In the very beginning of the film there is nothing but a black screen with a non diagetic background voice of sea creatures along with a POV shot of the shark. Here Steven Spielberg introduces us the shark through the music and the camera movements so that we are able to identify it easily in the future.
He uses a tension build up as the non-diagetic sound tempo increases, here is where the audience expects to see something to happen, in this case the movie has not yet started but the audience does know that the movie is a horror thriller about a great shark so this does sort of give them what they are expecting in a tricky way.
Steven Spielberg uses a straight cut to move to the next scene where a relaxing atmosphere of a group of teenagers enjoying their selves at the beach in the late evening. The camera moves across the circle of friends which is cored with a big camp fire, the camp fire comes parallel with two friends kissing each other, this connotates what is going to happen in the next scene where love becomes a danger…
The camera slowly reaches a boy who faces a girl who is separated from the circle of friends; there is a cloud of smoke across her face whenever the camera faces her, the smoke connotates her dullness. The boy follows her across the beach where they are separated from the warm light of the group that connotates their separation from safety, he runs after her in a path which has been bordered with a broken fence that connotates the teeth of the shark that the girl will soon run into. He tries to continue to follow her but as he reaches the water he struggles to take of his clothes but still attempts to.
The girl has entered the water, swimming freely, and waiting for the boy. She tries to call him but his answers cannot be heard, Steven Spielberg uses an extreme long shot where the girl is a very small fraction of the screen, her movements lead her into the waters where she slowly disappears. The camera now returns to its usual medium shot where she is seen swimming again, at an instant, the music re-appears, this makes the audience start to build up their tension from a scene that had free sea diagetic sounds that represented freedom, although the non-diagetic sound that represents the shark block all of that out of the way. It takes a few seconds until we can actually see the POV shot of the shark from below the girl, a close up shot of the girl is shown to represent her emotions, it turns from a smile to a moment of death where the girl is eaten by the shark. The convention of horror movies is now shown where the most attractive virgin girl is killed the first…
