Jaws

Steven Spielberg's first film that he ever directed was Jaws in 1975. This film contains a great white shark that starts roaming a small community off an island called Amity. The mayor of the city refused to close the beaches when a horrible shark attack occurred because summer was around the corner and he didn't want to lose money. The beach is their main money maker for this small community. After another shark attack occurred, the mayor finally let some of his men go out to sea and catch the shark. They caught a shark thinking it was THE shark to kill those two people but when one police chief (Roy Scheider) brought in a marine scientist (Richard Dreyfuss), he told them another story. That the teeth marks that appeared on the bodies did not match the shark they caught and the another way to prove that was to cut the shark open. The mayor would not have it, he didn't want to scare his business away. Before this attack happened, a hefty fisherman laid out a high price to kill this shark himself. The mayor turned him down. Another shark attack happened the next day and the mayor finally gave in and told Brody to use the fisherman and kill this shark. Brody gathered the local fisherman and the marine scientist and settled out to sea to do whatever it took to find this great white.

The use of elements, camera angles, sound scape, dialogue, blocking, editing was, to me, in an old fashion sense. The music definitely gave away when the shark was near or something was about to happen, I knew what to expect. Spielberg followed the simple three strikes and your out theme; there were three attacks before they did something about 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. It was a cool effect of getting a close up on Brody's face while he was having a bit of a melt down.  It really showed how chief Brody cared about his community and the safety for his people.

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.