To illustrate Film Structure in practice here's a real world example. Because I can't clear the copyright from Universal for 'Jaws' eXposure is proud to present 'Shark Attack', filmed entirely in Legovision.

Spielberg breaks down the structure - "The first act proved there was indeed a shark out there. The second act proved that the mayor was wrong, the beleagured police chief right. The third act was basically a man-against-beast tale."

Before each comment there's a rough timing from my VCR eg. 1.11.30 (1 hour, 11 minutes and 30 seconds)

Act 1 - Setup

3.20 - Following John William's ominous shark theme we are introduced to the first of the major characters - the Shark. A couple of teenagers leave a beach party for a spot of skinnydipping and before you can say 'what's for lunch?' the girl gets pulled down and eaten by....something.

4.30 - First shot of Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) getting out of bed. In his first minute of screentime we learn he's got a wife and kids, they're newcomers to the island and that he's the police chief. The setup is hardly subtle - to let us know he's a police chief he walks out in full uniform, the door of his car with 'Police' is clearly positioned in the background and even his wife calls him 'Chief'.

Brody drives past large sign 'Amity Island' which has a large picture of a girl sunning herself on a beach. It even states 'Annual Regatta on the 4th of July', foreshadowing the 4th of July sequence later in the film.

7.40 - "Oh Jesus" - Brody investigates girl, dead on the beach with crabs crawling all over her.

8.40 - Brody gets back to office and types up his report - 'Possible cause of death - SHARK ATTACK' ('Shark Attack' was the original title for 'Jaws')

Whilst Brody is trying to figure out what's eating the local kids he's constantly being pestered with insignificant matters - "There's a problem at the Karate school" etc. This not only helps to ground the film in reality and show us what Chief Brody usually deals with but also makes the attacks appear much more momentous in comparison.

11.00 - The town's mayor (Murray Hamilton) is introduced as Brody argues with him about shutting down the beaches - "Amity is a summer town - we need summer dollars" Just in case we forgot that Brody has just moved to the island the may tell him - "It's your first summer you know!"

Mayor Vaughn also foreshadows the 4th of July sequence later in the film with his line - "Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, and everyone says, "Huh? What? You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July".

Brody is on the beach checking the water for trouble. Now Spielberg gets to play The Rule of Three where a piece of action is setup, repeated and changed for the third time to surprise the audience. 1) Brody sits up - there's something cutting through the water - turns out its only an old man's swimming cap - false alarm. 2) Brody gets panicked when a girl starts thrashing around in the water - not to worry, its only her boyfriend messing about 3) A kid on a lilo gets attacked in a fountain of blood and salt water - SHARK!

16.08 - The famous shot where the perspective changes and Brody is lurched into panic. This type of shot was first used by Hitchcock in Vertigo and is achieved by tracking the camera forward whilst zooming out - which keeps the subject the same size but changes the perspective of the background.

Just before the second attack the old man in the swimming cap gives us another fact about Brody - "We know all about you Chief, you don't go in the water at all." So nailing this shark's going to be a real uphill struggle.

19.20 - Hoary old seaman Quint (Robert Shaw) turns up at a town meeting. He introduces himself by scraping his nails along a blackboard before demanding $10,000 to catch the shark. And he doesn't want any help.

Brody flicks through a book with some great pictures of shark attack victims missing legs etc. just in case we're not too sure how dangerous sharks are. (If you look carefully there's also a shot of a shark with a diver's tank in its mouth - a crafty piece of foreshadowing). He shouts at his son to stop playing with his new dinghy (which foreshadows the attack on his son later in the film).

23.00 - Two old guys try a spot of nightfishing in the hope of catching themselves the shark. They are third time lucky though as this time they're not attacked by the shark.

Chaos in the harbour as Brody tries to control opportunistic sharkhunters.

26.30 - Matt Hooper arrives from the Oceanographic Institute. Richard Dreyfuss described his character as 'just there to give us shark information...Boring, boring, boring'. Boring maybe, but very useful for a setup (besides which actors tend to hate spouting jargon)

Hooper performs an autopsy on what's left of the first victim. He helpfully informs us 'It was a shark".

31.00 - The shark is caught! Brody poses for a photo with the sharkhunters. If this is the shark this is going to be a pretty short film. Thankfully it isn't as Hooper informs us that "the bite radius on this animal is different to the victim's wounds"

34.20 - Just in case we had all forgotten how serious this is Spielberg grounds us in reality. Mrs. Kintner, the mother of the dead boy, comes up and slaps Brody - "My boy is dead".

Brody mopes about a bit. Hooper comes around for a spot of dinner. In case we'd forgotten what Hooper does Brody's wife breaks the silence with - "My husband tells me you're in sharks."

Tanked up on two bottles of wine Brody and Hooper decide to cut the shark open to check for the boy's body. Apart from a Florida number plate there's nothing there.

42.30 - The shark is still out there.

PLOT POINT 1 - Brody is finally convinced that there is a killer shark out there and it needs to be brought in.

46.30 - Hooper and Brody take the boat out and Hooper goes for a late night scuba-dive.

47.30 - Hooper discovers a dead man's head. Spielberg added this part in after successful preview screenings, convinced he could get another shock out of the audience.

By the end of the first act we have been introduced to all the characters: Chief Brody - a newcomer who is afraid of the water, Quint - a Captain Ahab-a-like who's a traditional shark hunter and Hooper - a young enthusiastic biologist. The location is established as Amity Island which is as a popular seaside tourist resort. And the premise is that there's a hungry shark that's bigger than anything this island has ever seen that needs to be killed.

Act 2 - Confrontation

~50.00 - The 4th of July. Brody is patrolling a packed beach. Hooper is out on a launch co-ordinating the efforts at sea. Brody persuades his son to play with his dinghy in the pool.

55.30 - The mayor persuades everyone into the water. No sooner are they splashing around than a shark is spotted and everyone runs out. It turns out to be a couple of kids with a fake fin.

58.30 - Another cry goes up. There's a shark in the pool! Brody's son is nearly a gonner but escapes.The shark consoles himself by biting the leg off a day-actor.

MID-POINT - Almost exactly in the middle of the film (1 hour) following the attack on his son Brody takes a long look out to sea. Up until this point the shark has been hunting the people. Brody realises that he has to confront his inner fears and go out to hunt the shark.

Brody convinces a panicked Mayor to sign an agreement to hire Quint. The Mayor has been one of Brody's main sources of confrontation, refusing to let him close the beach. Brody's other stumbling block is his fear of water which he is about to confront.

Brody and Hooper set out with sea-dog Quint to hunt down the shark.

1.09.30 - There's a great shot here of Brody, Quint and Hooper together on the boat that sums up their characters. Brody is splashing fish-heads over the side of the boat, looking sick and out of place. Quint is laid back on a chair with a fishing rod - a traditional shark hunter. Hooper is checking some electronic equipment in the background.

If the mayor was Brody's source of frustration in the first act then the animosity between the traditionalist Quint and the modern, scientific upstart Hooper is what threatens them all in the second act. If the shark doesn't kill them maybe they'll kill each other!

1.10.20 - Brody knocks down some air tanks and gets shouted at - "You screw around with these tanks and they're gonna blow up". A handy piece of information that is used in the finale.

1.11.10 - Quint gets a bite. Fishing line snaps - False alarm.

1.17.20 - Brody is slopping fish-heads into the water. The shark makes a toothy appearance behind him (Spielberg uses exactly the same shot he used in the false alarm five minutes earlier). This is the shark's first proper appearance in the film.

Spielberg explains that he 'thought what could be really scary was not seeing the shark.' However the original promo storyboards showed a more acrobatic shark flipping out of the water. The shark models were so unreliable that little effective footage of the sharks was shot and a more Hitchcockian 'the-less-you-see-the-more-you-get' approach was taken with floating barrels suggesting where the shark was.

Quint starts shooting the shark with yellow barrels to bring it to the surface.

1.22.30 - Quint and Hooper compare scars as they drink together. They discover that they deep down they are just like each other.

1.25.00 - Quint's U.S.S. Indianapolis speech about how he watched the survivors of a torpedo attack get picked off by sharks one by one. The story was going to become the sequel to Jaws but later became the basis for the 1991 TV movie 'Mission of the Shark'.

Act 3 - Resolution

1.30.00 - Shark returns and starts attacking the boat. Quint shoots at it and the shark swims off.

1.31.50 - Spielberg's trademark shot of a shooting star crossing the night sky.

1.32.20 - Daybreak. A barrel surfaces.

~1.40.00 - Shark chases them as they head back to shore.

1.43.45 - Boat's engine blows. The boat is sinking.

1.46.00 - Hooper plans to inject the shark with stricnine nitrate, luring him by using himself as bait. The shark cage takes a battering and the gun tip falls to the ocean floor. Hooper escapes the cage as the shark mauls it and the boat. Brody brings the cage up. Hooper isn't there.

~1.52.00 - Quint gets attacked and eaten by the shark.

~1.53.00 - Brody manages to fight off a marauding shark by lodging a gas cannister in its mouth.

1.54.55 - Standing on the boat's rigging as it disappears beneath the waves Brody takes a shot at the gas cannister in the shark's mouth. BOOM! The shark explodes.

1.55.45 - Bubbles come up through the water. Is it the shark resurfacing? No, its Hooper. He's alive!

In the story's original ending both Quint and Hooper die and instead of being blown to pieces the shark swims off. When Spielberg suggested that the shark was blown to pieces the producers where wary that the audience might not swallow it - it's hardly realistic. What the producer's didn't realise what that the audience wanted now was the resolution - Brody gets the shark and the more spectacular the more satisfying.

1.56.30 - Brody and Hooper swim back to shore.

Brody - "I used to hate the water"

Hooper - "I can't imagine why."

Jaws Facts

• Jaws was originally going to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock (with Charlton Heston as Police Chief Brody)
• To make the real sharks look bigger a midget diver was hired for Hooper's cage sequence.
• The mechanical sharks were named 'Bruce' after Spielberg's lawyer Bruce Ramer.
• The shark's final death cry is sampled from 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon' and was also used as the death cry of the truck in Spielberg's earlier movie 'Duel'.
• Afraid of being drowned by his mutinous crew Spielberg had a motorboat standing by to whisk him away after his last shot.
• At the height of seventies 'Sharkmania' ice cream stands started selling flavours such as 'Jawberry', 'Finilla' and 'Sharklate'.

And now in LEGOVISION!

Since Shark Attack I've discovered a number of other Lego productions on the net, including the first five minutes of Star Wars and a Lego Titanic. But the best offerings have to be these from Japan. Click through for screenshots from Baka Eiga - Desperado (and The Matrix - Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!!)

Steven Spielberg Moviemaker Lego Set

This has to be the coolest toy out. Spielberg has got together with Lego to produce this plastic brick studio backlot complete with earthquake-plate road, destructable buildings, Jurassic Park style dinosaur and a team of yellow-headed cast and crew. There's even a model of the bearded one himself! The set comes complete with a PC-compatible USB movie camera, kid-friendly software to assemble your movies and a tips and tricks handbook to help create your special effects.

 USA and International orders from amazon.com

Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Lego Set