How They Made the Shark in Jaws (and Why We Don't See It Very Much)
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jaws, let's take a brief look back at the shark itself.
Steven Spielberg's Jaws is famously a movie that builds suspense through what it doesn't show the audience, and if you know anything about the making of the original summer blockbuster (airing tonight in primetime on NBC!), you know that was a necessity that wasn't necessarily in the script.
After all, to make a movie about a killer shark work, you're gonna need a killer shark, and that's easier said than done. So, in celebration of the movie's 50th anniversary, let's take a brief look back at how Jaws made its shark come to life, and why we didn't see it nearly as much as Spielberg planned.
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How the shark in Jaws came to life
Though producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown originally considered using a real great white shark with the help of animal wranglers, it soon became clear that Jaws, based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, wasn't going to work with a real live apex predator on the call sheet. The production would have to fake the shark, and they'd have to do it well enough to convince audiences that the danger was real.
To make it all work, art director Joe Alves sketched out various scenes from the film, then explored how to make those scenes a reality. According to Alves in the documentary A Look Inside Jaws, Universal Pictures' effects department was, at the time, much more focused on bigger budgeted films like the Airport series, and couldn't devote resources to what was viewed as a much smaller production. They tasked Alves with going out and finding a shark builder for himself.
Fortunately, Alves got in touch with Bob Mattey, a recently retired effects wizard who'd designed things like the giant squid for Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Mattey was immediately convinced they could make a giant great white work through practical effects, and signed on to supervise the construction of three different prop sharks for the film.
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Using molds built by effects legend Roy Arbogast, Mattey's team set about assembling a trio of sharks that would be able to move convincingly through the open ocean off Martha's Vineyard, where Spielberg had determined Jaws would be shot. One of the sharks was a full-body model that could be towed on a line, while the other two were "left to right" and "right to left" sharks, each with one side removed to allow Mattey's various pneumatic hoses to be connected to the fins and jaws. These sharks were then mounted on a crane arm attached to a platform, which would allow the shark to move not just side to side, but up and down, rising up out of the water at key moments. There was also, according to Spielberg, a lone dorsal fin that could be pulled by a boat, suggesting the appearance of a shark without having to use one of the full-sized models.
It was a good thing, too, because once the mechanical sharks -- powered by the compressed gas of pneumatics to avoid potential oil leaks that would have come with a hydraulic system -- got out into the open ocean, the rough seas and salt water wreaked havoc on Mattey's creations. The sharks broke down constantly, and even sank to the bottom of the ocean, which meant repairs often took the place of filming, and left Spielberg to shoot everything he could without the sharks, including the now-famous scene in which Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw) attach floating yellow barrels to the shark in order to track it in the water.
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Production stretched on for months over schedule, making the crew homesick and putting Spielberg in a position in which he was afraid to leave Martha's Vineyard, because he felt that if he did, he might never go back. In the years since, Spielberg has famously discussed the shark's mechanical failures and delays, but in retrospect, he also views the moments when the shark did work with a genuine sense of pride.
"The shark worked well enough that we, for a while there, had the biggest hit of all time, so I really owe the shark a lot, more than I want to take away from it right now," Spielberg said. "And I owe Bob Mattey and his team a lot as well."
NBC's 3-hour telecast of Jaws — featuring an introduction from Steven Spielberg — begins Friday, June 20 at 8:00 p.m. ET. All four Jaws movies are now streaming on Peacock through July 14. You can also rent and/or purchase them from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, along with a special 50th Anniversary edition of Jaws.
