Documentary: “Raiding the Lost Ark”

Another ‘filmumentary’ from Jamie Benning:

Raiding the Lost Ark is an in-depth insight into the making of the 1981 collaboration between Spielberg and Lucas. This fan made Filmumentary contains behind the scenes video, rare interviews with cast and crew, reconstructed deleted scenes and subtitled facts.

This is a preliminary version of part 1. It’s pre-QC and pre-audio mix.

More background from Geek Dad at Wired:

Raiding follows the same format that Jamie basically invented, with hours worth of interviews and behind the scenes footage condensed and re-edited into the main flow of the film to produce a visual commentary of the movie-making process. Jamie has also added graphical reconstructions of deleted scenes, subtitled facts (many taken from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones

), and scans from the production diaries, offering an unprecedented insight into the first and best Indiana Jones film.

The real coup with Raiding, though, comes from the fact that Raiders director Steven Spielberg has yet to release an official commentary track on any of his films, so this really is the next best thing, with many clips from interviews from the last thirty odd years giving a great insight into the way he thinks and how certain, memorable, shots came about. An early gem of background info comes from actor Alfred Molina, who played Indy’s guide at the beginning of the film, as he recounts his experiences with all those tarantulas! Makes me shudder just thinking about it. And I love the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ way Jamie has inserted the title of his film right in with the real title. I’d heard that Tom Selleck was considered for Indy, but it’s a real treat to see a bit of his screen test, playing opposite Sean Young as Marion.

Here is the first 17 minutes of “Raiding the Lost Ark”:

You can see Benning’s ‘filmumentaries’ for all of the “Star Wars” movies here.

You can go here and download the transcript of five days worth of story meetings between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan about what would become Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Finally you can go here to read Damon Lindelof’s “love letter” to Raiders.

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