Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And sitting next to me as usual land blocked area
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. We're gonna need a bigger podcast,
Speaker 1: that's right. Shark Week is next week, right, Shark Week
Speaker 1: on the Discovery Channel, and so we thought we would
Speaker 1: do a podcast about something shark related to celebrate Shark Week. Now,
Speaker 1: for those of you are looking at a calendar that'll
Speaker 1: be August two through eight, market down, it's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: And you might think, all right, well, what kind of
Speaker 1: angle are they gonna take for Shark Week on tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, sharks aren't known for using their
Speaker 1: Newton's doesn't have good shark handwriting recognition software. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't bite you today. Looks like next
Speaker 1: Thursday is good, right? Well, bites all that could play
Speaker 1: into it, just different spelling. And we also considered the
Speaker 1: game Shark. Yes, we we came up with several different ideas,
Speaker 1: and then eventually the most obvious idea reared its shark
Speaker 1: ish head. We should do a podcast about Bruce. Bruce, Bruce,
Speaker 1: the shark in Jaws. Chris, do you remember that scene
Speaker 1: in Jaws where the shark leaps out of the water
Speaker 1: onto the orca and it and it crashes the orca
Speaker 1: and and Quinn starts to slide down into the mouth
Speaker 1: of Jaws. You remember that seeing, Chris, No, because I've
Speaker 1: never seen the movie. Shut your mouth, Chris. You have
Speaker 1: never seen Jaws. I have never seen Jaws. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: when when Chris that obviously that was a setup, I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: but I have not seen Jaws. I did not know,
Speaker 1: Chris and not seen Jaws until thirty seconds before we
Speaker 1: hit record. I'm not joking, and Jaws is in my
Speaker 1: top five films of all time. That's right. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stop talking now and go get a coke from
Speaker 1: the fridge and let you talk for the rest of
Speaker 1: the podcast. So June blockbuster known as Jaws hits the theaters,
Speaker 1: starts to frighten the pants off of audiences from coast
Speaker 1: to coast. I do remember that. I totally remember working
Speaker 1: into theaters and just seeing pants there. They don't know people,
Speaker 1: just pants. Are all these pants here and inside them?
Speaker 1: Totally scared out of them. Um. So June also the
Speaker 1: year and month that I was born. How about that, Chris,
Speaker 1: you remember it? I was born then? Yeah? So anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: the movie and I are of the same age. The
Speaker 1: film was plagued by several problems throughout shooting, and some
Speaker 1: of them were or because of personalities involved. There's a
Speaker 1: famous story that, um that a couple of the major
Speaker 1: actors had personality issues that escalated throughout the filming process.
Speaker 1: Can't imagine that Dreyfuss was one of them. Shaw was
Speaker 1: the other, and and so that was only a small
Speaker 1: part of the problem. There were also issues they had
Speaker 1: with the locals of Martha's Vineyard, which is where they
Speaker 1: shot Jaws. Uh. They had some problems with some of
Speaker 1: the locals not really liking the fact that their community
Speaker 1: was being invaded by Hollywood for what was supposed to
Speaker 1: be fifty five days of shooting, which turned into over
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty days of shooting. That's only you know,
Speaker 1: three times as much, right, Yeah? Could the major problem though,
Speaker 1: was with Bruce, and Bruce was the name given to
Speaker 1: the three life sized models of a great white shark.
Speaker 1: Was named after Steven Spielberg's lawyer. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can make golf lawyer shark jokes, and there are lots
Speaker 1: of them that Bruce Raymer is the name of the lawyer,
Speaker 1: and so they named the they collectively named the three
Speaker 1: model sharks Bruce. So the sharks came in. There were
Speaker 1: three different varieties. There was one design just to be
Speaker 1: shot from the left side, had a hole on the
Speaker 1: right side exactly, and there was one for the right side,
Speaker 1: the hole on the left side, same thing, same idea,
Speaker 1: so you only shoot it from one side. You obviously
Speaker 1: wouldn't shoot it on the side that had the big
Speaker 1: gaping hole in it that shows you all the pistons
Speaker 1: and everything inside of it. And then you had a
Speaker 1: full model that was mounted onto a c sled for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word. It was this kind of
Speaker 1: like a submarine without all the walls, but it was
Speaker 1: a little submerged vehicle that could tow this this model shark,
Speaker 1: and it was manned by scuba divers. Now, the models
Speaker 1: that had just the left or the right side. They
Speaker 1: were mounted onto a platform that ran on a set
Speaker 1: of rails that ran along the ocean floor. I wonder
Speaker 1: if those that's a good question. I wonder if they
Speaker 1: are probably in just a bad repair, because one of
Speaker 1: the major problems with this machine, or these machines, I
Speaker 1: should say, is that they kept on seizing up. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason for that is that saltwater is
Speaker 1: incredibly corrosive. Don't drop your iPod, Yeah, it will die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the This is one of those reasons why electronics
Speaker 1: and ocean water really don't mix. It's because ocean water
Speaker 1: tends to be very the salt content it makes it
Speaker 1: very corrosive. So if you were to drop your uh, well,
Speaker 1: well I'm not gonna drop a name brand. Let's say
Speaker 1: you drop your smartphone in water. If it's freshwater, you
Speaker 1: may actually have a chance to recover it by drying
Speaker 1: it out. You could leave it out, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: put it in some rice to try and draw some
Speaker 1: of the moisture out. That works dry rice, by the way,
Speaker 1: not cooked rice. Or but if if you were to
Speaker 1: drop it and say saltwater, the chances of you recovering
Speaker 1: that electronic gadget have decreased significantly because of the corrosive elements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just listen, people, if I've said it once, I've said
Speaker 1: it a hundred times, back up your mechanical shark before
Speaker 1: you put it in there, exactly because if you don't,
Speaker 1: you got the same thing is going to happen to
Speaker 1: you that happened to the the shooting of Jaws. Now
Speaker 1: here's what Spielberg did. He he had decided that he
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot everything on location. He had decided that
Speaker 1: that to shoot it in a studio, like in a
Speaker 1: big water tank would be too obvious, and that the
Speaker 1: movie going public was becoming too savvy and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: stand for that. They would just say, oh, that just
Speaker 1: looks so fake. So he decided he wanted to shoot
Speaker 1: it out on location in the water. They chose Martha's
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard because one it resembled the town that was
Speaker 1: mentioned in the novel Jaws, and to the shelf that
Speaker 1: had a very gradual um decline. You could go miles
Speaker 1: and miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard still only
Speaker 1: be like thirty ft deep, So it wasn't like the
Speaker 1: it woul suddenly drop into a trench you had, you
Speaker 1: could go out a long way so that you were
Speaker 1: out of sight of land. And yet the ocean wasn't
Speaker 1: so deep that you couldn't use this rail system, right,
Speaker 1: which is important because that's what enabled it to act
Speaker 1: like it was swimming. Yes, exactly, they could. They could
Speaker 1: uh mimic the motions that a shark would make while
Speaker 1: swimming through the water, and you could get all that
Speaker 1: wonderful thrashing about and um. So the sharks used a
Speaker 1: combination of electric and pneumatic and hydraulic motors and pistons
Speaker 1: to open the mouth, to roll the eyes, to move
Speaker 1: the fins, to to swing the tail, to bite and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that was very important. And I figured that much.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie, but I figured biting, biting
Speaker 1: does take out you know what. There's a movie called Jaws,
Speaker 1: and biting is involved. Um. Also, some of the some
Speaker 1: of the teeth were hollow and had tubes attached to
Speaker 1: them so that blood could be pumped through the tubes
Speaker 1: so that when the shark attacked, blood would spurt out
Speaker 1: of the shark mouth, right, So you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to just turn them on while the sharks out
Speaker 1: of the water, because then he's just to become a
Speaker 1: blood fountain, which would be an awesome name for a
Speaker 1: death metal band. Um. But let's stay on topic. So Bruce,
Speaker 1: you have Bruce, uh and Bruce was built in Los Angeles, right,
Speaker 1: they had three of them. They had to ship ship
Speaker 1: three sharks. And I'm not gonna say that fast because
Speaker 1: good lord, I know the FCC does not look over us,
Speaker 1: but Discovery does. So they had to send three shark
Speaker 1: models across the country. Okay, no, let's just stop it.
Speaker 1: So ms gun goofy. Because he hasn't seen the movie,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to lend him the DVD after the
Speaker 1: sept probably have to close his eyes at the scary pits.
Speaker 1: So um. So, yeah, they're built in Los Angeles. They
Speaker 1: were shipped over without the the the skin that put
Speaker 1: on them. Yet they were actually kind of just this
Speaker 1: weird the wish creamy plastic color exactly. They had a
Speaker 1: a steel tube frame. You had this this uh, this
Speaker 1: plastic foam on top of it to be the flesh.
Speaker 1: Eventually they use this polyurethane as the skin. They use
Speaker 1: some nylon around the joints so that there would be flexibility. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, shark skin is a is interesting. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. It's uh, it's smooth one way. When
Speaker 1: you rub your hand down from from nose to to
Speaker 1: dorsal fin, you would feel a very smooth surface right
Speaker 1: before you got eaten. And then if you rab your
Speaker 1: hand the other way, which really ticks him off, you
Speaker 1: would definitely eat eating. If you try that, it feels
Speaker 1: like sort of like a cat's tongue. It's you know,
Speaker 1: got those little knobby things, and it's very rough. And
Speaker 1: if if you were to rub your hand the you know,
Speaker 1: quite quickly down the wrong side of a shark, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell you would cut it up. I mean it
Speaker 1: would and it takes off the shark. Yes, you know what,
Speaker 1: sharks are really not as violent as you're making them
Speaker 1: out to be. Well, I mean it's we are talking
Speaker 1: about jaws here, which you know it totally inflates these
Speaker 1: So in order to get this this texture of skin on,
Speaker 1: they wanted to make sure that the skin looked realistic
Speaker 1: whenever the shark came out of the water, because that
Speaker 1: presumably it would come out of the water a couple
Speaker 1: of times in the in the film. So they didn't
Speaker 1: want to beat up on the polyurethane. So in order
Speaker 1: to get around this, they said, hey, why don't we
Speaker 1: just add some sand to the paint mixture and that
Speaker 1: can create the texture that we need and I don't
Speaker 1: even feel like a shark skin. And so they did
Speaker 1: and it seemed to work pretty well. Um, they had
Speaker 1: to tweak the paint um formula quite a bit once
Speaker 1: they got to Martha's Vineyard. What they had done is
Speaker 1: they had tested it back in l A and it
Speaker 1: seemed to work fine on the skin that they had
Speaker 1: created back in l A. Problem is the climate in
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard is totally different from the climate in l A. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the paint did not stick properly to the skin,
Speaker 1: so they had to start tweaking. Well. This meant that
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg had to look at scenes that did not
Speaker 1: involve the shark and shoot those first to give the
Speaker 1: build team enough time to finish the shark design um.
Speaker 1: So he would look at any other scene that he
Speaker 1: could shoot and start shooting those first, with the exception
Speaker 1: of the crowd scenes. Because the problem was that Martha's
Speaker 1: Vineyard when they started shooting, it was early spring and
Speaker 1: it was cold in the water, and I couldn't really
Speaker 1: pay extras to run around in freezing cold water all
Speaker 1: day long to get six seconds worth of footage, and
Speaker 1: they didn't. They considered briefly putting stunt people into the
Speaker 1: water wearing wetsuits that were painted a skin tone in
Speaker 1: order to manage these shots, and then decided that was
Speaker 1: not very um that what that just wasn't gonna work.
Speaker 1: So the best idea was to put those scenes at
Speaker 1: the very end of the film process, so that way
Speaker 1: the water would be at a bearable temperature, which meant
Speaker 1: that they had a certain number of scenes that they
Speaker 1: could film and that was it. Once they were done
Speaker 1: with those, they needed the shark, and the shark just
Speaker 1: kept giving problems. First it was the paint. Then it
Speaker 1: was the fact that they would get the shark out
Speaker 1: into the water and they hadn't tested it in ocean water.
Speaker 1: This would yes, yes, so the salt water would tend
Speaker 1: to make the different parts of seize up. Now, these
Speaker 1: were sharks mounted on gimbals, and if you want to
Speaker 1: know what a gimble is, there's a great article written
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Strickland on house tofforce dot com that explains it,
Speaker 1: but the gimbles allowed the sharks to tilt at certain
Speaker 1: angles to make sure that they could submerge and and
Speaker 1: and uh through the go move through the water in
Speaker 1: a way that looked natural, and also even leap up
Speaker 1: at the characters that were up on boats or on
Speaker 1: docks or whatever. Um. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: parts moving parts that could seize up, and they did
Speaker 1: a lot, so much so that people began to worry
Speaker 1: whether or not this movie would ever be filmed. The
Speaker 1: the production costs went from about three point five million
Speaker 1: to some say over ten million, which today is tiny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not even a marketing budget today for a film,
Speaker 1: but back then that was big bucks, so right, and
Speaker 1: to have your budget more than double, that's bad news.
Speaker 1: So this this film for a while, looked like it
Speaker 1: was gonna be the albatross around Spielberg's neck. But everything
Speaker 1: eventually came together. Eventually they were able to get the
Speaker 1: shark working enough for them to get the pivotal scenes
Speaker 1: they really needed shot. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: was taking a lot of time was the fact that
Speaker 1: underwater scenes. They could spend a whole day trying to
Speaker 1: shoot underwater scenes, and they would get six seconds worth
Speaker 1: of usable footage at the end of the day. So
Speaker 1: you think about that, how many seconds are in all
Speaker 1: of those underwater sequences and jaws, you know, you break
Speaker 1: that out by minutes, and then you figure that out. Okay,
Speaker 1: well six seconds of each of those minutes that took
Speaker 1: a day to do, so days per minute. It's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think about that, you know. And and now granted
Speaker 1: there's not like really extended underwater sequences, but there are
Speaker 1: a few. There's a couple of of shark cage sequences.
Speaker 1: There's some other stuff. I won't spoil the movie for you.
Speaker 1: You haven't seen it yet, Thank you very much, appre um.
Speaker 1: Except you know I won't be able to watch anyway
Speaker 1: with the scary scenes right, well, you know, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get someone to explain it to you using very gentle language.
Speaker 1: The we can say things like the man who was
Speaker 1: bitten by the shark is in a field playing with rabbits.
Speaker 1: Now go. So, once they got these sharks working, they
Speaker 1: went ahead and shot the images. Uh. The the other
Speaker 1: issue they ran into was that there were some things
Speaker 1: they just they weren't going to get the sharks for
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg came up with this brilliant idea of using
Speaker 1: uh the footage of just these barrels to represent the
Speaker 1: sharks presence. There's a point where Quint harpoons the shark
Speaker 1: and attaches these barrels that contain air to the shark.
Speaker 1: Idea being that it will keep the shark close to
Speaker 1: the surface. It can't dive down, and of course the
Speaker 1: shark dives down because it's Jaws and the movies named
Speaker 1: after it, So screw you, Quent, And so that you
Speaker 1: would see the barrels go under the water, and whenever
Speaker 1: the barrels will pop up, you would realize, okay, the
Speaker 1: sharks there nearby. You wouldn't have to see the shark.
Speaker 1: You just knew it was there because the barrels were there.
Speaker 1: It actually made it much more scary, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you could say that the absence of the shark and
Speaker 1: the end was a huge boon for the film because
Speaker 1: it meant that the mystery was preserved through most of
Speaker 1: the movie. You only got little glimpses of it, and
Speaker 1: it made it that much more terrifying because the it
Speaker 1: was your mind that was filling in all the details.
Speaker 1: So in a way, Bruce the malfunctioning shark is. I
Speaker 1: would say it was one of the main reasons why
Speaker 1: that movie is so freaking awesome and you need to
Speaker 1: see it. A few other just quick notes about the
Speaker 1: shark models. Do you know how long they were? How
Speaker 1: long the shark models were? Yeah? Um, you know I
Speaker 1: didn't write that part down. I know how heavy they were?
Speaker 1: How heavy were they? They were around um, two thousand pounds. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was two thousand pounds dry. Yes, because they gained
Speaker 1: ten to twelve percent water weight after being in the water,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why the the sharks wouldn't work
Speaker 1: very well. The kimbals weren't designed to lift an object
Speaker 1: that was that heavy. They were supposed to be neutraly, buoyant.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to just stay wherever you put them.
Speaker 1: But because they gained weight through water, they weren't. Um,
Speaker 1: they were long each Okay, so these are big, big models. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah. They had more than thirty different rams
Speaker 1: and motors in them to make everything go. And of
Speaker 1: course if one of them is not working, then it's
Speaker 1: not gonna look right right. You know, the more complex against,
Speaker 1: the more likely something's gonna go wrong. I also know
Speaker 1: that the shark that didn't have a hole in it.
Speaker 1: Also on the track could swim as far as sixty
Speaker 1: to seventy, which is pretty when you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a long way because you could do
Speaker 1: a lot with that much room. They would they would
Speaker 1: tow the shark down this rail and uh, they would
Speaker 1: shoot for the length of the rail. But of course
Speaker 1: once the rail runs out, that's it. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, go back to one, as
Speaker 1: they say in the movie biz Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking to Chris earlier. I was thinking, if
Speaker 1: they were to make Jaws today, Let's say that they
Speaker 1: never that Peelberg had decided to pass on this movie.
Speaker 1: It was never made. And now today they decided to
Speaker 1: make Jaws, and they decided instead of going practical, which
Speaker 1: is what we would call the mechanical sharks, they decided
Speaker 1: to go c G. I do you think it would
Speaker 1: be as successful a film today as it was back
Speaker 1: in Um, that's a good question, because you know they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had that. As you pointed out, UM, the
Speaker 1: mind is really powerful, and so if they weren't having
Speaker 1: to replace the shark with the uh, the barrels, you know,
Speaker 1: it might not have been a scary Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: of other shark movies I've seen, and while some of
Speaker 1: them are very gory and they have a lot of
Speaker 1: jump scares in them, they don't necessarily fill you with
Speaker 1: the terror that I felt when I first watched Jaws,
Speaker 1: because just hearing John Williams score on m once you
Speaker 1: start hearing that, especially early in the film. Early in
Speaker 1: the film, that score always indicated the presence of the shark.
Speaker 1: If you heard that theme, the shark was there, and
Speaker 1: it it got you used to that. Later on you
Speaker 1: would hear the theme, but the shark wouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: But you're on edge because you hear the theme and
Speaker 1: you've been trained, Okay, now the shark is here. Or
Speaker 1: in other parts you don't hear the theme and suddenly
Speaker 1: there's the shark, and that freaks you out because you
Speaker 1: didn't get the warning that you expected. It was a
Speaker 1: wonderful use of suspense. Um right out there with Hitchcock,
Speaker 1: I would say, and uh, and I can't imagine with
Speaker 1: c G. I being able to resist the temptation to
Speaker 1: show the shark off every chance you got, you know,
Speaker 1: which is done quite frequently with computer graphics, right, So
Speaker 1: I think in a way the busted sharks are are
Speaker 1: really what made that movie special now granted, and made
Speaker 1: it a living hell for the people who are working
Speaker 1: on the film at the time, But as a as
Speaker 1: a an audience member, Um, I'm actually thankful that it
Speaker 1: did happen that way, because otherwise we wouldn't have nearly
Speaker 1: as as memorable a film, I would wager. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's neat stuff. And if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about hydraulics and and things of that nature, we have
Speaker 1: articles on how stuff Works dot com and actually goes
Speaker 1: into the details of how hydraulics work. We didn't really
Speaker 1: go into that here because uh, well you know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of other fans stuff for me to cover
Speaker 1: because I'm such a fan boy of the film. I
Speaker 1: didn't even go into the U. S. S Indianapolis speech,
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, one of the best monologues
Speaker 1: in film history, even though it's not historically accurate. Is awesome.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so I'm freaking out a little bit over here. Okay,
Speaker 1: well are you done freaking I'm done freaking out. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I thought I would mention there's a pretty cool website.
Speaker 1: I would suggest people check out. It's www dot Frenzied
Speaker 1: waters dot com. Oh yeah, yeah, it's pretty mysterious. There's
Speaker 1: some interesting little videos and some other stuff there. There's
Speaker 1: a you know, do some digging, and I would suggest
Speaker 1: going beyond just the website. I say, search around, use Google,
Speaker 1: take a look. Uh, you might be surprised at what
Speaker 1: you find. There's some pretty cool, scary stuff on that
Speaker 1: website and things that are related to that website. Personally,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stick to showers now because I am
Speaker 1: afraid to go in the water. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what we'll do. What we'll watch Psycho and then
Speaker 1: you won't even want to do that. I know you're wondering. Nice.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we got that all the way. So
Speaker 1: remember Shark Week August two through August faith on the
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel. We hear it, text stuff, wish you happy swimming,
Speaker 1: and if you have anything you'd like to say to us,
Speaker 1: any comments or questions or criticisms, anything of that nature,
Speaker 1: send it to tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Remember we have tons of shark content on how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And we will talk to you again.
Speaker 1: Assuming We're not eaten really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to check out the New tech
Speaker 1: stuff blog now on the How Stuff Works homepage, brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you