of Eagle Scout. Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features, and began taking the camera along on every Scout trip. At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, titled Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of school classmates. The film won first prize in a statewide competition. Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm "adventure" films. In Phoenix, Spielberg watched films at the local theatre every Saturday. Some of the films he cited as early influences include Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), Akira Kurosawa films, Captains Courageous (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which he cited as "the film that set me on my journey". He attended Arcadia High School in 1961 for three years. He wrote and directed his first independent film in 1963, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight, which would later inspire Close Encounters of The Third Kind. The film was mainly funded by his father, which had a budget of under $600, and was shown in a local theatre for one evening. In the summer of 1964, he worked as an unpaid assistant at Universal Studios' editorial department. His family later moved to Saratoga, California where he attended Saratoga High School, graduating in 1965. A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father, while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He was not interested in academics; he aspired to be only a filmmaker. He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades. He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity. After taking a tour bus to Universal Studios, a chance conversation with an executive led to Spielberg getting a three-day pass to the premises, allowing him to come back the next day. On the fourth day he walked up to the studio gates without a pass, and the security guard waved him in: “I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios. And that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer.” In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute, 35 mm Amblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed by the