg Creates Tension. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGTcUTCbWmU. Last accessed 2019.
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park had a much larger budget than Jaws did. $54,000,000 more. It was also released
15 years afterwards, meaning the VFX industry had time to improve and evolve into some
form of CGI that was actually believable.
I am going to address one scene in particular, the T-Rex escape scene at night. This scene
worked so well because of the ahead-of-its-time VFX and a practical hydraulic-powered
animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Rex itself was originally far too heavy, and meant the
Stage 16 on the Warner Brothers’ backlot had to be reinforced in order to hold the 12,000lbs
weight of the animatronic. The animatronic itself was very similar to the sharks from
Spielberg’s original blockbuster, Jaws, in that it was made up latex, steel frames and air-
powered hydraulics and a cover of paint to get the desired look. It also had a similar enemy…
water. As the scene required rain, the Rex was showered constantly with water which soaked
into the latex and added a lot of water weight. The movements were carefully calculated to
work perfectly and look incredibly realistic at the weight that the Rex was when dry, but the
animatronic shook uncontrollably when attempting to move while overweight. The crew had
to constantly attempt to dry the Tyrannosaurus between takes, with hair dryers and towels,
and only just managed to get it to work long enough to complete the shot-list.
The VFX T-Rex worked so well because of the setting of the scene itself. At the time, there
was no CGI bounce lighting, meaning that if they had set the scene during daylight, the effects
wouldn’t look very realistic as they would have to light the Rex from many different angles
thanks to all the reflections that sunlight would cause. Setting the scene at night with one
light source meant that the VFX artists only had to reflect light from one direction. By making
it rain, the VFX artists could add specular lighting all over the dinosaur, making it seem
reflective and scaly. Thanks to the practical effects, the VFX team had a real dinosaur to
reference when creating the CGI T-Rex, making it as similar to the real thing as possible. It
meant that the artists knew how dark to make certain spots, how reflective to make it and so
on.
Spielberg crafted this scenewith the perfectly seamless blend of CGI and practical effects that
make the shots so iconic to this day.
Cosmavoid. (2018). The True Story of Jurassic Park's T. Rex Animatronic. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFTsYGgdR9k. Last accessed 2019.
Corridor Crew. (2019). VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 2. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4nGxX2mHOs. Last accessed 2019.
BBC Radio 1. (2018). Steven Spielberg on Jurassic Park, ET and his greatest movie
memento. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMv1iTHUTtc. Last accessed
2019.

3. Ready Player One
Once again, the budget increases. This time, by nearly $100,000,000 more than the previous
film. This is probably due to the amount of CGI that makes up this film, as CGI costs a lot of
money to create, particularly when you’re employing Industrial Light and Magic. 60% of the
film takes place in the Oasis, which is entirely computer generated.
Almost all of the locations seen in the filmare made up of CGI, including 100% of what is seen
in the Oasis. This is partially why the filmspent 8 years in production. To create the effects of
the Oasis avatars, Spielberg turned to motion capture, the same technique used to create
video games’ animations and cutscenes. This meant that the VFX team could animate the
characters directly off of the actors themselves, retaining as much of the performance as
possible. To assist the actors’ performances, the filmmakers created physical environments
out of scaffolding in order to get a more life-like performance. They shot all scenes from
within the Oasis first, meaning they collected all the motion capture footage at one time and
could begin animating as soon as possible, whilst shooting the rest of the film and hiring the
motion capture studio for as little time as they could to cut costs and save as much of the
budget as possibleto spend on the CGIto make it as believably realisticas possible.Aseparate
VFX company, Aaron Sims Creative, spent well over two years creating original characters to
fill the Oasis with, as well as adding various well-known characters from pop culture, before
handing off all the digital models to Industrial Light and Magic. ILMused the majority of these
in the large battle scene in the final act of the film. The only practical effects they used during
the production of the film were the explosions from scenes set in the real world, when
Sorrento blows up Wade’s home, but was then replaced by CGI when the environment was
created by ILM. This is the largest differing factor of this filmto the other two I have written
about, Jaws and Jurassic Park. There are very little practical effects, none really making it to
the final cut of the film. It is the polar opposite to Jaws, which had no CGI, showing the
Spielberg films have evolved as filmitself adapted to newer technology over the decades he’s
been working in the industry.
ILMVisualFX. (2018). Behind the Magic: The Visual Effects of Ready Player
One. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqVhbpBR8Lw. Last accessed 2019.
NowThis Nerd. (2018). Populating the OASIS: Character Design in Ready Player One |
NowThis Nerd. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEotRb_7Zzw. Last
accessed 2019.
FilmIsNow. (2019). READY PLAYER ONE | VFX Breakdown by Digital Domain
(2018). Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAp3VLirGSM. Last accessed
2019.
FilmIsNow. (2018). READY PLAYER ONE | Motion Capture Featurette. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jo_SfurgkE. Last accessed 2019.
FilmIsNow. (2018). Ready Player One "Steven Spielberg" IMAX Featurette. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy4hw5RycLE. Last accessed 2019.
In Conclusion

4. There is quite clearly a positive correlation between the amount of CGI in a Spielberg filmand
the budget used to create the film, and between the technology available and quality of VFX.
This clearly shows that Spielberg, as his films become more and more financially successful,
the bigger the budget he is given to create an immersive experience, and as years have gone
on the way to create that feeling is through computer generated imagery.
Despite this, Jaws and Jurassic Park both made around 15x their budgets at the box office,
whereas Ready Player One only made 3x its budget, making $400,000,000 less than Jurassic
Park did. I believe this is an indicator that, no matter how good the CGI is, people will still
prefer a perfect blend of real life and tech magic.
Steven Benedict. (2012). Steven Spielberg's techniques and themes. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uCBYFHRHU0&t=677s. Last accessed 2019.
Thought]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjJMFD-Vz8. Last accessed
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StudioBinder. (2018). Steven Spielberg Directing Style Explained [Point of