"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

I was watching the special features for Jaws (30th Anniversary Edition) last night. I really enjoy learning about all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. I guess it's like watching that television show 'How It's Made'; it fascinates me.

I learned a couple of interesting facts about the making of Jaws, and one in particular got me thinking about the film industry of today. Toward the end of the feature Steven Spielberg was discussing some of the 'tricks' he used to get a scream out of the audience. There is a scene where Chief Brody is 'chumming' blood and fish guts into the water in an attempt to lure the shark to the boat. He turns toward the camera, throwing chum over his shoulder into the water, and says "Why don't you come down here and chum some of this s***." At that moment the shark bursts out of the water. The audience screams. Spielberg smiles.

Spielberg explained that he wanted to first make the audience laugh, and then turn that laugh into a scream. He said he achieved the laugh simply by using the word s***. In 1975, when the movie first premiered, media language rarely used such 'vulgar' words. Spieberg says that s*** was an easy laugh back then because the older generation would laugh nervously and the younger generation would laugh rebelliously. At any rate, the audience laughed and then immediately screamed. Spielberg got what he wanted. Clever.

Anyway, I realized that the trick he used involved doing something in film that hadn't really been done before. Fair enough. But what about today? What hasn't already been done in film? Looking at the list of titles that have been released in the last ten years it's easy to believe that everything and anything that can be done has been done. Especially when you look at films like South Park and Team America: World Police.

Spielberg was focused on getting a specific reaction out of the audience, at a specific moment. Some of today's movies seem interested only in doing everything possible to shock the audience at every moment.

I guess the challenge is for the film makers to find new ways to get their desired reactions. Film makers like M. Night Shyamalan who found creative methods of shocking audiences in ways they hadn't been shocked before. And each time a new method is used the bar gets raised for the next filmmaker.

In the end, I see three possible futures for the film industry:

1) All the ideas get used up and Hollywood just churns out average, boring films with nothing new.
2) All the ideas get used up and Hollywood stops making movies altogether.
3) Filmmakers step up and start creating even better movies than we've ever seen.

I'm hoping for option three.

Just some food for thought.

Oh, by the way, when Jaws was released 30 years ago it became the first movie of all time (at that time) to gross more than $100 million.

Steven Spielberg was 26 years old when he directed Jaws. Wow.