Jaws Turns 50: What That Shark Can Teach Us About Podcasting

The movie Jaws turned 50 years old this week.

And there are some lessons as podcasters that we can pull away from a movie that almost didn't happen.

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There is a documentary coming out, I believe, on like, National Geographic Channel or something like that, which is always, like, one step above smoke signals, I think.

But I saw a preview, and it was Steven Spielberg, of course, the great movie maker.

And this was really.

It wasn't his first movie, but he said he was over his head.

And the fun part of this is the movie decided to film in the actual ocean with a mechanical shark, and the salt water broke the shark.

He said 80% of the time, the shark didn't work.

And so what they did was they used that music from John Williams to be the shark.

And when you heard that, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, kinda, he goes, that was almost scarier than seeing the shark.

And so what does this have to do with podcasting, Dave?

Well, I don't know.

There are many movies out now with computer generated sharks, and they're not half as scary as Jaws.

And so, number one, it was the story.

And if you look at that now from a kind of storytelling, you know, there's the captain is, you know, the chief of police is getting over his fear, Something with the water and then the dynamic, and there's all sorts of, you know, things that kind of come and go that keep you going.

I wonder what's going to happen next, because the shark just keeps getting bigger and bigger and scarier and scarier.

So what does this have to do with podcasting, Dave?

Well, I remember once I was doing an interview and they were using video.

And so right now, I've got lights behind me.

I've got lights in the ceiling now that are key lights pointing down at me.

And I've got a banner behind me that says School of Podcasting.

And they're like, whoa, that looks really cool.

And I said, yeah, but realize I didn't start here.

I started in my brother's basement with a waterbed behind me because I just gone through bankruptcy and a divorce.

2024 was not a great year for me, but over the years, I crawled myself out for a while.

I had a backdrop that said School of Podcasting that was a little thinner than the one I have now, but it looked pretty cool.

And that's when I was in an apartment.

It's kind of funny now when I look at video, I can go, oh, that was in the apartment.

Oh, that was, you know, that was above the deli for a while.

I had a business office and things like that.

But the bottom line is, yeah, we would all love to start with the best gear and just make this amazing video or just this amazing audio.

A lot of people like, well, I can't afford an SM7B because it's $400.

Yeah, but you can make great audio with a Samson Q2U.

And so in the same way that everything didn't exactly go right with Jaws, it was supposed to be like a 40 day shoot and it ended up being over 100 days.

They were way over budget.

They were always this close to being shut down.

And yet through Steven Spielberg's creativity of, okay, I don't have everything I want.

What can we do with what we have?

And so that's where you're like, all right, well, I don't really have a backdrop for video.

Or maybe I don't have a DSLR camera.

Yeah, you have a phone.

You have a phone.

If you want to do video, I always say start with audio and then move to video.

But there are things you can do if you don't have lighting.

Great, okay.

Shoot your video by a window.

And this is why, again, I kind of recommend starting with audio first.

Is there's a whole lot more moving pieces if you want to throw video into the mix.

But when I first started off, I have a friend of mine, I do a show every Saturday with Jim Collison.

It's called Ask the Podcast Coach.

And Jim is my co host.

He uses a Audio Technica ATR 2100 microphone.

Now, sadly, those are now discontinued, which is why I Recommend the Samson Q2U.

But they're both very similar and they're both under a hundred bucks.

You don't have to spend a lot of money on it.

And you know, there are all sorts of free tools.

Now, you have to be careful with free tools because a lot of times they go out of business because free is a bad business model.

But my point here is don't let your brain saying, well, I'd start a podcast or I would do this, or I would do this, but I don't have everything I need.

Don't let that stop you.

See if there's a creative way to get around not having everything you needed.

Because when I first started playing the guitar I had to basically wait till my brother went to work so I could play his.

And then he got mad and so I had to get my own guitar.

My guitar that I bought was crappy and the strings were hard to play.

But on the other hand, that really let me figure out do I want to play the guitar or not?

And I did.

So I went through those painful early years of playing the guitar and it didn't sound as good as his, but that's all right.

It was good enough to let me learn the basics and all the chords and everything like that, so that when I actually did buy a better guitar, I could fly on that thing.

And so sometimes having to do things not the perfect way actually gives you better skills.

One more quick story.

The band Black Sabbath, you've probably heard of them, they're considered the godfathers of heavy metal.

And their lead guitar player, Tony Iommi, unfortunately lost the tip of his ring finger on his left hand in a, you know, weird, you know, machining kind of accident.

And he didn't let it stop him.

He made this weird kind of like thimble thing that he would put over what was now his stump of his ring finger so he could play the guitar.

The problem was it did kind of hurt.

So what did he do?

He loosened the tension on his strings, which made all the notes go a little lower.

And that's what gave them their kind of spooky sound.

Everything was.

They just sounded more ominous.

Yes, that's a fun word to say.

And it was all because he had unfortunately had this accident with his finger.

Well, you do what you can with what you got.

And sometimes by having to be creative because you don't have all the other things, you come up with a new way, a different way that makes you completely unique.

And it's that uniqueness that makes you stand out.

And people like, oh, this is different.

And then they start telling their friends.

So I know it'd be great if you had everything you needed, when you want it, where you want it, et cetera, et cetera, but that rarely happens.

And so do what you can with what you have, because you don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

That's a famous Zig Ziglar line, and I believe it 100%.

If you need help with any of this, feel free to come over to schoolofpodcasting.com join.

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I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

And I can't wait to see what we do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.