Just to make sure we associate the nail-on-chalkboard sound with something unpleasant, Spielberg provides four separate reaction shots of people in the room: Mrs Taft rises from her seat and turns, one hand touching her ear like a secret service agent; an elderly woman in a blue jacket and pearls, looking like an extra from an Agatha Christie mystery, physically recoils in her chair; a tableaux of Amity residents, artfully arranged like a jury, collectively grit their teeth and narrow their eyes; and two of the councilmen (the bald-headed bespectacled one who had accosted Brody on his way to the hardware store, and the pudgy one who had made the crack about the reward money) try to make out the source of the noise through the intervening crowd of people, most of whom are now on their feet.
Two of the residents closest to the blackboard conveniently step aside in unison to allow us to see Quint seated at the far end of the room with all eyes now upon him. He takes a bite of a cracker, and, as he begins to speak, the camera begins a slow tracking shot towards him. As it passes Mr Taft, he momentarily turns to look back at the seated members of the council, but almost immediately turns his attention back to the fisherman, craning slightly in his seat to get a better view. The balance of power has clearly shifted from one end of the room to the other. Seated at the back of the room Quint is both literally and figuratively distanced from the island's recognised authority. One of the conditions he later sets the chief for going after the shark is to 'get the mayor off my back so I don't have any more of this zoning crap.' This line of dialogue was written into the script partly as an in-joke (the filmmakers had difficulty getting permission to build a temporary structure to stand in as Quint's boathouse), but it also suggests the fisherman's non-conformist attitude to civic obedience.
The camera movement towards Quint, which ends in a close-up as he addresses himself directly to Brody, has a certain predatory quality to it, not unlike the underwater POV shots of the shark. It's complemented by a reverse tracking shot that moves towards the council bench as the mayor rises from his seat in a gesture that suggests he has recognised the fisherman's right to the floor of the meeting. There is a brief cut back to the close up of Quint, who uses the language of commerce ('Gonna stay alive and ante up?') to reinforce his point.
In fact, his entire speech is punctuated with such terms: he introduces himself not by name but by profession ('You all know me. Know how I earn a living.'), talks about putting Amity's businesses back 'on a paying basis', raises the spectre of being 'on welfare the whole winter', and even sees his own life in monetary terms ('I value my neck a lot more than three thousand bucks, chief'). He makes a distinction between pleasure fishing and sharking ('It's not like going down the pond and chasing blue gills or tommy cods.'), which he will later use as a rod with which to beat Hooper's back ('I'm not talking about pleasure boating or daily sailing. I'm talking about working for a living.'). Incidentally, the pond reference is not, as we will later learn, meant as a generic term, but is a reference to the estuary where the hapless boatman will lose his leg and his life. As Quint describes the Great White's eating habits ('A little shaking, a little tenderizing, down you go.'), he munches on a cracker with no doubt intended irony, unable to appreciate, of course, the greater irony of the scene, which is that he is actually describing his own fate.
Brody and Quint are subliminally linked by matching tracking shots: as the fisherman declares his intention to do the job alone ('I don't want no volunteers. I don't want no mates.') the camera pushes in on him again and then cuts to a similar camera movement on the chief. In fact, when Quint's offer is eventually taken up and he becomes a de facto employee of the Amity authorities, it is Brody who ends up calling the shots ('It's my party. It's my charter.') and the fisherman is forced to accept Hooper as his mate and Brody as a volunteer.
To make clear that his motivation is strictly financial, Quint makes a sole claim on the bounty money ('Ten thousand dollars for me by myself.'), and figuratively cuts up the shark into an unholy trinity ('For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.'). The mayor, exchanging a look of puzzled agreement with another council member, promises to take the fisherman's offer 'under advisement', a phrase that suggests the language of bureaucracy has not totally deserted him. Quint, in a profile shot that shows off his mutton chop sideburns to their best advantage, takes his leave with a mildly mocking acknowledgement of the people in the room ('Mr Mayor. Chief. Ladies and gentlemen.'). He's followed down the empty corridor by his silent mate and dog as a young man and woman peer round the jamb to watch their departure. There is a final cut to a low angle shot of a brooding Brody on the right of the frame with the view of a house and a suspiciously bare-looking tree out of the window on the left.
