On Location.....on Martha's Vineyard: (The Making of the Movie "Jaws")

This is the most common cover by Edith Clarke on the making of the film she wrote her book on. There is a more modern version and that is worth the purchase as well. I just got this for the shrine and will not read this book until my final years of life.

I'm pretty sure that when Edith Blake was writing this book she had no idea that the film would be the worldwide smash that it was and that "Jaws" fans would snap up every bit of movie-related merchandise they could find, including her book.I say that because it is obvious that Blake gives more than just a few nods to her fellow Martha's Vineyard residents and neighbors throughout the book. In fact, this book could have alternately been a serialized session of contributing essays for the Martha's Vineyard Gazette and would have hit its target audience smack on their heads.Not that this is a bad thing necessarily. If it does occasionally come off sounding like a local reporter writing for local residents, then it does so with a refreshing lack of "big-time author grandiosity". The book could have used a better editor, though -- far too many spelling and punctuation errors.For the "Jaws" fans who AREN'T Martha's Vineyard residents, then this book is a delightful, if somewhat slight, folksy account of Hollywood descending on a small Eastern town that normally would just prefer to be left alone.The "Jaws" shoot ran way over schedule and tried the patience of more than a few locals, but the economic boon to the town during the off-season probably eased the inconvenience a bit. When the off-season turned into tourist season and the film crew was still on the island taking up valuable rental space, a few locals and businesses did get a bit testy. I imagine the success of the film and the tourist business that descended upon the island as a result made them change their tunes soon enough.Incidentally, I first read this book as a 9 year-old in 1975 and kept the original paperback for years and years. I jumped at the chance to repurchase this book and read it again with a fresh perspective and with about 200 viewings of the film under my belt. Admittedly, it made the book far more interesting, though it comes up short compared to Carl Gottlieb's "Jaws Log". But there's no way Blake could possibly hope to compete with Carl Gottlieb's insider perspective when it comes to "Jaws" production stories.I love all things "Jaws" (except the sequels, of course) and would recommend this book to all fellow "Jaws" aficionados. Heck, I even flew to New England to visit Martha's Vineyard in 2006 on a self-guided tour of the film's locations. I'm such a movie geek.Sidebar: One of my college professors was an employee at a hotel on the island during the bulk of the film's shoot and loved to tease me with tales of playing in weekend softball games with the "Jaws" cast and crew. Wish I could have been there for that. What a fabulous experience that must have been, both at the time and in later years when the film's cache lent so much to his memories of it all.

The book was dark and murky. The pictures were so dark they were almost unseeable.l

My copies of the book came. The old negatives have been digitally restored. The type face is not large, but is very clear. The enclosed pictures were taken from the book with my phone. The originals are even cleared. There has been a chapter added about the 45 years since the movie was made. It is well worth the price.

This book tells the story of filming Jaws, a story of an outsider who wasn`t allowed to know ALL the production`s secrets. So there are only stories of extras filming on the island.Because I was after the story of special effects involved in the making of this masterpiece, like making of the sharks, I was rather disappointed as there was nothing on the sharks at all. The DVD bonus features are far more informative on that topic. So if you are looking for the same, you should pass this book. Except there is a bit on filming the sinking Orca scenes (which are special effects too).But if you are after other type of stories like filming on location, then it`s ok I assume. And there is alomost nothing on working with the principal cast. It`s more like "the stories from passer by" or onlooker.

I really hoped this book would have fun photos--the kind that tell their own story and enhance the writing. You know, real behind the scenes stuff -- a feeling of what it was like to be on the set and location of Jaws. I was disappointed. The photos in this book look like they were printed on the oldest, cheapest copier in the world. The one I shared for this review is a good example. It's supposed to Steven Spielberg in a candid shot. The contrast is so bad you can't make out the face at all, you just have to trust it's actually Spielberg on location. I expected better, way better from this publication. If you're hoping for great photos to enhance the narrative, this isn't the book for you. However---the writing is interesting and has fun facts and stories. So it really depends on what you're looking for.

This book was well written, has interesting facts and unknown stories and actual compliments the "Jaws Log" book that came out years ago.

This is a fun book to read. It's not an encyclopedia for JAWS facts but a collection of anecdotes from filming that will delight. I found a copy of this while at a hotel in the rural Spanish countryside (random!) and decided to buy my own.

The edition of the book that I have is from 2020, the 45th anniversary edition which contains additional photographs compared to the original and a new chapter.I have very mixed feelings about the book. And I feel like I have to start with the negatives first. This is one of the worst edited books that I have ever come across.Let’s start with the text. I started spotting a number of errors quite early on. Silly little mistakes. The sort of mistakes that you could imagine being made and not picked up on in the days when people were using typewriters rather than computers. I thought that perhaps, then, these errors were a carry-over from the original edition to help maintain that feel (though if this was the case, a note about this in the introduction, as I did with my book “Osutaka” in which I decided to maintain errors that were contained in the original diary upon which much of the book is based, would have been helpful).Gradually, however, I began to realise that it was likely that the errors were no from the original text, but just a really bad job of editing. The final proof of this came on page 47… “Suddenly, an in no understandable way, the congestion increased when the entourage of encamped trucks and attendant confusion was enhanced by the other know okay okay the code is 7310 to get into it as I have a code on exam work email on it now”Now, the excellent “Jaws for a Minute” podcast has (jokingly… I think) pointed out how Jaws is a time-travel movie due to some slips in its timeline, but really? Edith Blake had email in 1975? Amazing. Or to put it another way, an amazingly dreadful piece of editing. I get the impression from this bit of text that the editor was a student – like many of my own students they seemingly didn’t go back through their own work and check everything was OK before submission.And then we come to the photographs. There may be more than the original version, but most are bordering on useless. They may have looked good on a colour PC screen, but that doesn’t work in a greyscale book. The conversion and altering needs to be done before hitting print. Also the dpi looks very low – not of proper publishing quality.Putting aside these problems, the book is great – although I admit a lot (unsurprisingly) was quite familiar due to being used in other books on the making of Jaws. But I cannot recommend that anyone buys this book until the errors are sorted out. Customers who got this awful version should get a free copy of an update and the current one should be withdrawn from sale straight away.

My wife is a jaws super fan.We very often watch it because it’s such an amazing film. I bought this along with a whole other load of jaws stuff (mugs, autographs, posters, toys, books) as part of her Christmas presents in 2020, her desk in her office could not be more jaws even if Bruce was laying on it!A nice official piece of merchandise, so it’s good quality. It gives a real insight into the production and how they took over Martha’s Vineyard and the various production problems they had which resulted in scenes being shot in very cold conditions!

The book provides an interesting insight into the making of one of my favourite films. The book is somewhat marred by numerous spelling, punctuation and grammar typos, they even manage to spell Jaws incorrectly (Jjaws). The photos are numerous but black and white and of poor quality, many are so bad they are little more than silhouettes. Disappointing for £17.

Great subject and an easy-going and funny report of the goings-on on the set of this movie classic, but in this edition almost unreadable: riddled with typo's that make you wonder if this was transcribed by either malfunctioning OCR scanning software or someone with little-to-no knowledge of the English language.

If you love the film you will love this. A very detailed diary of the films behind the scenes kept by a local who was seemingly appointed as a photographer. A real gem for Jaws aficionados.