Blog #3

              With the right editing, a good film can tell its story by how it arranges the images and which sounds to particularly focus on. One great example of this is the Get out of the Water Scene in Jaws. How the suspense in this scene slowly builds up by having a sequence of shots of a seemingly normal beach day lead to a horrific shark attack that stuns the beachgoers.
              The scene primarily focuses on three aspects: The expectation of something happening, the false sense of safety, and the dramatic buildup to the attack. The expectation of something happening in the first shots is seen by how the shots are arranged. There is a back and forth between Police Chief Brody and what is happening on the beach. The sounds of a teenage girl screaming in one shot brings him to immediate attention. His complete ignorance of what the mayor is saying to him also brings out the focus between him and the beach. He is searching for something and the girl screaming alludes to an uneasy feeling of a bad thing possibly happening. This is followed up by the shots of false sense of reality the beachgoers feel. The laid back music in the shots, the sounds of children playing in the water and splashing around, everyone on the beach feeling relaxed. It creates a sense of paranoia that the audience feels of Police Chief Brody and of their own expectations of what will happen. However, the buildup of the shark attack starts to happen right when a boy calls for his pet and the following, stark image of a stick floating in the water gives an immediate sense of danger and brings back the uneasiness of something not being right. Interestingly it also juxtaposes the few shots before. Where the sound in the shots before were getting louder, these following shots were becoming quieter. The suspense and tension is immediately with the underwater POV shot and the focus being on the children swimming. The iconic, tense music starts to play and get louder, giving the impression of seeing through the predator’s eyes and motive. Once the shark attacks a boy there is an immediate climatic climax. The boy is violently being attacked and thrashing about with the red blood flooding the shot, everyone is escaping and running out, the beachgoers are rushing to the shore to help the kids out. Eventually the commotion starts to die out and you see the poor mom looking for her son in desperation. The sense of dread kicks in and the fear of the shark feels very raw and alive.
              This scene works well, even without the context of the whole film itself, because the relationship of the shots give a clear and concise story of the situation at hand.