Opening sequence analysis #2

(This isn't the original opening scene but I couldn't find the original and I thought this one worked well the soundtrack has been changed)

Jaws is about a great white shark who becomes a menace in a small town and some of the towns people try to stop it. Jaws was released in 1975 and it was directed by the well known director Steven Spielberg and had 2 writers, Peter Benchley and Carl Gottileb, it starred Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.


The clip starts with a girl running into the sea she's on her own which is never a good thing, she starts swimming with no one else around her, at little way into the clip the camera is under water which in turn makes us feed as though we are also under the water, we are looking up at the girl swimming which could show that something will approach her from under the water, the camera then moves to a long shot and we see she is far out in the sea and still swimming away. We then go under the water again and are looking up at her the camera moves up towards her body before fully coming out of the water when we see the girls face she looks happy until something pulls her under, we can from watching this small extract from the clip see that the camera could have possibly been the thing that then dragged her under.

Although this isn't the original soundtrack I think it works well with the extract. The non-diegetic soundtrack is slow and peaceful creating a calm feeling within the scene and the audience, when something grabs her from underneath the water the soundtrack increases tempo, the soundtrack remains the same throughout the clip until the last couple of seconds when the girl is dragged under the water it stops completely, the only other sound we here is the diegetic sound of the girl laughing and screaming happily.

The editing used in the opening clip works well as there are fast cuts and tracking to help engage the audience it could also be foreshadowing something bad will occur.