Steven Spielberg on the process that robs him of his integrity: “I lose it”
As one of the biggest public defenders of the traditional theatre experience, Steven Spielberg has had to fight an uphill battle because the viewing habits of audiences drastically changed following the pandemic lockdowns. Even though big-scale spectacles like Villeneuve’s Dune series have slowly pulled viewers back into theatres, many continue to prefer the conveniences of streaming services.
For directors like Spielberg, who are adept at constructing massive cinematic visions that can only work in theatres, having your work forcefully adapted for smaller screens is less than ideal. If you are old enough to remember being terrified by the T-rex in Jurassic Park on the big screen, there’s no way you can actually compare that experience to a home screening.
However, it’s not just about the nostalgia or even a romantic notion of theatres that modern audiences have seemingly outgrown. There are various technical factors that give structure to the images up on the screen, often following the precise instructions of their creators, who have a very specific idea about the way in which they want to present their work.
During a conversation with Roger Ebert, Spielberg once opened up about his opinions on TV runs featuring his films and vehemently criticised the phenomenon of letterboxing. It’s something that both Ebert and his partner Gene Siskel have also denounced on their programme on multiple occasions, and there’s a good reason for it.
“The only time I lose my integrity as a filmmaker is when my films go on TV,” Spielberg said. “I lose it because I’m very frame-conscious, very conscious of my visual compositions, and I do a lot of things to tell a story by where I put characters and objects within the frame. Seven out of 11 of my movies have been wide-screen films, and when you make a film in wide-screen, when it shows on TV, the audience is losing half of my original picture.”
He added: “You can either pan and scan, which means you electronically pan the frame, or you make internal cuts in a scene from one side to the other. The problem with cutting is that you’re adding cuts where a cut is not required – where you don’t want a cut. When I see my movies panned and scanned, it’s like some of the scenes were being redirected by someone else.”
While streaming services of today often have the option to screen certain films in their original aspect ratio, many users prefer to use the “fill the screen” zoom feature in order to make use of the entirety of the screen. It’s something that isn’t even equivalent to a Band-aid for a bad injury, because it not only demolishes the filmmaker’s original intentions but also fails to replicate the magic of theatres.
