Where was JAWS filmed? Each major location explained

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“Jaws” is 50 years old in 2025, and it’s just as good as when he swam for the first time in cinema. Now the film is not exactly an excellent vacation advertising. The anecdotes on “jaws” make people afraid of sharks or even swim in the ocean are endless. But it is also an undeniably beautiful film; When there is no shark attack, it can make you suck in the summer and at the beaches.

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“Jaws” was not the very first film by Steven Spielberg, but it was the widest phase on which he played at that time. Not even 30 years old and still sui generis, Spielberg delivered a masterpiece of such an eventful shoot that he inspired a piece of Broadway (alias “The shark is broken”)! A large part of the difficulties of “jaws” production (which lasted more than 100 days on the calendar) was mechanical problems with the animatronic shark. Has the choice of shooting location something to do with problems?

If you are as courageous as Captain V (Robert Shaw) himself with regard to sharks, can you really visit Amity Island if you wish?

Now, Amity Island is not a real island … or, at least, the island is not really called this.

“Jaws” was mainly shot on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Installed by Europeans in the 1600s, the vineyard was once a bad fishing village. Nowadays, however, it is a rich enclave and a current vacation spot (with a permanent population of around 20,530), similar to other Massachusetts islands such as Cape Cod and Nantucket. The vineyard also announces its connection with “Jaws” to attract film fans as visitors.

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In the 1970s, however, the vineyard adapted to the bill for a small island town like Amity. In “Jaws”, Amity is said to be on the east coast of the United States (the Brodys moved from New York), so shot on the Martha vineyard added even more likelihood. There was the small town (houses and artery), the beaches, the port and the quays that friendship would need. The “Jaws” production even recruited local MV actors such as Lee Fierro, who played the mother of Alex Kintner unhappy (Jeffrey Voorhees).

Spielberg has chosen to shoot “jaws” on the real ocean rather than a water tank in a studio. He said that the Atlantic Ocean surrounding the vineyard was just as important for his choice of place as the city of the island. Interviewed by author Laurent Bouzereau for the book “Spielberg: the first ten years”, explained Spielberg:

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“”[Martha’s Vineyard] was the only place on the east coast where I could go to 12 miles at sea and avoid any observation of land, but have a bottom of the sandy ocean only thirty feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled. This is the depth that the mechanical shark device needs. Another factor was that once at sea on the orca, whatever the direction of my cameras, you have not seen a land. My fear was the minute when the public saw the earth, they would not feel danger. I wanted the public to think that the boat could not just turn around and go back to the ground. I literally needed a 360 -degree scene at sea. “

In “Jaws”, the island of Amity seems to be both the name of the physical island and the city which is stretched there (as in citysingular). There is only one mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), and Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is the only police chief. It makes sense; The story, which concerns a deadly force which invades a small town, is much simpler if it is only one city.

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But Martha’s Vineyard is home to some different communities. One of them is Edgartown, who was founded in 1642 and historically served as a whale port. Much of the city of Amity in “Jaws” is really Edgartown. For example, the city square that Brody travels very early is really the city center of Edgartown; This walk ends with a mini-ferry, which is the EDGARTOWN operation.

City Hall of Amity, where Quint appears for the first time with nails on a blackboard, is also the town hall of Edgartown. Meanwhile, the port where we meet Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) for the first time) is really the port of Edgartown.

The “Jaws” shooting, however, only remained in Edgartown. The Brodys house was filmed at the address still looking for the 265 East Chop Drive in the city of Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. Likewise, the scene where Brody and Hooper try to convince mayor Vaughn to close the beaches, walk and speak and make circles, was shot the cliffs of the gay head. These are a benchmark located in the small town of Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard. The gay head light can also be seen in the film during this scene.

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The house of Quint, a small fisherman’s store (seen in the last part of “Jaws” on Earth) was a set built for the film, but it was built in the fishing village of Martha’s Vineyard in Menemsha. As the shop would be too large under local zoning requirements (it East A two -story building, as illustrated in the film), it was demolished immediately after the wrapped shoot.

“Jaws” begins in the water of the pov of the shark itself. But after that, he cuts to the beach, where Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) takes advantage of his last moments alive during a beach evening at the end of the evening. This was filmed on two beaches: the field scenes were shot at Edgartown South Beach. The terrifying swimming scene, however, where Chrissie is dragged underwater by the shark, was filmed at Cow Beach.

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The first time we really see the shark in “Jaws” is when he claims his fourth victim, an unnamed man (Ted Grossman) sailing in red breadcrumbs in the pond off the main beach.

Universal images

Brody’s son Michael (Chris Rebello), also swims in the pond, but fortunately, the shark passes in front of him. The “Pond” on Amity Island is actually part of Sengekontacket Pond, which covers more than 700 acres. If you visit Martha’s Vineyard, you can pin the location of the cinema by the American commemorative bridge in the Legion, which connects Edgartown to Oaks Bluff and is visible in the aforementioned background. Do not be so quick to jump from the bridge, however, and not only because there could be a shark waiting below.

During the peak of the jaws, when the orca is blocked and flows and Hooper passed through a shark cage, you may notice something that changes. The shark is no longer just An elaborate puppet, there are also images of a real large white shark mixed.

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This sequence was shot by a second team of unit around the world of Martha’s Vineyard – in Australia, in particular. Australia (surrounded by the Pacific, Antarctica and Indian Oceans) has sharks in its waters, but that was not the only reason why the team went there. Ron and Valerie Taylor, accomplished divers who had already shot images of Sharks, lived in Australia and worked in the team of the second unit.

The plans of the shark beating around the cage, destroying it? These were captured by the team of the second unit; The shark is much more agile and flexible in these plans that animatronic could also not be. The shooting of the cage scene in this way ended up having great ramifications on the story of “Jaws”. When the second unit team finally pushed the shark to destroy the cage, it was empty. Consequently, the script was rewritten so that Hooper swimming out of the cage and survives, rather than dying as in the original “Jaws” novel by Peter Benchley.

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“Jaws” has two of the most beautiful leaps in the movies. One is the shark that comes out unexpectedly from the water. (Cue the emblematic line “Jaws”: “You are going to need a larger boat.”) The other arrives earlier in the film when Brody and Hooper go on the boat of the latter at night. They come across the abandoned fishing boat of Ben Gardner (Craig Kingsbury), one of the fishermen after generosity on the shark. Hooper plunges and discovers a hole in the side of the boat, from which floats the dead head of Gardner.

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This photo was actually filmed After The main photography on “Jaws” had been wrapped. But returning to the ocean for a single recovery was simply not practical. So, instead, the shot was captured in an Encino swimming pool in California, belonging to the editor of “Jaws”, Verna Fields. Fields maintained a mounting room in her pool house, where she and Spielberg worked together by editing “jaws”, so the pool was easily accessible to them.

In “Spielberg: the first 10 years”, the director told how, during the test tests, the photo of the head did not frighten the public as he wanted. Becoming “gourmet”, he decided to modify it:

“I went and spent three thousand dollars of my own money so that the art department built the side of Ben Gardner’s boat from Balsa Wood, to correspond to the one we had taken before. We cut a hole in it, used the same head, and filmed it using a double for Richard Dreyfuss, so I fired in the pool of my editor Verna Fields … There, so I shot that the hole of Nine Fields …

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Fields was an absolutely vital element in the manufacture of “Jaws” the film we know – Take, for example, how she sewed the best catches of Robert Shaw interpreting the monologue USS Indianapolis de Quint. Without its swimming pool and this sublime Rehot the frightening jump, “Jaws” would be a less perfect touch than it is.