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Techniques Used in the Film Jaws to Create Suspense

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Techniques Used in the Film Jaws to Create Suspense
How are film techniques used in Jaws to create suspense for viewers?
Throughout the well-known film Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, a number of different film techniques are displayed to create suspense for viewers. A few of these many techniques used are character behaviour, props and sound effects. These techniques help draw the audience to the film and experience different feelings towards each of the characters.
Character behaviour is a key film technique used to create suspense, Steven Spielberg displays this technique well by creating waves of different emotions and feelings for the audience to experience. One of many ways that the director has created suspense though character behaviour is by displaying the actors facial and body expressions. By doing this it gives the audience a sense of how to feel during each scene, such as when you are shown how frantic and horrified the deputy is when he discovers the young girl Chrissie’s body washed up on the beach, it gives you an image of how brutally disfigured her body must be. Another powerful example of how character behaviour can create suspense is when the characters act in a frantic behaviour. This sort of behaviour can create anxiety amongst the viewers, it gives you an uneasy feeling that something will go wrong and that the characters are acting too quickly to realise what they are doing. An example of this is viewed when Hooper decides to go into the shark cage even though he understands the risks.
Throughout the film Jaws, props are used to create each scene effectively to cause a reaction from the audience. Props are predominantly used to emphasise the main subject in each film, in this case the main subject is the mechanical shark well-known as ‘Jaws’. The shark’s size is emphasised by being placed besides objects that appear large to us, but look quite overpowered when put next to it, such as Quint’s boat The Orca and the shark cage Hooper is placed into which is dismantled and destroyed by

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