“Jaws” myths exploded by Spielberg, via Vaziri
VFX artist and movie fan (and Friend of Six Colors) Todd Vaziri, in a post from 2018 that he updated Monday with new information that debunks the myth that there was an “actual shooting star” in a couple of shots in the movie “Jaws”:
I reached out to film historian Jamie Benning about this issue. He said, “let me ask Joe Alves.” Alves was the “Jaws” production designer and also worked with Spielberg on “The Sugarland Express” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and has spoken extensively about his experience on “Jaws”. Paraphrasing, this is the response he got from Alves in August 2023: yes, the shooting stars in the movie were animated. Yes, they were added in post-production….
Another source has access to Steven Spielberg. So this person asked Steven Spielberg in September 2023… Paraphrasing from Spielberg: Yep, it’s animated shooting star, animated by Albert Whitlock.
This was a bombshell for me. No, not that Spielberg confirmed that it was animated, but that it was supervised by none other than Al Whitlock who passed away in 1999, the veteran visual effects artist who contributed to some of the most amazing visual effects of all time. Not to mention that really terrific illusion in “The Blues Brothers” (1980) that I documented on Twitter.
Todd’s site FXRant seems to be slowly emerging from hibernation, and just as he does on social media, he’s using it to combat misinformation about how special effects are used in movies. (If you didn’t know, Todd is a longtime VFX artist for Industrial Light and Magic.) Just yesterday, he slapped down that meme about how it took five months to film one scene in ‘Severance’, which of course it didn’t.
But still… going to Spielberg to debunk misinformation about how he made “Jaws.” That’s next-level stuff, even for Todd.