At Katama, shooting started yesterday on Jaws. Around the Universal Studios offices the day before, one wouldn’t have believed it was going to happen.

Steven Spielberg, the director, was out with Shari Rhodes, who is in charge of casting, to pass visual judgment on a line-up of actors who would be in front of cameras 24 hours later. Louis J. Fargo, production manager, was fitting a new $50 daily expense into his $3 1/2-million budget and musing on his day in court — on Monday, the $50 daily fine was levied by Special Justice Philip M. Boudreau who decided that the construction of movie sets at Norton and Easterbrooks’ boat storage shed was violating Edgartown’s zoning by-law.

In the stately Christine Pease house, where the production unit has set up shop (complete with a Universal Studios sign hanging above the door), there were no serious executives in cashmere suits humming along with muzak while studying film clips. Rather, there were a lot of frantic men in blue jeans, with hammers, nails and titles sounding like “Quasi-Executive Secretary of Properties Maintenance” hard at work making last-minute conversions of raw two-by-fours into the material illusions of cinema.

The noise was deafening ­— one expected to see a saw blade come buzzing through a ceiling or wall. Mrs. Robert W. Nevin, secretary, was trying to talk on the telephone to a scientist in Woods Hole. She had asked him for the mean water temperatures of Island beach spots, and he was muttering back in centigrade.

“Can you translate that? What? How many? I can’t hear you. Is that Fahrenheit?” ran the questions, but finally the figures were gleaned ­— in May the waters of the Atlantic run at about 46 degrees (F.), but by late June they have warmed up to 70. “Brrr,” said Mrs. Nevin.

A man in charge of certain props suddenly asked if this reporter lived on Martha’s Vineyard, the eagerly asked what kind of beer the people drank here.

“One brand, maybe two,” he said. “What’s their poison?” He wrote down the speculative answers, very careful about spellings, and added, for the sake of authenticity: “Do they drink the stuff out of cans or out of bottles? And what size?”

Filming Begins

With or without all the answers, the crew began shooting on the beach at Katama about 8 yesterday morning. Tom Joyner, assistant director, said that today and tomorrow the filming will-be done at the town dock in Edgartown, whence an “armada” of makeshift shark-boats will race off amid much clamor and pomp to seek the 24-foot killer. Monday and Tuesday will bring more action at the dock, and the latter part of Tuesday and Wednesday are planned for on-the-sea scenes off the north shore of Cape Pogue.

Miss Rhodes said the casting will go on until the last minute before the cameras roll, but mentioned C. Edwin Carlson and Richard P. Hewitt as two Islanders who have landed speaking roles. Roy Scheider, who played Gene Hackman’s partner in The French Connection and starred in The Seven Ups, is one actor signed for the big part, and Rick Dreyfus of American Graffiti fame is another.

There are still a lot of things the film executives have to talk about with town authorities so that they can avoid more court action or, simply, resentment. Monday’s district court question was resolved as it began, in good will and misunderstanding, but Mr. Fargo made it clear that such tangles are not what Universal wants to cause here on the Island.

The cause of the action in court was a complaint filed by Cyprien P. R. Dube, Edgartown zoning inspector, on the advice of Richard J. McCarron, town counsel. Mr. Dube thought the set construction illegal. Mr. Fargo was surprised. Mr. McCarron wanted to be gentle, according to policy adopted at last week’s Edgartown selectmen’s meeting with the film unit.

Mr. McCarron and E. Peter Mullane, attorney for Jaws, almost worked the case into a lengthy battle of formalities before Judge Boudreau stopped them with a “Let’s get this solved and have done” reprimand.

“Apparently there have been discussions and agreements between the selectmen, the lawyers, the film crew, the boatyard...all these agreements are not in my jurisdiction,” he said. “However, the zoning by-law is — and it seems there is a violation here.”

He levied a fine of $50 against Universal and Norton and Easterbrooks for each day the construction continues at the boat shed. This, the selectmen and production crew had decided earlier, was the easiest way out — it saved the face of Edgartown’s zoning laws and would cost the movie only about $200.

“Let’s move on,” said Judge Boudrea. His thoughts were probably echoes by everyone at Universal Studios.