The opening of the film “Jaws” starts with very fast music where we see the camera moving very quickly under water showing what it would be like from the creature’s point of view. This creates suspense for the audience as along with the fast pace of music you get a feeling of being there in the moment building up faster and faster towards what the creature is swimming towards. This establishes the genre as being a horror because of the scary fast music and fast movements.
The next part of the clip we see a group of people surrounding a fire late at night where people are playing musical instruments such as the harmonica and a guitar and people kissing and smoking and having a good time. This shows that a suspense and tense opening to the film has changed in a matter of seconds to a warm happy environment. This could mean that the happy environment could be changed back to the tense scary environment. There are two characters that are singled out in the scene around the fire when there are two teenagers where the girl and boy are looking at each other in a flirty way. They then decide to run off and go swimming in the sea; this could create more suspense for the audience as the opening started with fast paced tense music and a creature swimming through the water. We can establish the teenage girl as the protagonist when she swims through the water in a very gloomy and dark atmosphere and we can establish the creature as the antagonist as a low angle shot is used in the water looking up towards the girl swimming with stringed instruments being played very slowly creating a scary atmosphere.
The end of the clip shows a shark in the water attacking the teenage girl swimming; this shows that the shark was the creature from right at the beginning of the clip and the danger was in the water and the camping fire was the safe place.
The enigma for the opening scene for “Jaws” is that we want to find out what creature was swimming through the water in the very beginning of the clip and we want to find out what happens to the girl as she starts to swim in the sea.
There is a clever low angle shot when the girl is swimming in the sea; this shows the creature’s point of view from the bottom of the sea. This creates more suspense for the audience as they want to find out what’s going to happen to the girl. Editing used was juxtaposition when we hear the fast paced tense music where the creature is swimming underwater through the sea and then to a happy soft environment around a camping fire. This shows the two different environments/scenes.
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This link shows more information on the film "jaws" including actors, buget, revenues etc ---> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/
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