10 Mistakes That Actually Improved The Final Films

Steven Spielberg's Jaws is an undisputed classic but was apparently a real nightmare to film. Shooting a movie at sea creates a whole host of problems, and the special effects back in 1975 just weren't as good as they became in the decades to follow.

Production primarily struggled due to constant malfunctions with the three pneumatically-powered prop sharks used in the film. The issues with the sharks actually caused Spielberg to rethink his shoot and rewrite parts of the film.

Originally, the director planned to have the shark appear on screen much more frequently, but the final film only contains a few minutes of shark screen time in total. In addition, instead of actually showing the shark's full face or body, many scenes were altered to simply show the fearsome fish's dorsal fin, creating much more tension and dread. All of this only came about because the props proved unreliable.

Spielberg himself was pleased with the changes, saying that his film transformed into more of a Hitchcock-style "less is more" thriller over time. The reduced emphasis on the shark also forced the actors to work harder at conveying genuine fear through their performances, rather than simply having to react to constant shots of a big plastic shark.