Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1097515
66 DGA QUARTERLY Now, and then as the helmsman of J.K. Rowling 's extravagant wizarding world. The bridge between the two is built upon the meticulous, immersive attention to the authentic human ex- perience—that of the characters, and that of the audience—which he first learned from Spielberg. "There is a reality to this world in Jaws," observes Yates, "in the little things like the casting of the background world, and in the mix- ture of humor and pathos and horror. Those elements coexist quite closely together in the real world —quite scary moments are often at- tached to gallows humor. Of course, this is all wrapped up in a stirring adventure as well, with John Williams' beautiful music. But at heart, the social realism aesthetic is what I love, and if you can heighten things and make them feel more immersive, then all the better." These days, so many of the problems that nearly sunk Jaws in production would be solvable by technology—whether that's the nightmare of continuity in an ever-changing seascape, the stubborn refusal of waves to take direction or a waterlogged shark. But there are dangers here, Yates warns. "They had a nightmare, didn't they? Now it's so much easier. I think Spielberg always emphasizes the character and the story over the effect. Whether or not that was his initial design, that's the real triumph of the film. The danger in this expanding universe of block- busters is feeling that you have to somehow top everyone else, by adding more spectacle." "There's something really worrying about the limitless availability of some of these effects, and what you can achieve and execute now. So, as I'm preparing my next film, I'm channelling everything back through that thought—can we believe this, does it feel real? We want it to be grounded, because that keeps people within the story." Movies that best succeed, Yates argues, "always offer something quite grounded emotionally. "With the Potters, I always felt we weren't making 'movies,' we were making films, with bits of action in the water," he adds. "It's very lo-fi. There's a tendency nowadays to overproduce sound, in big movies particularly." Yates pauses to murmur an appreciative "yeeaah" as the shark bites off a dangling leg—"something wonderfully evocative about how the movie uses sound in the simplest way." GAIN AND AGAIN, it's Spielberg 's meticulous, elegant attention to realism, to building a multi- layered, three-dimensional sense of authentic- ity, that Yates comments upon. On re-viewing Jaws 44 years after it became the first summer blockbuster, Yates is struck by just how unlike today's VFX-heavy studio behemoths it is. "That's fascinating," Yates comments, as Brody, Quint and Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfuss) set sail for the third act's climactic en- counter with the shark, and the action shrinks to a chamber piece. "It's literally just these three men on this small boat, and their ten- sions. It makes you wonder, would this film get made today? I mean, of course if Spielberg was directing it, but in no way does it perform to the mathematics of a big conventional blockbuster today, where things have to expand outwards and outwards evermore." "This is why I wanted to make films," he explains. "What's really encouraging, coming back to Jaws after many, many years, is that it really isn't about the special effects, it's about a very primal human story. What is it that draws audiences and compels them to come back again and again to view the work that we do? It starts and finishes with strong primary emotional arcs of characters whom we feel we can be- lieve in. That's it, and all the rest is sparkle. We lose that at our peril, I think, as storytellers, especially in a world that gets evermore competi- tive, as movies become bigger and bigger and we're all trying to outdo each other. We'll lose our way if we lose the fact that it's fundamentally about characters that we care about, and a sense of reality." It's a lesson he has carried through to his own work. In a way, Yates has had two careers—first, as the director of urgent, award-winning TV dramas, such as Sex Traffic, State of Play and The Way We Live SCREENPULLS: UNIVERSAL PICTURES; PHOTO: (OPPOSITE TOP) EVERETT Yates praises the fine balance between Spielberg's rigorous architecture, his carefully and elegantly constructed frames, blocking and camera moves, and the hint of the unexpected and improvised that's always there. A