Behind the scenes at shark film

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 19

Behind the scenes at shark film

It is the day before the opening of Sea World marine park, a multimillion dollar underwater glass complex. The gates that connect the park’s lagoon to the ocean are slowly closing — too slowly to prevent a huge great white shark from silently entering the lagoon. Soon thousands of visitors will be entering the park, touring through the fragile underwater world...So begins “Jaws 3-D,” the most recent film in a series of box-office hits about giant killer sharks. Tomorrow at 10 p.m. on Two a special documentary on the “Making of Jaws 3D” will be screened. Subtitled “Sharks Don’t Die,” the programme, produced

and directed by Mark Grossan, looks at the world of the great white shark as well as behind the scenes at the making of the film. The financial success of the original “Jaws” (1975) made its director, Steven Spielberg, who was only 27 at the time, one of Hollywood’s most sought-after directors.

One of the greatest boxoffice blockbusters of all time, “Jaws,” based on the novel by Peter Benchley, won an Academy Award for John Williams’s stirring music. Live shark footage filmed on the Australian coral reef was well integrated with the giant mechanical shark that was a credit to the specialeffects crew.

Since “Jaws,” Spielberg has directed “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” “Jaws 2” also starred Roy Scheider and was directed by Jeanott Szwarc. “Jaws 3-D” was directed by Joe Alves and stars Dennis Quaid as the chief engineer of Sea World; Mike Brody, who is in love with the park’s senior scientific officer, Kathryn Morgan, played by Bess Armstrong. The grand opening is presided over by the park supervisor, Calvin Bouchard, played by Lou Gossett, Jnr, star of “The Powers of Matthew Star,” who won an Oscar for his performance in the film, “An Officer arid a Gentleman.”