Jaws opening scene analysis

Jaws opening scene analysis

Sound has a very very big impact on the film 'jaws' this is because it is very effective and is one of the main conventions of the film. Right at the beginning it starts off with a violin instrument like playing while the woman goes off swimming into the sea. This is quite a calm sound and this makes the audience feel and think that nothing bad is going to happen yet and is going to wait until further into the film until the shark occurs, it starts of with the very dark sound, and the noise gets louder and faster when the shark gets closer towards the girl, This sound is also non diegetic. This sound is alarming towards the audience as it only occurs when the shark is nearby and this makes the audience tense and worry about when the shark is going to attack and make them jump. However this scene happened extremely quickly and the audience wouldn't have time to prepare as she was dragged under the water extremely quickly and the sound then changed to very quick and was constant while she was getting attacked. This would make the audience extremely scared and weary, after her being dragged under and then back up and that happening multiple times. To begin with she starts laughing ( by the looks of it) and this makes the audience feel very confused on what is happening because she seems to be happy. This might make the audience ask themselves like, is this a trick? is somebody playing around with her? However then the questions get answered and when she is getting thrown around, we then realise that she is getting attacked by a shark. At the end the music becomes very high and very fast, and this gets faster and louder the more she gets dragged under. This is effective because it causes a lot of tension for everybody.

Camera shots are effective throughout the opening scene of Jaws, right at the beginning there is a long shot of her running into the water, This is also good because it shows the audience the setting and the surroundings. This automatically makes us think something bad is going to happen because otherwise the producers wouldn't want us to see everything that's going on around and would focus and zoom in to just the woman. For the next 30 seconds the camera is focused on the woman having a good time and enjoying herself, this suggests to the audience that it is crawl she is attacked by the shark because she only went into the sea for some alone time and she thought she would be safe there. The underwater shot is very effective because it shows us what the shark can see from underneath the water, this is a point of view shot from an animal. This shows us that the shark is so close to her and she doesn't realise, at any time he can get ready to attack and nobody would realise. We can also see the shark following the lady and getting closer and closer to her slowly, this makes us feel very weary and don't know if they are going to make us jump at any point. We have a close up shot of the woman's face when the shark decided to attack her. This is effective because it shows us her facial expressions very clearly and it shows us the worry and fear on her face as she really wasn't expecting that to happen. At the end of the scene we see another long shot, similar to the one to begin with and it showed us the water was so calm, like nothing happened. This makes the audience feel a bit weird inside as they are probably thinking to themselves. What if nobody finds her? what if that happens again because nobody is able to tell anyone that there is a shark in the water? The audience could be worried after this happened.

In the opening scene of jaws, there isn't many things that are presented and that happen, apart from the girl getting attacked by the shark. This is good because it makes the audience want to carry on watching so then they can have the questions answered that they keep thinking about and they want to know what happens to everybody else, and what other characters are introduced and throughout what actually happens and what the plot it.