Summary Of The Movie Jaws

Jaws is on of those rare horror movies that manages to make something real terrifying. By utilizing editing, sound, and cinematography, the movie makes us feel frightened, and highlights the meaning of the work as a whole, that we as humans must always respect the nature that surrounds us. No one on earth can discuss “Jaws” without first mentioning the music and sounds of the movie. It is often parodied, copied, and discussed, but Jaws did it first, and did it best. From the very beginning of the movie we (the viewers) are taught to associate this monster, the “man-eater” with those two notes, and every time we hear those two notes, we know the chum is about to hit the fan. The song utilized in this movie is beautiful for many reasons. First

In general, the movie tended to shoot very normal shots for the establishing scene, but brought us to a low perspective for others. One example of this is during the shark cage scene. While hooper is “in charge” of the scene, we are level, and stable. However, as soon as the shark starts smashing the cage and threatening Hooper, we see low angle shots. These shots make the viewer feel metaphorically below the shark by placing the viewer physically below the shark. We are left to feel small and dominated by this “monster” that we cannot truly control. The single most important stand-alone piece of camera work, however, would be the dolly zoom during the second beach attack. This shot helps us feel the unease, panic, and resulting tunnel vision the sheriff is feeling during the scene. This shot also helps contribute to the overall feeling of un-ease we the viewers experience. The next most significant example of cinematography is how the shark scenes are shown to the viewer. The movie is very clever in how is reveals the shark to the audience. We are shown glimpses there, and pieces here, but short of the ominous fin of death, we are shown very little of the shark for the first two acts of the movie. Though the first two deaths are in the first two acts, and we witness both of them, we do not see the shark’s face until the protagonist are on the boat. What we are shown is

The longest continuous shots in the movie by far take place during the scene where Quint is re-telling the tale of the ship that sunk. As some of the most pivotal shots of the movie, these shots are important to the telling of the gruesome, sorrowful, and fearful story being re-told by Quint. Pre-ceded by the scar swapping scene that included many cuts and many shots, this scene kills the comic relief beautifully. By choosing to make this shot almost unbroken, the film has brought the audience into the scene. While we are shown a few perspectives of him as he talks, we only take our eyes off of Quint briefly, to check on the other characters. By being sparing with the cuts of this scene, we are fully engaged and focused on him. These long shots stand out against the rest of the movie, and because of that we see the pain in his face and feel more and more respect for Quint, and understand more and more his fear of sharks as he goes on. The way this scene is cut helps to build the story as a whole by building depth in Quint’s character, and make us understand that, he too is fearful of the sharks. Thanks to the editing (or rather, lack thereof) during this scene, we don’t feel like we are watching a story being told, but we feel like we are on the boat being told the story.

Overall, Jaws uses sound, editing, and cinematography beautifully to