The open sea helped with realism, but it meant nothing without a realistic-looking shark. In addition, he opted to film the sharks in the open sea (previous films shot ocean sequences in water tanks). He wanted the sharks to be full-size, and fully-operational animatronics that looked and moved like the real thing. Spielberg rejected the idea of using miniatures. Bruce, named jokingly by Spielberg after his lawyer, Bruce Ramer, was designed by production designer, Joe Alves, and constructed by Bob Mattey, who previously built the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
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The animatronic sharks, on the other hand, were built to full 25-foot scale. To give the illusion of the shark’s monster-size, a real 15 foot great white was filmed swimming around a miniature shark cage that housed a diminutive 4′ 11″ actor. The crew shot the real-life shark footage off the coast of Australia.
The monster-sized 25-foot great white shark seen on film is an amalgamation of animatronic sharks and real-life footage. Here’s the full story about Bruce, and how Spielberg’s new technique scared an entire generation out of the water.
This suspenseful horror technique is often described as Hitchcockian, but it also owes much to cables, editing, and the talents of composer John Williams. Without a working shark, the 26-year-old director, Steven Spielberg, was forced to find a new way of creating suspense and terror that turned the camera into the shark’s POV.īruce still appeared in the film, but Spielberg relied mostly on his new technique. The mechanical shark was a menace that almost killed the production. That’s because “Bruce”, the animatronic shark, malfunctioned for the majority of the shoot.
There is a reason why the shark remains unseen for the majority of the film. This is also, more or less, the same story behind the movie’s troubled production. Jaws is a story about a shark that wreaks havoc and destruction on a small community, and the failure and, ultimately, success in defeating it.
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