Bruce, patiently waiting for Captain Quint to bleed out:
Here we see the shark showing patience while his prey bleeds out whiskey.
JAWS 50 year anniversary
- Thread starter Apollo
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Here we see the shark showing patience while his prey bleeds out whiskey.
Lol !!!!!!!
That was great, but then Laurent Bouzereau always is.
I know no mass audience doc is going to cover props to a degree that would make an RPFer happy, but they breezed so quickly through the Academy Museum shark that it would give anyone not already in the know the impression that it was screen used. I think they should have left it out entirely.
Also a little weird how they talked about the documentary filmmakers getting footage but didn't point out what that footage was (a single shot of a shark thrashing on top of a cage).
I know no mass audience doc is going to cover props to a degree that would make an RPFer happy, but they breezed so quickly through the Academy Museum shark that it would give anyone not already in the know the impression that it was screen used. I think they should have left it out entirely.
Also a little weird how they talked about the documentary filmmakers getting footage but didn't point out what that footage was (a single shot of a shark thrashing on top of a cage).
And how the cage was smaller to make the shark look bigger lol
Yeah the junkyard shark they mentioned was fiber glass… I know that shark was made out of the original Bruce molds, but was the 3 sharks made for production fiberglass with latex covering it?
The filming prop sharks were soft-skinned. The surviving one is fiberglass but it was cast from the original soft-skin molds. Joe Alves did a close-up inspection of the fiberglass one in recent years and confirmed it.
The mouth positioning of the fiberglass shark does not look mold-accurate to me, though. The original shark body was shaped with the mouth mid-way between open and closed. (They did that so the skin only had to stretch half as far either way.) But the fiberglass shark's mouth is all the way open.
Living in the UK we had to wait on average six months for a movie to arrive on our shores then the capital city London would show it before it then made its way across the country.
Im sure for us it was the summer of 76 that it finally came to town but I was only eight at the time so I could be wrong.
There was quite the arm twisting going on as ny mum didnt want me to see it and refused point blank to take me.. My gmar on the other hand loved taking me out so off we went in her VW Beetle to the large ABC Cinema(RIP) in town. Back then a long que was inevitable and the ticket booth lady always took an age to print the tickets out, I can still see her face All these years later she was a small lady with thick makeup horn rimmed glasses and puckered tight lips 50s style and could have easily have been a David Lynch extra. Once we had our ticket there was like a Theatre manager who welcomed up and clipped our tickets and told us to follow the usher with her torch on the floor lighting the way.
The Cinema was literally throbbing with excitement oh and the waves of constant smoking was almost choking to a young me. Jaws just looked very different than anything I had previously seen on the count them Three TV stations we had in the UK, heck our family had only just got our first colour so Jaws was a First on so many levels for me.
I loved Sharks I loved Dinosaurs my father being a printer by trade set out the type set for the paperback novelisation in the UK so this was a real treat felt like a family affair and I lapped it all up. My main memory was chrissie's horizon level type death scene, I knew it was coming as I had been buying all the magazines and I had the poster on my wall...
The whole cinema screamed! and it seemed like popcorn was flying Everywhere it was quite a traumatic but a thrill ride.
Jaws was also probably the first movie I took interest in that I had actually seen in the Cinema.
I still have the poster magazines the books and these items which we bought next to the cinema.
Funnily enough I now also live in a small coastal seaside town less than a minute from the beach and a view of the sea from our house which on days like today with the sun glistening on the sea remind me of that small boy and his gmar so long ago..
Im sure for us it was the summer of 76 that it finally came to town but I was only eight at the time so I could be wrong.
There was quite the arm twisting going on as ny mum didnt want me to see it and refused point blank to take me.. My gmar on the other hand loved taking me out so off we went in her VW Beetle to the large ABC Cinema(RIP) in town. Back then a long que was inevitable and the ticket booth lady always took an age to print the tickets out, I can still see her face All these years later she was a small lady with thick makeup horn rimmed glasses and puckered tight lips 50s style and could have easily have been a David Lynch extra. Once we had our ticket there was like a Theatre manager who welcomed up and clipped our tickets and told us to follow the usher with her torch on the floor lighting the way.
The Cinema was literally throbbing with excitement oh and the waves of constant smoking was almost choking to a young me. Jaws just looked very different than anything I had previously seen on the count them Three TV stations we had in the UK, heck our family had only just got our first colour so Jaws was a First on so many levels for me.
I loved Sharks I loved Dinosaurs my father being a printer by trade set out the type set for the paperback novelisation in the UK so this was a real treat felt like a family affair and I lapped it all up. My main memory was chrissie's horizon level type death scene, I knew it was coming as I had been buying all the magazines and I had the poster on my wall...
The whole cinema screamed! and it seemed like popcorn was flying Everywhere it was quite a traumatic but a thrill ride.
Jaws was also probably the first movie I took interest in that I had actually seen in the Cinema.
I still have the poster magazines the books and these items which we bought next to the cinema.
Funnily enough I now also live in a small coastal seaside town less than a minute from the beach and a view of the sea from our house which on days like today with the sun glistening on the sea remind me of that small boy and his gmar so long ago..
In 1976 we visited Universal and they had this fiberglass shark hanging like it had been caught. Supposedly taken from the original molds ( I don’t doubt that) no teeth, and you could stand inside the mouth. Mom, no way we are doing that. She is taking this picture and some random dude walked in front of us to check the shark out. It’s our only photo.
They really are..Grand mothers are always the best!
Thats a Great Photo!
Ah! Makes sense, I was going to say this was the first I heard of the movie sharks being fiberglass.
I thought the skin absorbed the water and over weighted the air pistons, making another problem for the sharks operation
Now with these cleared up and the fiberglass shark was made to display at universal
The following movies, jaws 2 and 3
They used the same molds again right?
I wonder if they corrected all the problems with the first shark mechanics
I don’t remember the second or third film.. and don’t really care to watch them, I don’t remember the shark moving/performing any different than the first film.. hmmm
Still an amazing photo.
What I found most interesting about the Jaws @ 50 documentary was the fact there were only eight professional actors in the movie..
This is certainly one of the better movie documentaries Ive seen with new material to boot.
Best line in Jaws..
Thats some bad hat harry!
This is certainly one of the better movie documentaries Ive seen with new material to boot.
Best line in Jaws..
Thats some bad hat harry!
That shark got moved around, it was in another place when I was there
I had to have my father back up and take 2 photos since it was to big
A little Japanese kid was crouching in the mouth when my photo was taken!
Talk with dad, we can’t find the length of frank Mundus’ 4500lb shark
We believe this is the only photo of it, there could be one more of him laying beside it on the dock but we can’t find it
His second shark was 3470lb and that was 17ft long
With Bruce the shark being 25ft long, he had to be pushing 3 tons
We believe this is the only photo of it, there could be one more of him laying beside it on the dock but we can’t find it
His second shark was 3470lb and that was 17ft long
With Bruce the shark being 25ft long, he had to be pushing 3 tons
iirc the Shark was redone for the sequels.
The fiberglass Shark was the last to be pulled out of the original mold
Wow! Excellent thanks for sharing! I was curious when the fiberglass shark was made
Do you happen to know how much the sharks weighed?
The soft skin material was chosen to be watertight (or at least water-resistant) from the start.
They still had trouble with the water. It takes a HUGE amount of force to yank a big object through water quickly. And the sharks were never complete sealed shapes, they always had open areas with exposed internal framework.
The biggest issue was the salt water. Bob Mattey (the shark builder) had tested the sharks in fresh water in Cali and they worked. But at Martha's Vineyard the salt water started rusting & frying everything. So they switched the whole powering medium from electro-hydraulic over to pneumatic air to deal with it. That way they could locate the electricals & air tanks & compressors on the crew's barge that was parked off-camera. The shark basically ran on a bunch of air hoses from the barge.
The problems were never really Bob Mattey's fault from what I've read.
TLDR version: Mattey estimated 1 year to build the shark. They rushed him down to 9 months, and then spent 3 months debugging it during production. D'oh! By the end of the movie the sharks worked pretty well. But by that time they were months over schedule/budget and the shark's bad reputation was cemented.
To put it in perspective, Bob Mattey was hired from outside Universal because he was the only person confident that the shark could be done. Universal's own SFX department had estimated 2+ years (which is basically saying "The project is uncharted territory. No promises.")
JAWS 2 was another trainwreck behind the scenes, but it was human & creative bullcrap. The movie started out with a darker tone and then got switched to teeanger fluff. The director elected to show the shark more because now it worked. And the first movie had already revealed it by the end.
JAWS 3 didn't use the Bruces AFAIK. The "35 foot" shark was only built as a mechanical head. The full-body shots were miniatures.
JAWS 4 was back to the Bruces (or at least their descendants). But it was a decade after the original, different people, low budget, etc.
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