‘Prey’: The franchise prequel “definitely influenced” by Steven Spielberg
While Steven Spielberg has proven his genius in a number of movie genres, it’s fair to say that the realm science fiction has greatly profited from his prowess as a film director. Across several admirable works of cinema, Spielberg has explored futuristic iterations of Planet Earth and the possibilities of life in Outer Space.
After the success of 1975’s Jaws, Spielberg delivered one of the most important sci-fi movies of all time in the shape of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which focused on a man who comes into serious proximity with a UFO, and just five years later, his brilliant science fiction family movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial showed the director’s penchant for alien lifeforms in a more humorous light.
Elsewhere, Spielberg had questioned the ethics of scientific experimentation with Jurassic Park and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, while Minority Report continued his sci-fi journey and consulted the writing of one of the genre’s most prominent authors, Philip K Dick. Quite simply, the world of science fiction wouldn’t be what it is without Spielberg’s magnificent efforts.
With that in mind, it’s only right that Spielberg’s movies would have inspired so many other sci-fi films, including 2022’s Prey. Dan Trachtenberg directed the film, and it serves as a prequel to the first four films in the Predator franchise, taking place in the Northern Great Plains in 1719, focusing on a young Comanche woman who must protect her people from a dangerous and violent humanoid alien.
Not all the Predator movies have been great, but Prey was well-received upon its release with particular praise being given to Jeff Cutter’s cinematography. In fact, in an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Cutter once admitted that the cinematography of Prey was significantly influenced by the great movies of Spielberg.
Discussing the kind of compositions that he and Trachtenberg wanted to achieve in Prey, Cutter noted, “I guess it’s an instinctual thing. Dan and I share the same sense of composition and how we like to layer and stack things.” The cinematography explained how, by using wide lenses, more actors can arrive in a frame, so rather than cutting to another actor, he can just “rack” to someone in the background.
“That’s a very Spielberg thing Dan and I are both very influenced by,” Cutter said. “Spielberg is the master of layering multiple actors within a frame, and then, rather than cutting to a reaction, he’ll rack from one actor in the foreground to someone else’s coverage, or an actor will move in the shot and bring you to another piece of coverage. We were definitely inspired by that idea – trying to make shots last as long as possible and make pieces of coverage connect in one frame or one shot.”
Sure enough, if anyone were to try and find influence in how to make a movie of the highest quality, then they could do much worse than consult the works of Spielberg. Known and loved as a true master of the cinematic medium, Spielberg’s influence is found everywhere, but particularly in the realm of science fiction.
Prey was a simply stunning movie to look at, but some of its brilliance comes down to the way that Spielberg often had his own cinematographers stack a frame with many actors, leaving more scope for experimentation, a method that was taken on with open arms by Jeff Cutter.
