It is July 1974, and Steven Spielberg is not yet part of Hollywood royalty. He’s just a small director with a huge shark problem. Spielberg was shooting on location at Martha’s Vineyard for three months. He was trying to set up the scary start for the movie Jaws. Jaws was set on the beaches of fictional Amity Island on a 4th of July weekend. Spielberg was now waiting for his overdue star, the sharks. Finally, three mechanical sharks got delivered. And as Spielberg saw the $250,000 sharks, his heart sank. This beast was far from menacing. With eyes crossed, teeth too white and jaws not closing, this was a disaster. In fact, on the first day of the shoot, the first shark sank to the bottom of the Nantucket sound. Within a few weeks, there was a mechanical failure caused by salt water in the engines of the second shark, and they had to replace the engine with some pneumatic pipes. Every evening, the sharks had to be brought to the shore, the water had to be taken out, some machines had to be repaired, and it had to be repainted. Even by diva standards, the hero of this film, the sharks, were clearly high maintenance. Spielberg knew that he had to do something about it. He had to find a way to tell the story without the sharks. That’s when he stepped back and asked himself, “What would Hitchcock do in a situation like this?” and he got his answer. ‘It is what we don’t see that truly frightens us.’ This idea of the unseen enemy completely changed the direction of the film. It shapes the opening scene, where a girl goes out for a midnight swim and becomes the shark’s first victim. We see her swim out, we see her legs underwater, and then we hear the ominous notes of John Williams’ score. We see her being yanked down and dragged across the sea. The film’s nemesis actually appears, for the first time, after 1 hour 21 minutes of the start of a 2-hour movie. The film went on to gross over $400 million and got nominated for 4 Oscars. It won three, and lost the best picture to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. It shot Steven Spielberg to the top of the great director’s list. Business Points ( Tags ) #uncertainty #stepback #perspective #ingenuity #outofthebox #creativity
