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Jaws - Changing the Film Industry Forever

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In this essay, I am going to be talking how Steven Spielberg’s film, Jaws, impacted the film industry. I am going to do this by talking briefly about how his childhood impacted on his films, an overview of the film, shooting and the cast, music, criticism and marketing. In addition I will explain how Jaws had a cultural and industrial impact on blockbuster films today. Steven Spielberg is one of the most influential and recognized directors in the world. He is known for his top grossing films in the box office. Steven Spielberg has made an immeasurable impact and has influenced the film industry today, “I'd love to go to school and have a normal life, but I don't see any professor at Yale being able to teach me more than Steven Spielberg”(Shia LaBoeuf). Steven Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a child he was always interested in directing films. He spent his childhood in Haddon Township New Jersey, where he saw one of his first films in a theater. Throughout his early teens, he made amateur 8mm films with his friends. In 1958, Spielberg made a 9-minute 8mm film called “The Last Gunfight”, for which he won his ‘photography merit badge’, “My dad's still-camera was broken, so I asked the scoutmaster if I could tell a story with my father's movie camera. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western. I made it and got my merit badge. That was how it all started”, (Spielberg’s interview with a magazine). Over the next 10 years, he went on making films, which had amateur releases, till 1968; where his first theatrical film ‘Amblin’ got released, where the film had a budget of $15000. Spielberg directed Jaws In the summer of 1975, Jaws made people all over America think it was unsafe to get into the waters. Known as ‘The Monster of Hollywood’, Jaws completely changed the way Hollywood made and released big-budget movies, Jaws was the first motion picture to break the $100,000,000 record in the box office passing movies such as The Sound of Music and Gone With the Wind. Jaws is considered the first real blockbuster as it was such a massive success, even creating a new path for Spielberg. Spielberg in an interview with Hindustan times said, “The movie was fulfilling at so many different levels. Every aspiration I had of bringing Lincoln back to life was exceeded by the response from critics, students, and educators The box office taking far exceeded anything I had dared to expect.” Plot The film’s plot is highlighted around a series of various shark attacks, which occur in a fictional beach town called Amity. Once a peaceful, summer tourist attraction, the town of Amity is terrified by the recent news of sea monster lurking in their waters. To protect the citizens and visitors of Amity, Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) tries to close the beach but is stopped by the Mayor who is afraid that attracting fear and panic will prevent tourists from visiting, therefore destroying the community’s main source of payment. As many attacks continue to occur, locals are finally convinced that the water is a threat to their safety, and decide to hire a local shark hunter to destroy the monster. Quint (Robert Shaw) asks Brody and a marine biologist Matt Cooper (Richard Dreyfus) to help him on his mission to sea. As chaos develops, Quint is killed during the shark’s attack on the boat, and to save Cooper and himself, Brody murders the great white shark and survives. Jaws charmed audiences by taking them on a journey that had never before been experienced in a movie theatre. This was done by its innovative; impressive special effects, a complex set design and a powerful thematic score. Modern blockbuster films such as the Transformers can attribute their commercial success to reflecting the epic and revolutionary conventions seen in Jaws Jaws motioned the birth of what is now known as the ‘summer blockbuster’, when it became the highest grossing film of all time in the summer of 1975, it earned a spot in cinematic history. Even 39 years later, the film has still not lost its charm and has devel

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