Essay Preview: Jaws
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Jaws is a Steven Spielberg film. It was his first major blockbuster. It was directed and produced by the legendary Steven Spielberg, who has also directed other award winning films such as Saving Private Ryan and the Indiana Jones series.
The thriller story was set at Amity Islands on the 4th July 1975. Amity Islands is a summer holiday resort, where large amounts of people come to spend the very important American Independence Day, national holiday.
The reason for it being set on the 4th July is because the beach resort would be fully packed with tourists and holidaymakers. Therefore, the killer shark would have had a lot of people making noise and moving around in the water. All the noise and movement in the area would have attracted the shark towards the island resort.
In the opening credits the music is deep cellos and violins building up with the tension of the shark getting closer and closer towards the girl swimming in the ocean. The camera shot is shown as though you are the shark gliding thorough the water towards your enemy. Towards the end of the little sequence you see the girls legs kicking, splashing in the water and you hear her screams for help. By the time that attack has finished the music is really loud and makes the audience feel anxious towards the girl who had just been attacked, and also shows the tension because the boy she was with didn’t know any of this had happened.
It was late at night when the girl and her boyfriend went down onto the beach; the girl ran into the water and swam quite a way out while her boyfriend remained on the beach. The shark then attacked her, but because of the length she had swum out he couldn’t hear her shouting for help.
Every time the shark comes into a position where there could be an attack the music builds up more and more. This shows the audience that whenever the music comes on they should get ready for an attack or something to do with the shark; it creates suspense and makes the audience worried. It makes the audience think that someone is going to get attacked when the music starts.
The second attack was very clever, Spielberg put in a lot of false alarms to pull the audience off track so that they don’t think there is going to be an attack even though there might be. The audience get to know the boy Alex who is eventually attacked a bit more than some of the other victims because he has come out of the water and runs over to his mum and he asks her if he can stay in for another 10 minutes, this shows us that the boy likes the water. He runs back out to play on his surfboard, after a few minutes there had been a man playing with his dog in the water, where he had thrown the stick out for his dog to go and get the dog hadn’t