I've always been fascinated by the art direction and cinematography in Spielberg's classic film. While he executes many amazing filmmaking techniques throughout the movie, the strong compositional shifts from the left, center, and right hand side of each frame are striking. 

I wanted to see if the actual compositional shifts were as strong as my initial memories watching the film, so we built a tool that allowed us to look at all the frames of the movie. We started by looking at 1 frame per 10 seconds of film, but we ended up with too many transitional frames. The final app pulls 1 frame per minute of film.

Jaws at 1 frame per minute

The compositional patterns started to emerge pretty clearly. We built another tool that allowed us to cycle through the frames quickly, and mark which ones had left, center, or right visual weight. In due time, we began describing the positioning with nautical nomenclature: Port and Starboard.

I had so much fun swiping through the frames and determining which compositional weight was the strongest that I managed to wrangle most of the office into another boondoggle. I was determined to bring the app into reality. Quickly Jawsography was born. Take a look on your mobile device (or laptop) to see the cinematography of Jaws in a whole new way. Dive in!