Movie tidbits of great white shark

Jaws was mainly filmed on1May 2, 974 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The crew had previously considered East Long Island, new york. Brown later said that the plot needed a resort with a lower economic scale. If sharks appear, local tourism will be destroyed. Another important reason for choosing Martha's Vineyard Island is that the distance between the sandy seabed around its coast and the sea surface is always greater than 1 1 m, which is very beneficial to the action of props sharks. The director hopes that the water and underwater scenes in the film can have a close-up effect, similar to what people see when swimming. Photographer bill butler has designed new equipment for shooting at sea and underwater, including a drill floor and a sealed submersible camera box, which can keep the camera fixed in case of tide. Spielberg asked production designer to avoid using red in the scenery and wardrobe, so that the blood in the shark attack would become the only red element in the lens, which would have a greater impact on the audience.

Menesha, a small fishing village on Martha's Vineyard, is the main location of this film.

The crew made three full-size pneumatic props sharks. The crew named the shark Bruce after Spielberg's lawyer Bruce Raimer, and one was a full-scale "sea-sliding shark", which was mainly dragged by a cable about 100 meters long. This shark has no lower abdomen; The other two "platform sharks", one is used to shoot sharks from left to right, and its left side does not appear in the lens, so you can see that multiple sets of pneumatic hoses are exposed inside, and the other is the opposite, which is used to shoot sharks from right to left, and its right side exposes the internal mechanical structure. These props sharks were designed by Joe Alves, the artistic director, from July to September in 1973, and then produced by Rowley Harper film equipment rental company in Sun Valley, California from June 1973 65438+ 10 to April of the following year. * * * Up to 40 special effects workers participated in the production, and Bob Matai, who is famous for making the giant octopus in Two Wan Li under the Sea 1954, was in charge of the producer. When the prop shark is made, it will be transported to the location by truck. 1974 At the beginning of July, the platform used to tow two side-looking sharks sank in the process of descending to the bottom of the sea, so the crew had to send a team of divers to the sea to search. All moving parts of these models need to be controlled by 14 operators.

The shooting process is full of difficulties and the cost is greatly overspent. David brown once said that the budget of this film was "4 million dollars, but it actually cost 9 million dollars". Due to the problem of mechanical sharks, the expenditure on special effects alone reached $3 million. Disgruntled crew members even nicknamed the film "Flaw" (the original English film was called Jaws). Spielberg blamed many problems on his perfectionism and inexperience. His perfectionism is mainly reflected in his insistence on shooting at sea with a full-size prop shark. He said, "I can shoot this movie in a water tank or some protected lake, but it will look different." As for my inexperience, the director said, "Basically, my view of the sea is still naive. I naively thought that I could conquer nature, but it was only a manifestation of foolhardy and arrogance. The real problem is that when I asked everyone to go to the Atlantic instead of shooting this movie in a water tank in North Hollywood, I was too young to realize my recklessness.

Shooting at sea caused many delays: foreign ships entered the camera's field of vision, the camera flooded, and the killer whale sank again with the actors on board. Prop sharks often fail frequently for various reasons, such as bad weather, seawater corrosion of pneumatic hoses, frame rupture caused by water pressure, skin corrosion, electrolysis and so on. From the initial test of water, shark skin made of neoprene foam, which is known as "non-absorbent", absorbs seawater, causing sharks to swell, and underwater algae often entangle "sliding sharks". According to Spielberg's later calculation, of the 12-hour work schedule every day, only 4 hours are actually spent on shooting. Gottlieb almost had his head cut off by the ship's propeller, and Dreyfus almost couldn't get out in a steel cage. Several actors often get seasick. Because of the tax problem, Xiao fled to Canada as soon as he had the chance. During this period, Dreyfus received rave reviews for his performance in The Apprentice, while Xiao began to drink heavily and was indignant at Dreyfus' success. During the main filming of the film, the editor Verna Fields had little working material. According to Spielberg, "If all goes well, we can shoot five shots a day, but usually there are only three. If it doesn't go well, we can't shoot any of them. "

A mechanical shark hanging from a tower.

As it turns out, the delay in the shooting process has also brought some unexpected gains. The script was improved in the production process, and the poor reliability of mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to only hint at the existence of sharks when shooting many scenes. For example, most shark killing scenes use yellow floating barrels to represent their positions. At the beginning of the film, there was originally planned a scene in which a shark swallowed Krissy, but it was later rewritten to simulate a shark attack with a suddenly pulled cable. Spielberg also used several shots in the film where only the dorsal fin could be seen. It is generally believed in film reviews that although these restricted shots are not allowed, they enhance the suspense of the film. The director himself said many years later: "This film has transformed itself into a more Hitchcock-style work on the basis of the original Japanese Saturday matinee thriller. The less you watch, the more you gain." He also expressed a similar view in another interview: "It is a godsend that sharks can't work. The film became more like Alfred Hitchcock than Ray Harry Hausen. To convince the audience that there is such a huge shark, the actor's acting skills become crucial: "The more fake the shark looks in the water, the more anxious I am to tell myself that I must improve the naturalness of the performance. "

Shark experts Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor filmed real sharks in Australian waters and created the illusion that sharks were huge by keeping small actors in small shark cages. During the filming, the Taylor couple met a real great white shark, and both the boat and the cage were attacked. The images of these attacks are so amazing that the director is eager to use them in the film. When attacked, there was no one in the cage. The content of the script in which a shark killed Hooper was the same as that in the novel, so the plot was rewritten. Hooper successfully escaped from the cage, and the shots taken by the Taylor couple were used in the film accordingly. As executive producer Bill gilmour said, "The Australian underwater shark rewrote the script and kept the role of Dreyfus".

Although the main shooting work was planned to be completed in 55 days, it was actually delayed by 159 days until 1974 10.06. Spielberg once said, "I thought my film career was over." I heard rumors ... I can't find a job anymore, because no one has made a movie for more than 100 days. "The last scene of the film shooting is the scene of the shark exploding at the end of the film, but the director himself was not there when shooting, because he thought that the crew would throw him into the water after shooting that scene. Since then, this has become a habit of him. As long as the last scene of the film he directed is taken, he will be absent on purpose. Afterwards, the crew filmed underwater scenes in the MGM water tank in Culver City, California and near Santacatalina Island. The stuntmen Dick warlock and Frank James sparks, as body double of Dreyfus, filmed the shark attacking the steel cage. Verna Fields has finished the rough cutting of the first two-thirds of the film, and then finished the editing work from the part of chasing sharks, and reprocessed some materials. According to senac, "She actually reconstructed some scenes taken by Steven into comedies, making them terrible and turning some originally terrible scenes into comedies". The crew brought the ship used as a killer whale back to Los Angeles so that the sound team could record the sound of the ship and the underwater scene.

Two shots in the film were modified after the preview. One reason is that the audience's screams drowned out Schairdel's lines "You have to find a bigger boat", Brody's shot of the corresponding reaction after the shark jumped out of the water from behind was extended, and the volume of Schairdel's lines was also increased. Spielberg also decided to make the audience "scream again" and remake the scene where Hooper found Ben Gardner's body, but Universal Pictures refused to bear the corresponding expenses, so the director paid $3,000. This underwater scene was shot at Fields Swimming Pool in Encino, san fernando, LA. First, Craig kingsbury's head model was made of latex, then it was attached to a prop and put on the wrecked ship. The director also poured milk powder into the swimming pool to get the muddy effect of Martha's vineyard.