TechStuff's Shark Week Special

that's right. Shark Week is next week, right, Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, and so we thought we would do a podcast about something shark related to celebrate Shark Week. Now, for those of you are looking at a calendar that'll be August two through eight, market down, it's gonna be awesome. And you might think, all right, well, what kind of angle are they gonna take for Shark Week on tech Stuff. I mean, you know, sharks aren't known for using their

Newton's doesn't have good shark handwriting recognition software. Yeah, I'm I'm sorry, I can't bite you today. Looks like next Thursday is good, right? Well, bites all that could play into it, just different spelling. And we also considered the game Shark. Yes, we we came up with several different ideas, and then eventually the most obvious idea reared its shark ish head. We should do a podcast about Bruce. Bruce, Bruce,

the shark in Jaws. Chris, do you remember that scene in Jaws where the shark leaps out of the water onto the orca and it and it crashes the orca and and Quinn starts to slide down into the mouth of Jaws. You remember that seeing, Chris, No, because I've never seen the movie. Shut your mouth, Chris. You have never seen Jaws. I have never seen Jaws. Ladies and gentlemen, when when Chris that obviously that was a setup, I mean, clearly,

but I have not seen Jaws. I did not know, Chris and not seen Jaws until thirty seconds before we hit record. I'm not joking, and Jaws is in my top five films of all time. That's right. So I'm gonna stop talking now and go get a coke from the fridge and let you talk for the rest of the podcast. So June blockbuster known as Jaws hits the theaters, starts to frighten the pants off of audiences from coast to coast. I do remember that. I totally remember working

into theaters and just seeing pants there. They don't know people, just pants. Are all these pants here and inside them? Totally scared out of them. Um. So June also the year and month that I was born. How about that, Chris, you remember it? I was born then? Yeah? So anyway, Uh, the movie and I are of the same age. The film was plagued by several problems throughout shooting, and some

of them were or because of personalities involved. There's a famous story that, um that a couple of the major actors had personality issues that escalated throughout the filming process. Can't imagine that Dreyfuss was one of them. Shaw was the other, and and so that was only a small part of the problem. There were also issues they had with the locals of Martha's Vineyard, which is where they

shot Jaws. Uh. They had some problems with some of the locals not really liking the fact that their community was being invaded by Hollywood for what was supposed to be fifty five days of shooting, which turned into over a hundred and fifty days of shooting. That's only you know, three times as much, right, Yeah? Could the major problem though, was with Bruce, and Bruce was the name given to the three life sized models of a great white shark.

Was named after Steven Spielberg's lawyer. And you know, you can make golf lawyer shark jokes, and there are lots of them that Bruce Raymer is the name of the lawyer, and so they named the they collectively named the three model sharks Bruce. So the sharks came in. There were three different varieties. There was one design just to be shot from the left side, had a hole on the right side exactly, and there was one for the right side, the hole on the left side, same thing, same idea,

so you only shoot it from one side. You obviously wouldn't shoot it on the side that had the big gaping hole in it that shows you all the pistons and everything inside of it. And then you had a full model that was mounted onto a c sled for lack of a better word. It was this kind of like a submarine without all the walls, but it was a little submerged vehicle that could tow this this model shark, and it was manned by scuba divers. Now, the models

that had just the left or the right side. They were mounted onto a platform that ran on a set of rails that ran along the ocean floor. I wonder if those that's a good question. I wonder if they are probably in just a bad repair, because one of the major problems with this machine, or these machines, I should say, is that they kept on seizing up. And part of the reason for that is that saltwater is incredibly corrosive. Don't drop your iPod, Yeah, it will die. Yeah.

The the This is one of those reasons why electronics and ocean water really don't mix. It's because ocean water tends to be very the salt content it makes it very corrosive. So if you were to drop your uh, well, well I'm not gonna drop a name brand. Let's say you drop your smartphone in water. If it's freshwater, you may actually have a chance to recover it by drying it out. You could leave it out, you know, maybe put it in some rice to try and draw some

of the moisture out. That works dry rice, by the way, not cooked rice. Or but if if you were to drop it and say saltwater, the chances of you recovering that electronic gadget have decreased significantly because of the corrosive elements. Yeah, just listen, people, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, back up your mechanical shark before you put it in there, exactly because if you don't, you got the same thing is going to happen to

you that happened to the the shooting of Jaws. Now here's what Spielberg did. He he had decided that he wanted to shoot everything on location. He had decided that that to shoot it in a studio, like in a big water tank would be too obvious, and that the movie going public was becoming too savvy and they wouldn't stand for that. They would just say, oh, that just looks so fake. So he decided he wanted to shoot

it out on location in the water. They chose Martha's Martha's Vineyard because one it resembled the town that was mentioned in the novel Jaws, and to the shelf that had a very gradual um decline. You could go miles and miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard still only be like thirty ft deep, So it wasn't like the it woul suddenly drop into a trench you had, you could go out a long way so that you were

out of sight of land. And yet the ocean wasn't so deep that you couldn't use this rail system, right, which is important because that's what enabled it to act like it was swimming. Yes, exactly, they could. They could uh mimic the motions that a shark would make while swimming through the water, and you could get all that

wonderful thrashing about and um. So the sharks used a combination of electric and pneumatic and hydraulic motors and pistons to open the mouth, to roll the eyes, to move the fins, to to swing the tail, to bite and uh yeah, that was very important. And I figured that much. I haven't seen the movie, but I figured biting, biting does take out you know what. There's a movie called Jaws,

and biting is involved. Um. Also, some of the some of the teeth were hollow and had tubes attached to them so that blood could be pumped through the tubes so that when the shark attacked, blood would spurt out of the shark mouth, right, So you know, you don't want to just turn them on while the sharks out of the water, because then he's just to become a blood fountain, which would be an awesome name for a

death metal band. Um. But let's stay on topic. So Bruce, you have Bruce, uh and Bruce was built in Los Angeles, right, they had three of them. They had to ship ship three sharks. And I'm not gonna say that fast because good lord, I know the FCC does not look over us, but Discovery does. So they had to send three shark models across the country. Okay, no, let's just stop it.

So ms gun goofy. Because he hasn't seen the movie, I'm gonna have to lend him the DVD after the sept probably have to close his eyes at the scary pits. So um. So, yeah, they're built in Los Angeles. They were shipped over without the the the skin that put on them. Yet they were actually kind of just this weird the wish creamy plastic color exactly. They had a a steel tube frame. You had this this uh, this plastic foam on top of it to be the flesh.

Eventually they use this polyurethane as the skin. They use some nylon around the joints so that there would be flexibility. Um. And you know, shark skin is a is interesting. Yes, it's very interesting. It's uh, it's smooth one way. When you rub your hand down from from nose to to dorsal fin, you would feel a very smooth surface right before you got eaten. And then if you rab your hand the other way, which really ticks him off, you would definitely eat eating. If you try that, it feels

like sort of like a cat's tongue. It's you know, got those little knobby things, and it's very rough. And if if you were to rub your hand the you know, quite quickly down the wrong side of a shark, you wouldn't tell you would cut it up. I mean it would and it takes off the shark. Yes, you know what, sharks are really not as violent as you're making them

out to be. Well, I mean it's we are talking about jaws here, which you know it totally inflates these So in order to get this this texture of skin on, they wanted to make sure that the skin looked realistic whenever the shark came out of the water, because that presumably it would come out of the water a couple of times in the in the film. So they didn't

want to beat up on the polyurethane. So in order to get around this, they said, hey, why don't we just add some sand to the paint mixture and that can create the texture that we need and I don't even feel like a shark skin. And so they did and it seemed to work pretty well. Um, they had to tweak the paint um formula quite a bit once

they got to Martha's Vineyard. What they had done is they had tested it back in l A and it seemed to work fine on the skin that they had created back in l A. Problem is the climate in Martha's Vineyard is totally different from the climate in l A. Yes, and the paint did not stick properly to the skin,

so they had to start tweaking. Well. This meant that Steven Spielberg had to look at scenes that did not involve the shark and shoot those first to give the build team enough time to finish the shark design um. So he would look at any other scene that he could shoot and start shooting those first, with the exception

of the crowd scenes. Because the problem was that Martha's Vineyard when they started shooting, it was early spring and it was cold in the water, and I couldn't really pay extras to run around in freezing cold water all day long to get six seconds worth of footage, and they didn't. They considered briefly putting stunt people into the water wearing wetsuits that were painted a skin tone in order to manage these shots, and then decided that was not very um that what that just wasn't gonna work.

So the best idea was to put those scenes at the very end of the film process, so that way the water would be at a bearable temperature, which meant that they had a certain number of scenes that they could film and that was it. Once they were done with those, they needed the shark, and the shark just kept giving problems. First it was the paint. Then it was the fact that they would get the shark out into the water and they hadn't tested it in ocean water.

This would yes, yes, so the salt water would tend

to make the different parts of seize up. Now, these were sharks mounted on gimbals, and if you want to know what a gimble is, there's a great article written by Jonathan Strickland on house tofforce dot com that explains it, but the gimbles allowed the sharks to tilt at certain angles to make sure that they could submerge and and and uh through the go move through the water in a way that looked natural, and also even leap up at the characters that were up on boats or on

docks or whatever. Um. So there are a lot of parts moving parts that could seize up, and they did a lot, so much so that people began to worry whether or not this movie would ever be filmed. The the production costs went from about three point five million to some say over ten million, which today is tiny. Yeah, that's not even a marketing budget today for a film, but back then that was big bucks, so right, and to have your budget more than double, that's bad news.

So this this film for a while, looked like it was gonna be the albatross around Spielberg's neck. But everything eventually came together. Eventually they were able to get the shark working enough for them to get the pivotal scenes they really needed shot. One of the other things that was taking a lot of time was the fact that underwater scenes. They could spend a whole day trying to shoot underwater scenes, and they would get six seconds worth

of usable footage at the end of the day. So you think about that, how many seconds are in all of those underwater sequences and jaws, you know, you break that out by minutes, and then you figure that out. Okay, well six seconds of each of those minutes that took a day to do, so days per minute. It's crazy. Yeah, you think about that, you know. And and now granted there's not like really extended underwater sequences, but there are a few. There's a couple of of shark cage sequences.

There's some other stuff. I won't spoil the movie for you. You haven't seen it yet, Thank you very much, appre um. Except you know I won't be able to watch anyway with the scary scenes right, well, you know, we'll we'll get someone to explain it to you using very gentle language. The we can say things like the man who was bitten by the shark is in a field playing with rabbits. Now go. So, once they got these sharks working, they

went ahead and shot the images. Uh. The the other issue they ran into was that there were some things they just they weren't going to get the sharks for Steven Spielberg came up with this brilliant idea of using uh the footage of just these barrels to represent the sharks presence. There's a point where Quint harpoons the shark and attaches these barrels that contain air to the shark. Idea being that it will keep the shark close to

the surface. It can't dive down, and of course the shark dives down because it's Jaws and the movies named after it, So screw you, Quent, And so that you would see the barrels go under the water, and whenever the barrels will pop up, you would realize, okay, the sharks there nearby. You wouldn't have to see the shark. You just knew it was there because the barrels were there.

It actually made it much more scary, and in fact, you could say that the absence of the shark and the end was a huge boon for the film because it meant that the mystery was preserved through most of the movie. You only got little glimpses of it, and it made it that much more terrifying because the it was your mind that was filling in all the details. So in a way, Bruce the malfunctioning shark is. I would say it was one of the main reasons why that movie is so freaking awesome and you need to

see it. A few other just quick notes about the shark models. Do you know how long they were? How long the shark models were? Yeah? Um, you know I didn't write that part down. I know how heavy they were? How heavy were they? They were around um, two thousand pounds. Yes, that was two thousand pounds dry. Yes, because they gained ten to twelve percent water weight after being in the water, which is another reason why the the sharks wouldn't work

very well. The kimbals weren't designed to lift an object that was that heavy. They were supposed to be neutraly, buoyant. They were supposed to just stay wherever you put them. But because they gained weight through water, they weren't. Um, they were long each Okay, so these are big, big models. Yeah, and uh yeah. They had more than thirty different rams and motors in them to make everything go. And of course if one of them is not working, then it's

not gonna look right right. You know, the more complex against, the more likely something's gonna go wrong. I also know that the shark that didn't have a hole in it. Also on the track could swim as far as sixty to seventy, which is pretty when you think about it. It's kind of a long way because you could do a lot with that much room. They would they would tow the shark down this rail and uh, they would shoot for the length of the rail. But of course

once the rail runs out, that's it. Yeah, you gotta go back to the beginning, go back to one, as they say in the movie biz Um. And you know, I was talking to Chris earlier. I was thinking, if they were to make Jaws today, Let's say that they never that Peelberg had decided to pass on this movie.

It was never made. And now today they decided to make Jaws, and they decided instead of going practical, which is what we would call the mechanical sharks, they decided to go c G. I do you think it would be as successful a film today as it was back in Um, that's a good question, because you know they wouldn't have had that. As you pointed out, UM, the mind is really powerful, and so if they weren't having to replace the shark with the uh, the barrels, you know,

it might not have been a scary Yeah. I think of other shark movies I've seen, and while some of them are very gory and they have a lot of jump scares in them, they don't necessarily fill you with the terror that I felt when I first watched Jaws, because just hearing John Williams score on m once you start hearing that, especially early in the film. Early in the film, that score always indicated the presence of the shark. If you heard that theme, the shark was there, and

it it got you used to that. Later on you would hear the theme, but the shark wouldn't be there. But you're on edge because you hear the theme and you've been trained, Okay, now the shark is here. Or in other parts you don't hear the theme and suddenly there's the shark, and that freaks you out because you didn't get the warning that you expected. It was a

wonderful use of suspense. Um right out there with Hitchcock, I would say, and uh, and I can't imagine with c G. I being able to resist the temptation to show the shark off every chance you got, you know, which is done quite frequently with computer graphics, right, So I think in a way the busted sharks are are really what made that movie special now granted, and made it a living hell for the people who are working on the film at the time, But as a as

a an audience member, Um, I'm actually thankful that it did happen that way, because otherwise we wouldn't have nearly as as memorable a film, I would wager. Uh, it's it's neat stuff. And if you want to learn more about hydraulics and and things of that nature, we have articles on how stuff Works dot com and actually goes into the details of how hydraulics work. We didn't really go into that here because uh, well you know, it's a lot of other fans stuff for me to cover

because I'm such a fan boy of the film. I didn't even go into the U. S. S Indianapolis speech, which is, by the way, one of the best monologues in film history, even though it's not historically accurate. Is awesome. Um yeah, so I'm freaking out a little bit over here. Okay, well are you done freaking I'm done freaking out. Okay, So I thought I would mention there's a pretty cool website. I would suggest people check out. It's www dot Frenzied

waters dot com. Oh yeah, yeah, it's pretty mysterious. There's some interesting little videos and some other stuff there. There's a you know, do some digging, and I would suggest going beyond just the website. I say, search around, use Google, take a look. Uh, you might be surprised at what you find. There's some pretty cool, scary stuff on that website and things that are related to that website. Personally, I'm going to stick to showers now because I am

afraid to go in the water. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you what we'll do. What we'll watch Psycho and then you won't even want to do that. I know you're wondering. Nice. I'm glad that we got that all the way. So remember Shark Week August two through August faith on the Discovery Channel. We hear it, text stuff, wish you happy swimming, and if you have anything you'd like to say to us, any comments or questions or criticisms, anything of that nature, send it to tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.

Remember we have tons of shark content on how stuff works dot com. And we will talk to you again. Assuming We're not eaten really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com and be sure to check out the New tech stuff blog now on the How Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you