Bruce, the shark that lurked through the nightmares
of every kid in the 1970s. The animatronics behind this iconic monster
made the set of Jaws, as Steven Spielberg describes, a disaster. Although now we can look back at Jaws and
recognize it for the classic of American cinema that it is, at the time of its production,
it looked less like the very first Hollywood blockbuster and more like the end of Spielberg’s
career. At one point, he confided in his fellow crew
members that he seriously thought that Universal Pictures was going to fire him any day. How did all of this happen? The team who brought life to the animatronic
shark was lead by Bob Mattey, who had previously designed the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea- a spectacular special effects film that actually jeopardized Walt Disney’s
career. I’m sensing a pattern here. Spielberg famously nicknamed the shark Bruce,
after his lawyer Bruce Raynor. The shark that we see on screen is actually
an amalgamation of three different animatronic characters and footage of real great whites
swimming around a diving cage of the coast of Australia. The man in the cage was a 4’11 actor, making
the 15 foot great whites appear more to scale with the 25 foot animatronics. The man-made sharks were constructed with
steel skeletons covered by polyurethane rubber skin. The movement was provided by air powered pneumatic
mechanisms that worked absolutely perfectly, without a single issue... on land. The moment they were submerged under the shores
of Martha’s Vineyard- that’s when the problems started. The salt water of the ocean flooded the tubes
and dissipated the electrical components making them at best difficult to work with and at
worst completely unresponsive for the majority of the shoot. These were animatronics that cost half a million
dollars to produce and most of the time, they just didn’t work. And then, because things couldn’t possibly
get any worse, one of them sank. On a beautiful late summer day, one of the
animatronic sharks capsized during filming and sat on the ocean floor until the crew
could get it back up onto land. But by then, the damage was already done and
shooting was delayed even further. Spielberg, tasked with fixing this mess, was
losing his mind. And that’s when ingenuity kicked in. Recall, if you will, the iconic opening scene
of Jaws in which a swimmer is attacked, but we never actually see the attacker. Though it’s one of the most tense, thrilling
moments of the movie, we don’t even catch a glimpse of the shark. Spielberg credits Peter Benchley, the author
of the original novel, for this, as he described the initial attack, but never the shark. Instead, we are left with this primal fear
as our imaginations fills in the gaps. The most convincing and terrifying shark of
Jaws isn’t one of the animatronics or even the actual great whites they shot footage
of, it’s the shark that we don’t see. It’s the one that’s created by John Carter’s
sound mixing, Verna Fields’ editing, John Williams’ score, and your imagination. Spielberg embraced the limitation of having
effectively broken robotic sharks by using them much less than they had originally planned,
recreating that same suspense of the opening scene throughout the film. We get exhilarating glimpses of Bruce, but
never the entire creature, not until the final showdown. That restraint, coupled with all those finely
executed cinematic elements made Jaws a true landmark in American filmmaking. Many films have tried to be Jaws, many more
will do so in the future, but none of them will possess that same importance or carry
the same weight. I'd like to thank you very much for watching this video. Is there a specific film you'd like to see me cover? What's your favorite part of Jaws? Let me know in the comments and, again, thank you very much. Be sure to come back next week for a new video. Stay tuned.
