Jaws on Home Video

Just about every Spielberg film (especially his 80's and early 90's movies) has at least one instance of an odd cut or just weird continuity jumps like whole scenes were left on the cutting room floor at the last minute or pages of the script were discarded during shooting leading to awkward "WTF?" scenes. Although Spielberg didn't technically direct "Poltergeist" there's several odd cuts, especially a jarring bit early in the movie where a scene jumps from the family in the kitchen to the parents knocking on the neighbor's door asking about any weird problems and itching from mosquitoes.

By about Indiana Jones, it became almost like finding a hidden easter egg finding such instances in his films.

 

...including the famous scene of the little girl looking away from the staticky TV screen and saying "They're hee-ee-re". If you look at her lips, she's clearly mouthing something else.

 

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but what always got to me is the story of Joe Spinell supposed to be in Jaws but he supported his friend going through a breakup instead. On the Joe Spinell documentary there is video of him being in the room when Spielberg didn't get the director nomination. The only thing on par is Robert Shaw not getting noticed either.

"Its a dark day in hollywood". "who directed this picture...the Shark?!"

Actually here it is now:

 

I have the "Rolodex from Hell":

Amblin Entertainment
100 Universal Plaza
Bungalow 477
Universal City, CA 91608
(818) 777-4600

Nice adobe/Spanish building, right on the North side of Universal next to the little road on the side. Great screening room in there, but not enough parking.

 

And here's a great new poster for the classic 1975 Jaws done by a talented fan...

 

Oooo, that's really nice! They should use that as an official promotional poster for a theatrical re-release of some kind. Or sell it as a poster print.

 

Blu-Ray all the way!
Check out the details:
Jaws Blu-ray Roy Scheider

 

Whoa... who knew this was the anniversary of Jaws released to theaters this week in 1975...

 

SiCk!! Lol

 

Greetings everyone. I actually haven’t posted to this site for a while but anyways hello. I have all the Jaws films on VHS and DVD.
My go to copy for the original film is the 2005 30th Anniversary DVD. I also have the 2012 DVD which uses the same master as the BD but I tend to just go with the 2005 DVD partly due to the 2012 DVDs lack of extras (yes I’m aware the BD has the extras of the older DVD releases plus The Shark Is Still Working doc).

Another reason I prefer my 2005 DVD is partly out of my preference of the films original mono audio. Yes the 2012 DVD and BD have the mono option but compared to the track that they provide the mono on the 2005 DVD sounds better to my ears. A tad crisper. Also it lacks some of the flaws the other track has such as the correct syncing of the sound effects when Hooper and Brody cut open and the Tiger Shark and the correct pitch of the explosion of the Orca’s engine.

I know there were reviews and articles when the BD first came out that the 7.1 mix was stricken from the original mono tracks but this is largely untrue. It was based off of the 2000 surround remix for the first DVD Release with only a few original sounds restored such as the whale cry.

I’m glad I also have my DVD for the original unaltered film. There was a wire removed in the opening scene and a sailboat on the horizon in a later scene is also gone. Ahh well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyways that’s about all I have to say. Jaws has been a big favorite of mine for a long time and with Summer and 4th of July being here it’s time to get in the mood for this film again. Have a good day folks!

 

Changes that small I can live with. It's not like Spielberg is going in and... oh, I dunno... dropping in alien creatures and additional spaceships in the background. Erasing an obvious mistake is not that big a deal to me.

 

I was a tiny bit dissapointed with the the blu-ray but it is miles better than the old dvd I had.

My guess is that the source material is not better than this and that Jaws looks as good as possible after the restoration they did

 

I agree but at the same time Spielberg did say he was no longer changing anything with his films even mentioning that for 1941 he is/was not gonna ‘go back and take the wires out because the Blu-Ray will bring the wires out that are guiding the airplane down Hollywood Blvd.‘ But yeah the two little tweaks in Jaws aren’t big. I was just saying I’m still glad to have the old DVD just from a purist point of view. It doesn’t ruin the movie.

 

Well, he removed the glass reflection from the snake scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As I said, obvious mistakes can be forgiven, because he's not making a change to the film content per se.

 

True. Like I said I agree. Removing something technically not meant to be there is one thing, removing something that is is another. Fortunately this is not the latter.

 

Really? I love the BD. Looking forward to the 4K!

 

It could be sharper and have more detail and maybe Universal did go a bit heavy on the grain management.
Not really complaining though. Maybe my expectations was too high.
Jaws looks really good but not great imho

 

Watching the blu-ray was like watching it for the first time. It looks amazing.

The only part that really bothers me is when the boat is going down and after the shark eats Quint, it breaks through the glass of the boat where Brody shoves the tank in its mouth. The sound of the breaking glass is ridiculous compared to the original.

 

Indeed - a "Jaws" 4K is in my top 5 most desired 4K UHDs!

 

Going to see Jaws this Sunday night at a little retro movie theater in Stone Harbor NJ. First time seeing on the big screen.

Saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail there back in April. Nice little theater with recliners, a bar, and a burger bar attached.

 

It's a little unclear whether he or Lucas would've been making those decisions on the Indiana Jones movies before the sale to Disney. It would probably come down to a handshake between the two. Spielberg had always viewed Lucas as in control of those movies so it may have been up to Lucas himself if he asked for Spielberg's approval on a change. I think Lucas reedited the final scene in Raiders himself back in 1981 but of course he would not have done that then without getting Spielberg's approval. Now that Disney owns them, they would probably be more concerned about getting Spielberg's approval than Lucas'.

I'm also not sure whether something so small as a wire being removed might've been done by a restoration technician without necessarily notifying the director directly what was done. Remember things like the misframing on Back to the Future 2 which required sending out replacement DVDs. If a flat-out mistake can slip through the approval process then a perceived improvement could certainly slip through as well.

 

No, it'd be Spielberg. Spielberg has extremely tight control of all the movies he's done in the last 45+ years, regardless of what studio entity bought them or sold them. And even on the stuff before that, Spielberg renegotiated contracts and got "understandings" that he had to approve clips, stock footage, publicity, remastering, documentaries, all aspects of the films. He's known as a control freak's control freak (which I understand).

Two different issues. Wire removal, effects problems, all that stuff would still have to have a final sign-off by the director (if they're alive) -- and that's standard for pretty much any major studio feature. I know of cases where even fairly minor 1970s and 1980s independent films still had to have the director's final approval for home video releases done in the last 10 years.

In the case of Back to the Future, I think the reality is nobody noticed until it was too late, and I think the director and producer just kind of spot-checked it and assumed it matched the previous version. What we do today for any major studio (and actually, a lot of independent companies) is we run a digital copy of the last home video version and compare them back and forth during the mastering process on the same calibrated monitor. The framing, the color, the brightness and so on are all "ballparkish" identical, but we try to use good judgement to improve on what was done before and fix any obvious mistakes if we spot any. My general inclination is to use as much of the available dynamic range in HD and 4K as we can. Framing-wise, it's a question of balance and standard composition that goes back to Film 101. When I saw the Back to the Future fiasco, I just rolled my eyes because it was extremely obvious it was wrong -- way too much "air" over the actors' heads. In my case, I was a camera operator for five years before I got into color, so it's the kind of thing we look for all the time.

For Amblin & Spielberg, what has happened until recently is that post-production chief Marty Cohen (now Mark Graziano after Marty passed away 2 years ago) supervised all the remastering sessions on a day-by-day basis, and then they would bring Spielberg in for a few hours to have him sign off on different segments of the film (like reel by reel). In other cases, they have the DP supervise every day and then have Spielberg come in... or they send a remote feed to Spielberg's office to approve the reels. But Spielberg really does approve every pixel of every version, and that included Jaws.