Or should that be fin trailer?
Whilst studying film and television at university at the latter part of the 20th Century I decided to try and hone some of my editing skills by putting together a contemporary trailer for my all time favourite film, Jaws.
With its re release at cinemas earlier this year it was granted a new trailer which got my thinking about the one I produced back in that edit suite, I still had a copy of it somewhere knocking around on VHS so decided to hunt it out.
If memory serves I put it together at some point in 1997 and used a piece of Hans Zimmer music from Crimson Tide, a submarine thriller from late Director Tony Scott. That score though is perhaps most famous for being used on one of the greatest trailers of the 90s, Independence Day, or ID4 as it was known in some quarters. I hear that the film itself is being released in 3D sometime next year.
In my Jaws trailer I went for setting the scene in Amity and then slowly building a sense of dread and foreboding before finally revealing the shark. Of course there was a mixture of the classic scenes, such as that first attack, and some of the classic lines,that are just so iconic.
All in all I was still pleased with what I produced all those years ago, I especially liked the juxtaposition between Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) during the autopsy and the first victim he is looking, which worked rather well in the section where he splashes water on his face which seems to mimic poor Chrissie making her way through the ocean at night.
My trailer is perhaps a tad long but the stand out moment for me is the bit where Quint (Robert Shaw) delivers his “too many captains on this island” talk to the whole town and Chief Brody (Roy Scheider). I love it where the music begins to swell up again just as the camera is moving in on him.
The widescreen really shows off some of the wonderful framing and beauty of the film, including the sweeping light shot on the boat at night, Spielberg loves his light and it really shows here acting almost as a pre-cursor to Close Encounters.
Both my trailer and the re release one share many of the same key characteristics and shots (which of course they would,they are from the same film) so I was pleased that in marketing terms I seemed to be hitting the same kind of notes as the boys at Universal.
Jaws is released on Bluray for the first on Monday 3rd September.
Without further ado, here is my Jaws trailer:
And here is the re release one:
Dawn of the Dad 