Steven Soderbergh has officially given the filmmaking community something totally bonkers. It's an app called Production 02074 that tracks every camera setup and day on Jaws.
The app's name refers to Universal’s original production tracking number for the movie. It's completely interactive and is part production log, part granular editing timeline, and part 25,000-word directorial analysis.
It's kind of everything you want in one of these things. You can look to it for inspiration or advice, or just to break out of your shell and learn how Spielberg did it all.
The price is $24.99, and proceeds go to an animal charity.
Let's dive in.
1. Entire Shooting Days Never Made the Final Cut
The app maps out all the chaotic days of the Martha's Vineyard shoot. We see in detail how the mechanical shark ("Bruce") kept sinking, the ocean conditions were bad, and a 55-day schedule ballooned to 143 days as everything went wrong...
Except for the final movie.
This stuff is visually reconstructed, and you even get to see the production days that ever really work out, too.
Soderbergh’s breakdown reveals entire days where the crew burned daylight on shots and setups that never made the final cut, which got delayed thanks to rain or malfunctions.
For me, this is all a lesson in rolling wth the punches and being adaptable.
2. Iconic Scenes Were Stitched Together
Here's another cool thing I learned scrolling through the pages of shoot days and editing. You learn that some of the most famous scenes have takes stitched together from different days, and there's this magic of movies in your face.
Soderbergh maps out how matching lighting, character geometry, and relying on just the logic of the space allowed Spielberg to build geography out of utter production chaos.
3. The "Editorial Steals" That Saved the Movie
Soderbergh’s 25,000-word commentary zeroes in on the dynamic between Spielberg and legendary editor Verna Fields'
You see these microcuts where Spielberg is lifting our frames to match certain things and find seamless tension. On set, you can also sort of feel Spielberg editing in his mind.
There are repurposed Reaction Shots and all sorts of little tricks.
Soderbergh once told BFI:
"I have so many questions that only Spielberg can answer because [the film’s editor] Verna Fields is no longer with us. I’ve identified certain editorial changes that I’m dying to know whose idea it was, you know, to move this thing over here and steal that shot and put it in this other sequence. Who came up with that idea and when, and what problem were you trying to solve?"
