Steven Spielberg Research Paper

The great Steven Spielberg once said, “You shouldn't dream your future, you should make it.” His view on life is so positive and inspirational that it makes you think twice about how you’re living your life. He has gone through the worst of times and all he can think about is how it will all be better one day. Known for giving the world generous amounts of money to charity funds, expressing how to be yourself, preserving historic events, and is changing the movie industry forever, Spielberg is the most successful film director of all time. He has been writing movies and TV shows since he was 10 years old. Spielberg's films have been nominated for over 200 major awards and currently has the highest rated movie ever, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial,

on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Steven is one of the highest paid people in Hollywood and has given away $750,000 to American Cross, $1.5 million to help Hurricane Katrina survivors, and has created a charity fund for the profits of his movie Schindler's List; which has raised a little over $40 million. His movies now set the standard on what it means to make an award winning film.
Steven Spielberg’s work with charity funds have been astronomical. In 1993, he created the Righteous Persons Foundation to fund projects which impact the Jewish life, with the earnings of his hit movie Schindler's List. This charity was highly successful and “As of fall 1995, the foundation had made 30 grants totaling nearly $10 million (Steven Spielberg Charity Work 2).” The organization was proposed to produce more than $40 million in its first ten years
Robertson 2 of being created. To preserve the testimonies and witnesses of the Holocaust, he constructed the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. The USC Shoah Foundation Institute “maintains the largest video library in the world (Steven Spielberg Charity Work 2)”, holding nearly 52,000 video testimonies in 32 languages from 56 countries. This institute’s objective is to show how destructive being prejudice is, through the eyes of the peoples being discriminated. Spielberg is such a humble man when it comes to giving, “Eighty percent of what I do is anonymous. I get so much pleasure from that (Spielberg, Steven 3).”
Steven is one of those people who have gone through tough parts of there lives and used those moments to help them succeed.

His backstory proves that by being yourself and putting heart into your motive, anything can be achieved. During his childhood he was not accepted by many of his classmates by coming off as awkward and weird. His Jewish heritage made things even harder, because only a few people lived in the vicinity of his home (Gish 13). Because of this, he was often bullied and needed a way to cope with his troubles; this is where he found film making. At age 13 Spielberg had “Mastered the art of filmmaking sufficiently to win a contest with his 40-minute war film Escape to Nowhere (Steven Spielberg).” In this movie he used his childhood bullies as enemies which he “killed them all several times (Steven Spielberg).” When it came time for him to go to college, he found out that because he spent so much time on his filmmaking, he did not have sufficient enough grades to attend any of the film schools he wanted. This setback did not stop him from getting an education as he settled for California State College at Long Beach; at Long Beach he graduated, receiving a bachelor’s degree in English (Steven Spielberg 2). He found that he could “Do anything, live anywhere via [his] imagination, through film (Gish 12).” By being himself, Steven Spielberg’s creations have come off as

more
Robertson 3 personal, relating to a wider audience.
The biggest known achievement that the great Spielberg has accomplished is the art of preserving historic events. His movie Schindler's list, expresses the pain and suffering of the Holocaust by looking through the eyes of a German businessman who saves the lives of thousands of Jews that are slave laborers at his factory (Steven Spielberg, UXL Biographies). He turned to his personal inspiration again, with family relatives affected by the Holocaust, he “felt the desire to direct such a movie (Spielberg, Steven 2).” He created this movie for one reason, “for [himself], for the survivors, for [his] family—and for the people who should understand the word ‘Holocaust’ (Steven Spielberg, UXL Biographies 2).” Another one of his movies that was a commercial hit was the telling of Saving Private Ryan. This motion picture narrates the horrors of D-Day and what a squadron will do to find the lost private, James Ryan. Taking the lead role was Steven’s good friend Tom Hanks, who helped him illustrate how terrible war is. He choreographed every shot with perfection showing as much gore as possible. Tom Hanks admitted that Spielberg made the feature “gruesome, because that’s what war is (Gish 13).” He has always made his movies real; telling the truth to spread the word of these tragic events hoping to effect as many people as possible. By resurfacing events, Spielberg addresses issues that enable the audience and those affected by such a horror, to relive and remember the importance of such historical events (Steven Spielberg).
Spielberg has and will keep changing the movie industry forever for the good. By the 1990s, not only was he considered by many people to be one of the best filmmakers in history, but he had broken 3 box records with Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park, owned his own studio, and was worth almost $2 billion (Spielberg, Steven). His new special effects now set the standard on what the new “awesome effect” was. With these cutting edge effects came mind splitting costs. His huge hit the Titanic comes in at #3 of the most expensive movies ever made costing just shy of $300 million. The new Hollywood he created has been viewed as the “biggest destructive tendencies of capitalism in history (Spielberg, Steven 2).” Although he spends a lot of money making his movies, they also bring in their fair share of funds. Even though Titanic cost so much to make, it grossed $2,186,772,302 making it the most profited movie in history. When he was making the second movie for the Indiana Jones Trilogy he found that he could not work with the rating scale to fit the type of style he wanted. The result of this issue was the creation of the new rating code “PG-13” (Steven Spielberg). From that movie on, the new rating is the most widely used rating now because it can reach broader audience. Steven Spielberg’s additions to the movie industry have changed the way all of the new movies are produced.
Spielberg has changed the movie industry, given the world great amounts of money to charities, expressed how being yourself helps you succeed, and resurfaced historic events in order to remember their importance. He has changed the world for the better in too many ways to write about. Steven Spielberg will go down in history as one of the most influential role models to ever step foot on this planet.