Name: Steven Allan Spielberg

Essential DVDs: Jaws (1975); Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977); Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981); E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982); The Color Purple (1985); Empire of the Sun (1987); Schindler's List (1993); Jurassic Park (1993); Saving Private Ryan (1997)

Oscars: Best Director, Best Picture (Schindler's List, 1994); Best Director (Saving Private Ryan, 1994)

In His Own Words: “If you have a story that is very commercial and simple, you have to find the art. You have to take the other elements of the film, and make them as good as possible, and doing that will uplift the film.”

In analysing Steven Spielberg, the first thing you need to do is clamber past Steven Spielberg. The success, the deification, a near unquantifiable contribution to not just cinema but modern culture itself, and the reams of praise that smother him like a giant quilt. Given such a position, it almost feels moot to extol virtues that have been ringing in his ears for years. Thus it is to the films, in the end, you must return, to cut them loose from the hallowed tag and understand again why this small guy from Cincinnati, Ohio stands so tall over the medium.

So, we'll have no talk of the child within (although, he is expert at conveying multifaceted innocence); no talk of some kind of modern-day P.T. Barnum, barnstorming cinemas with non-stop thrills (are you willing to think of Jurassic Park as a deliberate piece of self-parody?); and hold no truck with the narrow-minded view of a director as Hollywood edifice, unwitting murderer of the poetic seventies. Dash it all, he put Francois Truffaut in Close Encounters. He threaded a Christ allegory into an alien visitation movie. And he finally cut Hollywood free from its outmoded Vietnam preoccupations with the most salutary, shocking twenty-five minutes of war movie footage ever created. That's the thing, Saving Private Ryan's harrowing opening salvo is transcendent, you can feel the medium buckle under its skill, the narrative tappings of cinema being rewritten. There are a scant few who can lay claim to that level of effect. And, goddamnit, Jaws was(ital) a seventies movie.

There seems to be a fair amount of misrepresentation about Spielberg. That he is a formulaic man, a predictable purveyor of the easy-fit populist frame-of-mind. In reality, he is far more elusive, tapping into something subliminal, an understanding of how we work as human beings. His is not the convention of myth and bland heroics, his lead characters come cut from an ordinary cloth, suburban and middle-class more often than not. Even Indiana Jones, certainly born from a heroic archetype, while effortless with a whip and a quip, is forever a man in over his head. He is not just a dusty James Bond. Spielberg puts the audience, their very idea of themselves, into the extraordinary. These are not fantasies but glorious, romping realities of the heart. The greatness of Jaws is not the malfunctioning shark, but the disparate triumvirate of honest-to-god masculinity –the gruff machismo (Robert Shaw), the stubborn intellectual (Richard Dreyfuss) and the determined family protector (Roy Schieder) –required to undo the unknowable force of nature.

Another aspect so often overlooked, or maybe taken as read, is his visual genius. He is, in his own distinct way, as good a stylist as Ridley Scott or John Ford or David Lean (and very much inspired by the latter two). The stunning use of amber light, almost liquid as it pours through the door in Close Encounters, is worthy of Kubrick. The magnificent simplicity of shooting so much of E.T. from not only a child's perspective but the physical dimension of a child. The shifting visual tone of Schindler from the elegant expressionism for the Nazis to the stark, quasi-documentary shudder of the Jewish ghetto. It's the stuff critics clamour about with Scorsese, yet his good friend and compatriot is every bit as film literate and gifted.

The patterns of his career have been picked clean by the due attention his massive success has brought: the early films, still carrying the vestiges of the Movie Brat movement even as they invented the blockbuster; the towering eighties when he could do no wrong; the quest for the Oscar; the complexities of his post-Schindler era. The shapes are clear, but categorisation is almost impossible (it's why he's been lumbered with his own category: “The Spielberg Movie”). 'Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make,' he said of his approach. Surely, it can't be that simple. Seemingly, it is.

Perhaps more fascinating to us now, are the failures, or should we say, relative failures. Empire Of The Sun, alongside The Color Purple his gearshift into literary aspiration following the popcorn exterior of the early films, is a troubled but noble attempt to capture not only the scope but also the surrealism of J.G. Ballard's memoirs. Is there a more ambiguous Spielberg shot than that of a semi-demented Jim Graham bathed in the holy aura of acetylene sparks, caressing the metallic surface of a Japanese fighter plane? AI, so emotionally uneasy, feeds on an anti-fairytale mythology more Terry Gilliam than E.T. And why did so many critics circumvent the cynical, abusive undertones of The Terminal? Portraying America as a prison cell was hardly the presupposed idea of a Spielberg movie. Hook, we'll grant, is a misfire. But 1941, with its criminal excess, is as magnificent a site of creativity run amuck as Coppola's One From The Heart.

The trouble, as always, is that his name continues to arrive ahead of the film. He's doing his darndest to avoid it –the variety of project in the autumn of his career cleaves closest to the genre hopping likes of Howard Hawks and is way more challenging than the drift into bloated mediocrity so evident with Scorsese. You can bet your bottom dollar, War Of The Worlds will still filter H.G. Wells' socialist context. The Munich Olympics political thriller Vengeance could be his most daring film since Schindler. While a Lincoln biopic sends signals of his great work on his beloved America. And, boy, it needs it.

Spielberg, the world's greatest living director and contestably up there even if you include his deceased forebears, is finally worthy of his status because he speaks to everyone –understanding our fears, translating our dreams and revealing both the world's chaos and its beauty –not just a select realm of highbrow intellectuals or pontificating ironists. The miracle is, he has proven it is not simply entertainment but also art and truth we crave. At twenty-four frames a second.

Dance is one of the oldest forms of artistic expression and dates back thousands of years. It exhibits a bewildering array of styles and performs a variety of functions, from ceremony to entertainment – even the best dancers can master only a small subset of dance styles and forms, but learning various dance moves can make a dancer more versatile. Below is a guide to some of the most iconic dances and styles.

Dance Moves from the 1920s

The 1920s are known as the Roaring Twenties because of the rise of jazz and dance culture. Several iconic dances are associated with this period.

The Charleston

Perhaps the most famous dance of the Roaring Twenties, the Charleston is complex. The first step is to walk backwards and then forwards, all the while kicking one’s legs out to the side. The second step is to move forwards and kick a front leg out, followed by moving backwards and kicking a leg back. The final step is to put both hands on both knees and move side-to-side by moving the knees apart and then together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfAMIrUao9w
Steps for the Charleston

The Lindy Hop

Another iconic dance of the Roaring 20s, it is performed by two dancers who swing each other around while bouncing on one leg and then another. Some couples perform flips and even splits.

A Lindy Hop Competition

Hip-Hop Dancing

A more recent style of dancing was developed in the 70s and 80s in urban street environments. Hip-Hop dancing comprises three broad categories of dance: breaking, locking, and popping.

Breaking

The distinctive feature of breaking, or break dancing, is that the dancer is often horizontal to the ground and maintains contact with the ground via the arms, torso, and head as well as the feet. The iconic move here occurs when a dancer spins on his or her head.

Break Dance Competition

Locking

This form of Hip-Hop dancing involves the dancer freezing momentarily, i.e., locking, and holding a pose. A simple locking move is the Up Lock, or muscle man pose.

Popping

Whereas locking involves a momentary pause, popping involves contracting the muscles to create a jerking motion, i.e., a pop. A common type of popping is sliding the feet, the iconic sliding move being the moonwalk, made famous by Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson Popping and Moonwalking

Moshing

Not for the faint of heart, moshing, sometimes known as slam-dancing, is an aggressive dance style in which dancers push one another into other dancers. Associated with hardcore punk, moshing involves full body contact between participants. Indeed, moshing has resulted in the occasional death. Moshing often takes place in a pit just below center stage.

The iconic move in moshing is crowd surfing. This occurs when someone is lifted in the air and passed around from one crowd member to another. A few entertainers engage in crowd surfing, but most do not.

Country Line Dancing

Line dancing takes many forms, but it is closely associated with country or western line dancing due to the popularity of the video for “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus. In line dancing, dancers form a row, face forward, and dance in unison, emphasizing foot movement. WGNA, a country music radio station in Albany, New York breaks down some of the basic line dancing steps for beginners.

Recent Dance Crazes

Dance and popular culture often meet when a dance becomes trendy and a dance craze ensues. We’re in a new age where Internet memes drive popular culture, and there are no finer examples of this than the recent iconic dances featured in the Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style memes.

Harlem Shake

As a video meme, the Harlem Shake became viral in 2013. In a Harlem Shake video, one person freestyle dances while others go about their normal business, until a jump cut occurs, exposing a dance party made up of motley-dressed dancers freestyle dancing, often convulsively – hence the shake.

Harlem Shake – Ten of the Best

Gangnam Style

Gangnam style was made popular by Korean pop star Psy in his “Gangnam Style” video, which has received over two billion views to date. Although Gangnam Style is more than just a dance style, it denotes a foxtrot dance that mimics the riding of a horse which became one of the most iconic dances of 2012.

Dancing Gangnam Style

As we can see from just a few of these iconic dances, the artform appears in many guises. Although no one can master every dance, everyone can have fun trying out different dance styles and perhaps creating the next viral craze to sweep the net.

As Los Angeles is the country’s leading hub for movie and television production, the city’s many neighborhoods and attractions have appeared in countless films and shows. It’s hardly an understatement that for many first-time visitors, exploring Los Angeles can feel very much like traveling through a real-life movie. With so many unique areas to film, we’ve put together a list highlighting some of LA’s more notable film locations. Before you get started on your next filmmaking project in the city, be sure to check out Los Angeles County’s policy regarding film permits to ensure your production goes off without a hitch.

Chinatown

The first modern American Chinatown, Los Angeles’ Chinatown Central Plaza was opened on June 25, 1938, becoming one of the country’s original open malls, with the iconic East Gate being completed in 1939. The area is composed of buildings that combine American and Chinese styles to create a unique location that has served as the backdrop for such films as Chinatown, Rush Hour, and Lethal Weapon 4. While many of the area’s Chinese population has relocated to other areas of Los Angeles, this one-of-a-kind commercial center is still a leading bastion for Chinese culture, food, and music.

Santa Monica Pier

Originally opened in 1909 following a year of construction, the Santa Monica Pier has been attracting locals and tourists alike for over a century. Boasting Pacific Park, which is a family amusement park and has a sizable Ferris Wheel, a carousel from the 1920s, the Santa Monica Pier Aquariums, stores, street entertainers, restaurants, and a number of other popular local businesses, the pier offers countless scenic locales that have appeared in such notable movies as The Sting, Beverly Hills Cop III, Funny Girl, Forrest Gump, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Also, if you’re looking to get some fishing done in between takes, the end of the pier is a popular spot for fishers. With an annual visitor rate of over four million people visiting the pier every year, there is countless opportunities for filmmakers to find extras and interesting characters for their projects.

Beverly Hills Hotel

On May 12, 1912, Margaret J. Anderson and her son, Stanley S. Anderson, opened The Beverly Hills Hotel. After unsuccessful attempts had been made to drill for oil, water was found. With that discovery, Burton Green formed the Rodeo Land and Water Company. He announced plans to build a city with large lots of curved, tree-lined streets. But Green needed a special attraction to set his city above all the other housing developments sprouting up around Southern California at the turn of the century.

A grand hotel was envisioned, and Green persuaded the Andersons of Hollywood Hotel fame to come and build their dream. Against all advice, they left their secure surroundings in Hollywood and came to the undeveloped area that was later to become the city of Beverly Hills, literally built around the new hotel. Over the course of the century, the hotel became a popular destination for celebrities and royalty, with such famous guests including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Howard Hughes, John Wayne, and many others. It was also featured on the cover of the Eagles’ famous Hotel CaliforniaLP and in such movies as The Way We Were, Shampoo, California Suite, and American Gigolo.

City Hall

The tallest base isolated structure in the world, Los Angeles City Hall serves as the center of government for Los Angeles and is where the mayor’s office is located alongside the meeting chamber for the Los Angeles City Council. Designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin, Sr. and completed in 1928, the building’s singular art deco-inspired style would help to inspire the design of other notable buildings in downtown Los Angeles, such as the Los Angeles Public Library.

The building’s iconic status as both an architectural and cultural landmark has only grown over time as it has served as the backdrop for countless classic movies and TV series, appearing as the Daily Planet building in the Adventures of Superman, Dragnet, Adam-12, the 1953 version of War of the Worlds, Perry Mason, and countless other productions. If you’re looking to give your production a classic LA feel, the City Hall is a perfect location for filming.

Griffith Observatory

 

Made famous to cinephiles the world over due to its appearance in the classic James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause, the Griffith Observatory opened in 1935 after Colonel Griffith J. Griffith gifted the city with the 3,015 acres upon which the observatory would be built. The observatory was unique from its inception as Griffith had made it a stated goal of making observatories open to the public at a time when they were primarily used solely by scientists. As such, the observatory remains free to the general public.

Located on Mount Hollywood, the facility and its surrounding park offer visitors and filmmakers an extraordinary view of the Los Angeles Basin, which includes downtown, Hollywood, and the Pacific Ocean. Some of the famous films that have used the location include Flash Gordon, The Terminator, The Rocketeer, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Yes Man, and Terminator Salvation.

Millenium Biltmore Hotel

The Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles, California opened in 1923 and at the time was the largest hotel west of Chicago and designed by architects Schultze & Weaver. Originally named the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, it was made a Historic-Cultural Monument in 1969. Its interior is extremely ornate with frescos and murals, marble fountains and columns, and bronze stairwells and doorways.

The hotel’s lobby was featured in the movie Ghostbusters, as the fictional Sedgewick Hotel. It also served as an early location for the Academy Award Ceremony when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was founded at a luncheon banquet at the hotel’s famous Crystal Ballroom in May 1927. It was the nerve center of the 1960 Democratic National Convention; headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and housed TV networks and candidates including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Adlai E. Stevenson. Movies that have been shot at the hotel include Vertigo, Chinatown, and Beverly Hills Cop.

San Fernando Mission

Based in the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, the Mission San Fernando Rey de España was established by Father Fermín Lasuén on September 8, 1797. The fourth such mission he had built in as many months, Lasuén had chosen the location due to its accessibility and the mission served to both spread the Christian message and establish a Spanish colony in the United States.

Over the course of the next two centuries, the San Fernando Mission became a fixture of the Los Angeles landscape, being sold and re-sold multiple times and operating as a train station, a warehouse, and even a hog farm at one point. In 1971, the San Fernando earthquake caused enough damage to the mission that the city had to re-build it completely.

With the birth of the film and television industries, the San Fernando mission appeared increasingly on movie and TV screens in such productions as Dragnet, Knight Rider, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and Incredible Hulk, making it a perfect location to capture a slice of historic Los Angeles.

Queen Mary

Originally constructed as an ocean liner that traversed the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 by the Scottish business John Brown & Company, the Queen Mary was designed to compete with the superliners that were being built by German and French companies is the 1920s and 30s. During World War II, the Queen Mary was transformed into a troopship that carried Allied soldiers before returning to commercial service following the war.

By 1967, although the Queen Mary was one of the most popular ocean liners, as it was losing money it was ultimately retired that year, where it was sailed to the port at Long Beach, California and has remained since then. Over the past four decades, the ship has become a nexus of commercial activity as restaurants, a museum, and a hotel, which helped to earn the ship its place on the National Register of Historic Places. Since its retirement, it has served as a location in such films as The Poseidon Adventure, Death Cruise, Chaplin, and Pearl Harbor.

Greystone Mansion

The largest home ever built in Beverly Hills, Greystone mansion was built by famed oil-tycoon Edward Doheny in 1928, as a gift to his son Ned. With over 46,000 square feet of living space, it cost more than $4 million to build in 1928. Many people hail this massive home as one of the grandest mansions on the West coast.

Shortly after the house was built, there occurred a legendary controversy wherein Ned and his secretary died of a murder-suicide. Ned’s family remained in the house until 1955 and its new owner nearly demolished the home until the neighborhood of Beverly Hills stepped in and purchased the mansion, leasing it to the American Film Institute from 1965 to 1982, wherein countless films and television shows were and continue to be shot. Now a public park, every summer Catskills West holds a play in the pool area entitled The Manor. Some of the many films and shows to be shot in and around the mansion include The Big Lebowski, The Bodyguard, Alias, The Muppets, Spider-Man, and There Will Be Blood.

Union Station

Built and opened in 1939, Union Station is known by many as the “Last of the Great Railway Stations” to be constructed in the US, serving trains from the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Santa Fe Railways. Partially designed by John and Donald B. Parkinson—the father and son duo who were also responsible for Los Angeles City Hall—the station itself was an amalgamation of different styles that included Dutch Colonial Revival and Mission Revival. As such, it has served as an iconic film location for movies that include Catch Me If You Can, Blade Runner, Speed, and Star Trek: First Contact.

Author: Melanie Williams Oram, Chair, Screenwriting Department, New York Film Academy

It’s against our nature to fail. We’re programmed to succeed at all costs. Our fear of failure can cause us to be risk averse, to stay in our lane, and to accept tasks where we know we can shine because we will only have to use skills that are clearly in our wheel house. Creating memorable characters means counteracting your natural instincts to avoid failure at all costs. A screenplay character needs to be willing to learn new skills, to venture into new lands, and most importantly to take risks. Intriguing and complex characters in good screenplays succeed where ordinary people do not because they leave their comfort zones willingly in spite of the fact that failure is not just a remote worry but a real possibility. In fact screenplay characters MUST live through an Epic Fail incident in order to reach their goal.

Creating an Epic Fail moment is an essential building block to developing an iconic screenplay character. An Epic Fail Incident usually happens around the midpoint of a screenplay and is the place in the story where the character reaches an obstacle so great, so high, and so deep there’s nothing for her to do but face the challenge head on. She cannot avoid this obstacle and despite all of her best efforts her plans do not succeed. She suffers a major setback and she experiences an Epic Fail incident.

Like all key story points, The Epic Fail moment needs a set up so that the pay off can be rewarding for the character and the audience. An Epic Fail incident can only happen if there’s something at stake. The protagonist must face the reality that if she fails to overcome this obstacle she will lose something that’s truly important to her. The higher the stakes, the more compelling the Epic Fail moment becomes. An Epic Fail incident can cost the protagonist her job, the trust of a loved one, or even her freedom.

Why do we love characters like Neo in The Matrix or Annie in Bridesmaids? It’s because they don’t just screw up situations and fix them quickly. They suffer from a tremendous loss during an Epic Fail moment but they are able to reboot and find a way to succeed. Neo fights hard but Morpheus still gets captured by the machines. Ultimately he chooses to believe in his own abilities, accept his destiny and beat the machines at their own game. Annie totally bombs in all her duties as maid of honor and destroys her friendship with her best friend Lillian. After Annie’s friendship with Lillian disintegrates, Annie is left broken and alone and she decides to abandon the silly and hurtful competition to prove that she’s Lillian’s BFF. Annie refocuses her efforts and insures that Lillian’s wedding gets back on track and salvages the seemingly irreparable damage done to her friendship with her best friend.

Two very important things happen when you include an Epic Fail incident in your screenplay. It gives your audience a chance to connect with your protagonist. Everyone wants to see a character succeed against all odds. Think about the first time you saw Rocky and you watched the scene where Rocky initially runs the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He’s alone, he’s winded, and he barely makes it to the top. Clearly there’s no way that this character is ready to get into the ring with the heavyweight champion of the world. Rocky is trying to train but he’s failing completely. The audience connects with Rocky’s struggle and his determination to overcome his feelings of inadequacy and failure. Later in the film when we see the iconic scene where Rocky runs the stairs again, he’s triumphant and he’s followed by scores of people who are encouraging him to succeed. Rocky’s has transformed from a down and out, isolated low level hoodlum with no future to a guy who becomes a hero in his community and is ready to fight the heavyweight champion of the world. The audience connects with Rocky in that moment. We’ve witnessed Rocky fail utterly and now we’re excited by his success. We want him to win. Rocky’s victory on the stairs would not have been so satisfying if we didn’t see him grapple with what appears to be inevitable defeat.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NubH5BDOaD8

Also, an Epic Fail moment allows the character to experience a reboot or a flip-the-script moment where she can learn from her mistakes, develop a new strategy, and continue with her journey to reach her goal. The Epic Fail pitches the character into the depths of despair and the agony of defeat but it also allows her to reinvent herself. Armed with the pain and the heartache that the character experiences during the Epic Fail and combined the with the knowledge she gets from the reboot, the character is positioned to reach her goal and more than likely make an indelible impression on the minds of the audience.