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I don’t know about Jaws, but there certainly is ne in the second Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It’s obviously an Effects shot because it’s so perfectly framed, and it occurs just as Indy makes up his mind to stay and help the impoverished Indian village (it looks good enough to be real, though). Since Spielberg directed both flicks, I wouldn’t be surprised if he snuck a shooting star into Jaws as well. I haven’t seen it in a long time, so I couldn’t tell you for certain. I suppose it’s just possible that a real shooting star got captured on film durin shooting, but when it’s a Stephen “Wish Upon a Star” Spielberg film, I’m inclined to doubt it.
Yes, it’s there, but it looks too good (well-framed, etc.) to be real.
Yes, but obviously faked, in the scene after they all get drunk and are singing on the boat, you can see a couple of shooting stars in the night sky.
Shooting stars are Spielberg trademark, kind of like Hitchcock’s cameos in his films.
I too heard that one of the shooting stars in Jaws was real, I thought it was at imdb.com but now it just lists it as a Director’s Trademark. I believe at one time Spielberg claimed that it was just a coincedence, that they didn’t even notice when they first shot it.
One maybe…but two meteors at once seems highly improbable.
Phobos, I’m ashamed of you.
Somebody with a name like yours should certainly be familiar with the concept of a meteor shower.
For myself, I have a hard time believing that those streaks across the sky are fake. If they could do that good a job faking meteors, they could have made a better looking shark.
"Jaws’ was shot from May 2, 1974 well into September of that year.
The Perseids Showers do occur in the Northern Hemisphere during the time of July 23-August 18th. The peak nights are August 12-13th.
Having just gotten off the phone with the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette Libaray Department. Lovely lady. Great accent. She informs me that she’s got to look it up by microfilm, so this will take a few days.
My WAG? It was inserted in post-production. “Jaws” was Spielberg’s second feature, and first theatrical film. In the intervening years a shooting star might have become a signature, but back then unless he adored them already, my guess is that they were shooting nights on the ocean, and during that summer’s Perseides they saw enough of them that he wanted to insert a few into a night horizon shot. Easy enough to do, and it works in the shot.
Even if that nice lady tells me the Perseids were big that year, there’s really no way to know if they caught one on film. The odds are incredibly low. I’m curious enough on this one to make a note, and call Amblin’s offices this morning. I just bet I’ll get an Archivist on the phone who will be delighted to give me the straight dope on it.
No mention is made of it in either of the two books I have on the making of the film.
Cartooniverse
Without copying both books right into this thread, lemme tell you that in 1974, a shooting star was a cakewalk next to a mechanical shark.
There were three sharks. They were hydraulically operated and ran on submerged sled rails. They were ravaged by the salt water, and the buffeting of the ocean. Everything, even the paint used to make the skin look right, was hand created and then adapted more once they got to location, and sunk the puppies for the first time into the cold and briny North Atlantic.
Bob Mattey, the shark’s designer, did an amazing job, all things being equal. He had worked in the Universal Studios Special Effects department for 17 years before retiring. He’d designed and operated the special effect creatures from " 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". HE built that giant squid, and made it fight with the men.
Eventually the sled and apparatus weighed 12 TONS and required 15 men to operate it. So, let’s not get too snooty. It cuts rather nicely with the live footage shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor off the coast of Australia. Real Sharks. Real Cages. You gonna tell me you’re so blase that when you saw it in the movies, you didn’t get scared witless when Chrissie Watkins dies in the beginning???
Cartooniverse
I’m sorry, Cartooniverse. I didn’t know that
constituted getting snooty.
I’ll keep that in check in the future.
Hey, I watched Jaws Wednesday night. One of my favorite movies of all time. Right after Capt. Quint’s “Indianapolis” monologue, Jaws starts ramming the “Orca” so they all go out on deck. Brody gets his service revolver out and starts firing at Jaws. At one point, after he stops firing, there is a close up of Brody and his gun, and you can see the shooting start go by then. It starts in the upper left of the frame and goes down. Then, after that, there is a long shot of the “Orca” in the water, and you can see another shooting star. It starts in the upper left hand frame also. I think it’s the same scene where the barrels resuface and start heading towards the boat, but don’t quote me.
You can’t beat that “Indianapolis” speech, tho.
Quite possibly my all time favorite. Never get tired of watching it. **Moi[/]b who loves sharks, never gets tired of telling me “Sharks don’t really act that way.” I never get tired of telling her “Shut thy cakehole, woman.” 
Of course there’s a shooting star in it. Near the end, Roy Scheider shoots at the shark, hitting the tank of air thereby blowing up the shark. ::blink blink:: what?? 
Two questions: First, are there any other recognizable stars in either of those frames? For that matter, are there any sort of direction indicators? That could help tell us if those were legitimate Perseids. Secondly, would stars show up on standard movie footage? Most movies have to edit them in, anyways, because they’re so dim.
I am. Are you?
First, a meteor shower is uncommon…at most once a month but more like once a season.
Second, the frequency of meteors during a meteor shower is still something like 1 per minute. Maybe one every few seconds. But 2 at once would be rare.
Third, for 2 at once, it’s more likely that it would be a “meteor storm”. These are even rarer than meteor showers (frequency on the order of once every several years). Even during a meteor storm, you might not see more than 1 at a time.
So, although it’s possible, it seems improbable.
It should be noted that Speilberg is a space exploration advocate (member of the Planetary Society). It would not surprise me for him to inject a bit of astronomy into his movies on purpose.
As rare as pissing off 2 other Dopers with one very short post?
Sorry, y’all, I obviously got up on the wrong side of the bed today.
Knead??? I feel like I OWE YOU the apology. I had no call to say that. You weren’t being snooty one bit. After all, this is The Straight Dope, not a debutante ball ;). I’m sorry.
Now, an update. I spoke a few minutes ago to the head of the Media Relations Dept. at Amblin’ Entertainment. That is Spielberg’s own company ( Opposed to Dreamworks SKG ). The nice lady I spoke to said this :
.
Heaven help me if Spielberg calls. <snicker>. Where would I start? I’ll try to keep cool, and remember that while it would be NICE to shoot for him, I’d LOVE to shoot for Jodie Foster. Now, there’s a filmmaker. I’m assuming it’ll be someone on staff who knows so much about “Jaws” that it’s frightening, even to a Jawsaphile like myself.
I’ll keep the T.M. posted <–wishing there was a Smilie shaped like a dorsal fin right about now…
Cartooniverse ( thinking of changing my Member name to Charanadon…)
Actually, it was his third feature and second theatrical film. You probably forgot “The Sugarland Express”
“Jaws” is the name of the movie, not the shark. The shark never had a name, although I heard that the special effects people referred to the mechanical shark as “Bruce.”
There’s a falling star in Jaws and it HAD to have been a post-production optical effect. Trust an amateur photographer, there is no way you can photograph both a well-lit boat and the stars in the night sky. If the boat is properly exposed, the stars will not register on motion-picture film because they are too faint. If the stars are visible, the boat will be WAY over-exposed. Also, the boat would be blurry because each frame of film must be exposed for a very long time to record a star.
Here’s a page that tells how to photograph meteors with a still camera. Exposure time is far too long for a motion-picture camera.
Essentially, the optical effects crew took the image of the boat and combined it with a painted night sky (this is called a matte shot) and overlaid a hand-animated image of the falling star.
Perhaps Spielberg was inspired by a meteor shower, but the falling star in Jaws was, simply, a cartoon.