Jaws

     This film is about a great white shark that roams around a small community off an island called Amity. A young girl is attacked and killed by a shark one night at an ocean side party. Police Chief, Martin Brody, wants to close the beach until the shark is found and killed, but the mayor doesn’t want to scare people during the tourist season that drives the islands economy. The sheriff, a local fisherman and a shark scientist from the Oceanographic Institute set out to sea to kill the dangerous great white shark. It soon becomes a battle between man and shark.

    The use of elements, camera angles, sound scape, dialogue, blocking and editing was done in an array of suspense; it kept the audience on the edge of their seat. The film uses a brilliant score, the music for jaws has become almost the most identifying part of the movie. Spielberg creates suspense throughout the whole movie by keeping the shark very mysterious until the very end. The camera work is also very well done, and really helps with creating tension, by showing the victims from the point of view of the shark. The way Spielberg used his zoom, for example, in one scene when Brody is sitting on the beach after the first attack happened, looking out for all the citizens, there was this close up on Brody's face where the camera was zooming in but in the background it looked as though it was zooming out. This was a cool effect that showed the 'atmosphere' of the events unfolding.



    I think that Spielberg had a lot of discovery in this film. He realized that each detail matters immensely. He successfully used the tactics to make the audience wanting more. He discovered a lot about the film making process and about himself as a director. The making of this film did not go smoothly, but the end result on purpose or not was great. Spielberg used these elements quite well for his first film. Even though the music gave away when there was a shark present and you automatically know something is about to happen, it never over powered the scene. I think he could have used less of the soundtrack because just seeing a person in the water at night gets you all worked up that something could happen without music letting you know it's about to go down. Gives more of that suspense feel. This is most certainly a classic adventurous/horror film that I recommend that everyone should watch at least once.