Jaws Opening Scene Analysis

Jaws is a 1975 American horror film about a shark that attacks beach goers at a fictional beach side town, and follows the shark hunters and scientists that try to capture it. The film opens with a couple going skinny dipping in the sea early in the morning. Both characters are young people, appealing to the horror genres target audience of teenagers by helping them to relate to the events onscreen. The fact the scene is set so early in the morning when the sun has hardly risen suggests the characters have been out all night, which also appeals to the target audience as they like to imagine themselves taking part in a wild all night party that ends up with skinny dipping on a beach. The scene also opens with establishing shots of the beach and the sunrise, which also introduces the male character who is shown in the foreground. The audience can connote he is unintelligent but sociable, a typical 'jock' character which is a genre convention of a lot of teenage horror films. We see these characteristics displayed by the characters clumsiness, falling down a sandy bank as he runs after the girl but also his good humoured nature shown through his speech. He says "I can swim! I just can't walk, or dress myself," which refers to his falling over and struggle to get his clothes off.

The second establishing shot we get is a long shot of the beach leading on to the sea, with the sea in the background of the shot. The girl runs from the camera to the sea and dives in, then starts swimming away. The girl seems to be having fun, as we can tell through her body language (doing handstands in the water etc.). We have a close-up of the girl, although she is still not fully visible due to the dark lighting of the shot. The non-digetic sound of seagulls also lets the audience know this is a sunrise, rather than a sunset. We then have a shot of the girl swimming from under the water. We know this is from the sharks point of view and the scene is suddenly made tense. The background music that begins with this shot helps create this tension, as it features very slow ominous and deep tones. Another shot shows the camera creeping slowly towards the woman from under the water as she floats there kicking her legs. These shots are very long and drawn out to bring the film to a painful slow speed to increase the anticipation of the audience. The background music slowly changes into a variation of the sound motif of the shark that is now so famous in movie culture. The tense tones lead up to the sharks attack of the woman.

The pace of the shots quicken as soon as the woman is attacked to show the pace of the action and the threat and speed of the shark. The woman is dragged under the water and then thrashed around violently by the shark as she screams for help. Juxtaposed shots between the terrifying situation the girl is in to the calm relaxed situation of the boy lying drunk on the beach makes the girls shots seem more dramatic. After more close-ups of the girl screaming for help and mid-shots tracking her movements through the water, she is suddenly dragged underneath the surface. Her screams and the loud tension music cut off abruptly as soon as she is out of sight, and the shot ends with 3-4 seconds of silence just showing the slow movements of the waves. This shows how quickly things seem to return to normal again after the attack, and the fact the scene happened in the middle of the sea suggests no one will find out about what happened to the girl. This works to make the threat of the shark seem greater, as its victims vanish without any trace. The fact we never actually see the shark throughout this opening scene also makes it more frightening, as this plays on audiences fear of the unknown. This also builds anticipation for the reveal of the shark later on in the film.