Causes Of Paramount Success Of Jaws Directed By Steven Spielberg

The Blockbuster

Due to the film’s paramount success, it was crowned the title ‘Blockbuster’ and it was considered one of the first films from the ‘blockbuster era’. People were literally lined up around blocks to get their tickets. The undebatable impact it had on audiences allowed it to become a cultural phenomenon.

What if Jaws was released in 2019?

What if we asked ourselves, where would Jaws be if it was released this year, this century, with this audience and in this economy? As inflation is the increased price of goods and services over time, without a doubt we can conclude that things like movie tickets have increased in price. For example, in 1975, the average price of a movie ticket was USD 2.05, and 260 million tickets were sold. This means Jaws made a little over as they are $9.01 per ticket. Because of inflation if Jaws was released this year or $260 million with ticket sales. But if we compare it to today’s prices for movies would probably have grossed 1.15 billion dollars and would have been placed 1st in the list of top-grossing movies.

Audience Research – Focus Group Results

To conduct research to gain qualitative data, which is known to be subjective and based on opinions, I conducted a focus group by asking numerous questions to people who have watched the Jaws film. I have recruited people ranging from the ages of 11-18, and of different genders and asked around 10 questions.

The three participants wish to be nameless and I will be referring to them based on the letter which corresponds with the number that they are. From the participants, we can tell that there is a bias within the group as there are only a three- year age range and the fact that there are only three participants from the same school.

• 1 – A
  • Age: 15
  • Gender: Female
• 2 – B
  • Age: 16
  • Gender: Male
• 3 – C.
  • Age: 14
  • Gender: Female
• 4. – D
  • Age: 12
  • Gender: male

Overall, the focus group had a very mixed response and reactions. They did confirm that many of them had watched the film because of friends and family, this is also confirmed in the questionnaire sent out. Although, there was a split between if they had liked the film or not. A big part that came into the conversation was the age of the film, nearly 45 years difference. Few of the participants had said that one of the reasons they watched it and liked it was because of its age and the time of release, but similarly to an opposing point if the film came out this year they would not go and watch it. This shows that the time of release was a big part of its success because if it was released now, many won’t go and watch it. To conclude, there are mixed opinions about the film, some being positive and some being negative.

Academic Research

For this section, I will be using academic research to find out about the director from Jaws, Steven Spielberg. To carry out this task I will be using a website called Ebsco Host, which can be found on our Lionel page.

This is what came up. Image of the results can be seen in the appendix. To summarise, it talks about the author peter Benchley, Spielberg’s directing as well as in relation to other major directors, as well as similar movies and genres compared to Jaws. It goes into detail when talking about Speilberg’s’ history before Jaws, as well as the company he worked with to make Jaws a reality.

Conclusion

To answer the question of ‘Why Jaws was so successful?’, I have conducted numerous types of research to come to a conclusion to answer the main question. In my opinion, I don’t think there are one or two particular reasons that made the film so successful, I believe that it had been numerous things that contributed to its success, and without those little pieces, the puzzle can’t be completed. For example, its many different types of advertising and campaigns reached a wide audience in one category. But the director, Spielberg himself may have attracted some people from his previous film Sugarland Express into coming to watch the movie. Or it could have been the ratings and by critics as they were quite positive. There is no way to conclude why exactly the film was a success. But every part of the film and franchise did play a role to help it become successful and everything contributed is the reason why the film is so successful.

I think the best research I conducted would probably be the secondary data since the film is quite old, there is a lot of information to draw conclusions from and write about and I think this really helped me. But on the other side of the spectrum, I think the worst type of research I did was the primary research, particularly the focus group. I think that rather than doing for people from similar age groups, I could’ve done it on different people to have a broader range of results. since the movie is quite old, I could’ve asked older people to share their opinions as it may have been from the time of release. I think that next time I will take these small factors into consideration. I don’t think one type of research was more effective and informative than the other, this is because they each provided different information that is useful on one hand. They both have their pros and cons which makes them equal to each other.