VALERIE TAYLOR DOCUMENTARY WINS BIG AT AACTA
The music of Jaws by John Williams won numerous awards and accolades over 45 years ago, and now the music for a documentary about the life of Valerie Taylor - who helped film the live action shark footage in Jaws - has won a AACTA Award for Best Original Score in a Documentary.
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) awards are like the Australian version of the Emmys or BAFTAs and the National Geographic Documentary, which is now on Disney Plus, won the converted award for its music, which is by Caitlin Yeo.
The stunning documentary was also nominated in the Best Documentary and Best Editing categories.
The Academy serves as Australia’s most prestigious film and television membership body, bringing together and representing screen professionals from a cross-section of the screen industry in order to further screen excellence in Australia.
Playing With Sharks was up against some tough competition
Playing With Sharks (2021), directed by Sally Aitken, received its virtual premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The Daily Jaws were lucky enough to catch up with Sally, Valerie and Bettina Dalton, its producer.
This documentary is both a celebration of Valerie's past, but also a legacy for our future and the future of sharks.
And of course Jaws does feature in that. In the Steven Spielberg classic, Ron and Valerie filmed the jaw(s) dropping actual great white shark footage of the shark attacking the cage that housed Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss).
Valerie Taylor and husband Ron acted as technical consultants on Steven Spielberg’s shark thriller Jaws (1975)
That footage was shot in Australia using the forced perspective of a smaller cage and a shorter stunt performer - Carl Rizzo - to give the impression that the 13 foot long great white was the 25 foot one from the film.
The Australian husband and wife team also filmed live shark footage for both Orca (1977) and Jaws 2 (1978).
Words by Dean Newman
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