Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Steven Spielberg

Stunts

The Peruvian temple interiors used in the film were life-sized sets.[14][28] The giant boulder—made of fiberglass, plaster and wood—was designed to be 65 ft (20 m) wide, but this was reduced to 22 ft (6.7 m), with the resulting prop weighing 300 lb (140 kg).[12][14][28] Spielberg liked the effect and had its ramp extended to give it more screen time.[14] The boulder was controlled by a steel rod concealed in the wall by rubber rock outcroppings.[28] Ford performed the stunt ten times for the different camera angles. Spielberg said he was an idiot for letting Ford do it, but it would not have looked as good with a stuntman concealing his face.[12][28] Ford performed as many of his stunts as was allowed throughout Raiders, suffering various injuries.[15][48] The tarantulas on Molina's body would not move because they were male and non-aggressive. A female spider was put on his chest to encourage movement.[14][15][17] Abandoned ideas for the temple included a crushing wall trap and a pit concealed by spider-webs. The golden idol also had mechanically operated eyes that could follow Jones.[14] For the last part of the scene where Jones flees by plane, the first take ended in near-disaster when the plane crashed from a height of 20 ft (6.1 m) because Ford's dangling leg was blocking the aircraft's right flap.[12]

Filming of the Well of Souls scene was delayed initially by a lack of snakes. There were 500–600 snakes to use for close shots and some mechanical snakes for wider shots, but Spielberg wanted more. A request was made to snake handlers from around London and Europe who produced between 6,000 and 10,000 snakes in a few days.[20][35][48] Afterward, they struggled to obtain anti-venom; with local supplies having expired, it had to be imported from India.[17] Many of the snakes were harmless grass snakes or non-venomous pythons, but the cobras were positioned behind plexiglas to protect the cast and crew.[37][40] Also present among the snakes were legless lizards.[53] The stage doors were kept open during filming for quick access to a waiting ambulance.[12] Spielberg recounted that Allen was so scared she could not scream on cue. He dropped a dead serpent on her to elicit a genuine reaction.[17] Allen said she got used to the creatures after 3–4 days.[54] Animal handler Steve Edge donned a dress and shaved his legs to stand in for Allen at specific points.[12] Vivian Kubrick's complaint to the RSPCA about the perceived poor treatment of the snakes required production to cease while safeguards were added.[12]

Reynolds and production artist Ron Cobb created the BV-38 flying wing based on the Horten Ho 229, the Northrop N-1M and the Vought V-173.[55][56] Constructed by the British engineering firm Vickers, it was dismantled and shipped to Tunisia.[12] It was not designed to be flight-worthy, only to serve as a source of danger from its propellers.[28] The plane was abandoned in Tunisia and slowly dismantled over the following decade by souvenir hunters before being demolished.[55][56] The fight between Jones and the German underneath the plane was mainly improvised; Spielberg had to restrain himself from making it too long as each new idea led to another.[48] During the fight, the moving vehicle rolled over Ford's foot and towards his knee before it was stopped. It took 40 crew members to move it off of him. He avoided injury through a combination of the extreme Tunisian heat making the tire soft and the ground being covered in sand.[12][28] Dysentery had left the production with a lack of stuntmen, and Spielberg had Marshall stand in as the flying wing pilot. The three-day shoot was one of Spielberg's more difficult scenes to film, and he was reported saying he wanted to go home.[48][57]

Second unit director Michael D. Moore filmed most of the truck chase. Spielberg had not used a second director before but agreed to it as the scene would take a long time to film being set in multiple locations. Moore completed wider shots where stuntmen stood in for Ford. He closely followed Spielberg's storyboarding but innovated a few shots Spielberg considered improvements.[12][28] Stuntman Glenn Randall suggested the scene of Jones traversing the underside of the truck.[28] Ford sat in a concealed bicycle seat attached to the truck underside when clinging to its front.[12] One of the convoy cars going over a cliff was a combination of matte painting background and stop motion animation of miniature figures falling out of the car.[28]

Special effects

Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) handled the film's special effects, under the supervision of Richard Edlund. The team worked on both Raiders of the Lost Ark and the dark fantasy Dragonslayer (1981).[12] He felt special effects were a financially economical method of delivering a good film; as long as they were emotionally involved in the story, he said audiences would buy into even a poor special effect.[34] Spielberg liked practical effects because he could regularly check the raw footage during filming, rather than waiting months for the completed composite effects.[28]

Freeman said he had no idea what was happening when he opened the Ark. He was told to imagine something coming towards him and to scream.[48] Special effects artist Steve Gawley created the Ark's spirits by suspending small robed puppets in a clouded water tank in front of a blue screen. They were shaken to create a natural movement that was composited into the live footage. A Lucasfilm receptionist, dressed in a long white robe, was suspended in the air in front of a blue screen for the close-up of the ghost. She was filmed moving away from the camera and the footage was reversed to create an inhuman movement. Her visage was composited with a skeletal model for the monstrous transformation.[35]

Freeman, Lacey, and Kahler's death scenes were created using different models.[35][58] A mold was made of Kahler's face; it was lined with bladders filled with air. Controlled by up to ten people, the air was removed to make the head shrivel.[12] Special effects artist Chris Walas sculpted Lacey's melting face using different colored layers of gelatin placed over a carved, heat-resistant stone skull. Propane heaters were used to melt the gelatin and filmed using a slower-than-normal camera so the effect appears to take place rapidly when played at normal speed.[58][59] Belloq's head mold contained a thin-plaster skull filled with blood bags and detritus. It was blown up using explosives, shotguns, and an air cannon. It took three attempts to get the desired effect.[12] Belloq's death was considered so extreme the Motion Picture Association of America initially classified the film with an R rating restricting it to those over the age of 17 without an adult. Flames were superimposed over the scene to conceal the effect.[15]

Kasdan scripted detailed montages during the transition between locations, but Spielberg saved money by showing a map and an animated line traveling between destinations.[28] Skulls and rotting bodies made by chief make-up artist Tom Smith filled the Well of Souls catacombs.[12] To get the monkey to perform a Nazi salute, the trainer hit it on the head to make it touch the affected area. When this did not work, the filmmakers hung a grape over its head to encourage it to reach up; it took 50 takes to capture.[32] A partially deaf rat was used for the scene of the ark humming in the hold of the Bantu Wind, giving it a unique and unnatural head movement.[48]

Visuals and sound

Matte paintings were used to create more elaborate backgrounds: these included the establishing shot of Marion's Nepalese bar and the warehouse where the Ark is later stored, the latter painted by Michael Pangrazio. Spielberg disliked the painting of the China Clipper plane (by Alan Maley) as he did not think it looked real against the water they had filmed.[f] Jones' attire—a leather jacket and khaki pants—was based on Humphrey Bogart's in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Charlton Heston in Secret of the Incas (1954).[12][28][62] Costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis dumped boxes of hats on the floor for Ford to try on. After picking the right style, she purchased an Australian model she aged with Fuller's earth and mineral oil, and then scrunched beneath a bed. The hat allowed them to create a recognizable image even in silhouette.[62] Designer Ralph McQuarrie was responsible for the Ark decorations.[63]

Spielberg wanted a moodier film noir lighting style like in The Informer (1935). In contrast, Slocombe wanted to make things brighter and used backlighting to create a greater depth of field; Spielberg preferred his changes. Slocombe often employed natural light, using solar position predictions to plot a scene's layout. Spielberg liked the beams of sunlight glimpsed through scenery and tasked special effects artist Kit West with using a smoke machine to create artificial sunlight shards. For the bar fight, Spielberg wanted pitch-black shadows on the wall, but the lighting required to achieve this would have shrouded the actors' eyes; he settled for subtler shadings. He also wanted to illuminate the Well of Souls with a lighting effect through the ceiling opening, but once this was sealed it no longer made sense. The flaming torches used in the scene did not provide enough light, so he opted to use an artificial light source. Spielberg noted Allen always looked beautiful in her scenes because Slocombe spent twice as long setting up her lighting as he did Ford's.[28]

Sound effects supervisor Ben Burtt recorded the film's many sounds. The snake slithering is a mix of Burtt running his hands through cheese casserole and wet sponges being dragged across grip tape; the rolling boulder is a Honda Civic driving down a gravel hill; and the Ark lid opening is the sound of a toilet cistern being opened.[15][35] The Ark spirits are the cries of sea lions and dolphins filtered through a vocoder. Jones' revolver is the sound of a Winchester rifle firing, while his whip-crack was made by recording Ford using the whip.[35]