How did they make the famous scene in 'Jaws'?

Talking about the popularity of   Shark jaws   For movie buffs, it is "showing off in front of an expert", but perhaps talking about the behind-the-scenes story of the film, especially one of the deadly, spine-chilling scenes in this work, will be very interesting. When the Vietnamese translation of the book Audience- ology: How Moviegoers Shape the Films We Love by two authors Kevin Goetz and Darlene Hayman was released to Vietnamese readers, many behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Jaws were gradually revealed, but not from a purely "narrative" perspective, but rather through in-depth dissection through the test screening story. Because the authors are people with many years of experience in this field.

Scene from the set of Jaws in 1975

The Jaws test screening came about as "the mid-1970s saw a change in the film industry that made test screenings more widely available and forced the process to become more rigorous and disciplined." Steven Spielberg was only 28 years old at the time, virtually unknown, but MCA Universal had given the project to the young filmmaker and planned a massive promotion. The test screening on "a rainy afternoon in the spring of 1975" had MCA executives on edge, and "at the 90th minute," they decided to screen the film.

Although they had run a promotional campaign through local radio stations beforehand, when they arrived at the preview screening, MCA's leadership did not expect to see a long line of people outside the theater to see the first showing of Jaws . The success was beyond expectations! The audience screamed, was stunned, some left the theater to calm down, some even vomited during the process of the characters fighting the extremely bloodthirsty shark on the screen. However, there was a scene that made the whole theater "jump out of their seats", but the crew felt that it had not really reached the "peak" of fear, which was the scene where a character dived along the hull of the ship, shining a flashlight to search and suddenly the captain's head emerged floating. To "upgrade" this scene, Steven Spielberg and his colleagues decided to re-film the next day, but to save costs, they filmed it in a swimming pool. After editing, the crew updated the new version of the film and opened a second preview screening. In the same terrifying diving scene along the side of the ship, the character "discovers a deep gash in the hull and shines a flashlight into the hole. The camera pauses for a moment in the enveloping darkness. Then, suddenly, a head appears on screen with one eye bulging in deathly fear, the other eye gone, its socket filled with crabs . The whole theater explodes."

The book Audience Learning is a good translation, is an interesting book about cinema, has a lot of useful information for "movie buffs"

Jaws was a huge box office success that year, becoming the highest-grossing film in history until the space epic Star Wars came out two years later and "dethroned" the film. Jaws was praised for its editing and sound effects. The test screening helped the filmmakers make changes to the current version of the film to make it better, to last longer in theaters, and, more importantly, to live longer in the hearts of the public.

As a writer who has observed and researched Hollywood for over 30 years, Kevin Goetz has provided a sharp, contemplative analysis over a long period of time about the test screening process - although it is only preliminary, probing the audience's reaction to the unfinished cut of the film, it determines the survival of the work. Kevin Goetz even said that the test screening is so carefully calculated that, if we consider the demographics of movie-going, the test screening process will have its own extremely strict rules. And the point of view that Kevin Goetz presents throughout Audience Studies is even more certain because the author has an admirable working history with the leadership of the big, long-standing film studios in Hollywood.

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