Research into the horror "Jaws" opening scene.

 

It was distributed in 1975 by MCA records, now known as Universal Pictures. The director of this film was Steven Spielberg. 

The total budget of this film was about $ 7 million and the global gross was about $ 480 million.  

The main cast was:

An interesting fact about the film:

Steven Spielberg called shark "Bruce" after his lawyer.

The narrative that is given to us is that there is something that lives deep in the sea and that there is a company of young adults who are having fun at a cost. One couple from that group of teenagers went to the coast the girl went to the sea for a swim at something that happened to her. It was never shown what has happened to her. That leaves us, an audience with a lot of not answered questions. This means that we can predict that the rest of the plot is going to be about finding out who is that mysterious monster and what is its aim. I think that the targeted audience for the following film is going to be boys 16+ due to the fact that there are things to think about, there are moments that are leaving the audience slightly on edge. However, I would not classify it as an 18+ film, because there were never shown any violent scenes that were to do either with blood or with something else.  The genre, in my opinion, is not really set up through an opening scene, I believe that through an opening scene we can get more of a feel of a thriller than a horror film. Mainly due to the fact that there were no scary moments in this opening scene at all, apart from the non-diegetic soundtrack, which made the audience feel slightly on edge. So, mostly due to the use of sound audience could feel that the film is probably going to be horror, but other than the non-diegetic soundtrack nothing really made this opening scene look like a horror genre.

Talking about the main characters, I believe that there was a slightly introduced the main character, however, the audience never got to see it throughout the opening scene. I believe that the only main character that was introduced in the opening scene was that monster from the sea. Because it was the only one on whom was made the main accent. It appeared two times within 3 minutes of the opening scene. However, any other character either died or was not shown that much in that opening scene. We know that it is the same character under the water as at the beginning of the scene because we have the same non-diegetic soundtrack within it.

Continuing with a scene, I decided to look at the whole opening scene, especially the parts when the main character is. Interestingly enough the main character is always followed with the same non-diegetic

soundtrack and it always has a Point Of View (POV) camera angle, so it makes it more mysterious, which makes an audience member even more on edge. We know that the main character lives in the sea because we see from the POV perspective that it only sees peoples part of the body that is only in the water and it only has the main view on what is in the sea (e.g, seaweed). 

Another interesting thing from this opening sequence is that there is no non-diegetic sound at any time of it when everyone on the coast and everything is fine. However, once the water is shown and what is underneath water suddenly diegetic ambient sound or a diegetic dialogue changes on a piece of dense instrumental music. That is made to make the audience feel uncomfortable, slightly on edge.

Concluding, I believe that this opening sequence was fairly successful. It left an audience with a desire to continue watching the film, to finally find out who is the main villain and why it kills people.  There were some good uses of camera work, that showed some meanings through it. Although, the only thing that I would add is a little bit more horror-movie style thing. Because throughout the opening scene some of the members of the audience can get the feeling of more of a thriller film, rather than a horror film.

Here is an actual opening scene of the horror film "Jaws" 1975.