THE WELL OF SOULS
Kathy Kennedy (Associate to Steven Spielberg): The Well of the Souls set was the
most impressive set. It was really amazing to walk in there to see these huge jackals,
with hands up. The tallest stage at Elstree is around 40 feet; so the jackals rose around
37 feet in the air. From above, looking down into the Well of the Souls, they were truly
terrifying.
Norman Reynolds (Production Designer): Indy's actually on the jackal statue when it falls. We
spoke to the stunt arranger and went through the routine that Indy would follow, and provided
hand- holds to make it work, and safety pads and so on. And the same for the stunt of Marion
hanging on the lower jaw of the jackal, and its teeth breaking away.
As far as the art department models were concerned, my way of working is to
determine what the set should look like, then do a drawing or sketch and talk again to the
director and confirm that that's what we both want to do; and then put it in three
dimensions, making a model so that we can finally get the wheels turning. The moment
the model is approved, then it's a matter of working with the draftsmen to prepare
the working drawings. And the working drawings are then issued to the various
departments and the set finally arrives.
Lawrence Kasdan (Screenplay): George [Lucas] has said that a big stunt is meaning-
less if you don't care about the people. That's something that I've based all my work on
you must care about the people or everything's meaningless. And that a good
joke's worth a good stunt equal to and a lot cheaper and a lot easier.
A little piece of George Lucas's Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back is cleverly hidden in the dank, snake-filled Well of the Souls. Look very closely at the wall behind the Ark of the Covenant at the complex hieroglyphics inscribed by "the ancients." Right in the middle are the ever-popular droids Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio, shaking hands. Smaller renditions of them also run up and down the posts of the altar that houses the sacred Ark.
Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood): It was an enormous challenge to me because I've never
done this type of film or this stylized type of acting. Anytime you put someone in with
snakes and skeletons, ask her to fall down cliffs, all that sort of thing it's a whole
new ballpark I'm working in.
Steven Spielberg (Director): Karen has never done an action picture before, so she
came very prepared to play Marion, and very unprepared to fight the bad guys, ride the
horses, beat back the snakes, to be dragged by the hair along the
ground, to be run over by assorted vehicles, to be hanging from the
jaw of a 37-foot jackal god. When she came to the set, she thought it
was going to be acting for 10 weeks, and discovered it was a
combination of acting and physical fitness. I said to Karen, "We're
now moving you out of the Al Pacino school of drama into the Sam
Peckinpah school of action"
Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood): I've never really been
around snakes very much. I've grown fond of them except for the
pythons, the ones that bite I'm not fond of those. It feels a little
odd being so physically unprotected in all of those scenes. It works
well for me, and, at the same time, it makes it worse. Harrison has his
boots and gloves, and leather clothes, and I have naked arms and
nothing on my legs and bare feet. In the beginning that was
tougher than it is now because I just couldn't stand the snakes on my
feet. But I've gotten used to them. Now I have to keep reminding
myself that they're snakes.
Robert Watts (AssociateProducer): | We bought them, and
then we sold them again at the end or I hope they're sold.
Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer): we originally ordered
about 2,500 snakes, which were hatched for the production. But it
takes a lot of snakes to fill a set wall-to-wall, so we had to order
another 4,000. If they had all been poisonous, you
wouldn't have been able to put your foot on the ground without
being bitten.
Frank Marshall (Producer): I had to cure myself of a common phobia about
snakes. But once you see other people, like a snake handler, not
worried about it, then you touch one. Then I got to be real
comfortable with them. Which was a good thing because I
was elected to do the second camera shots of them. Steven would
give me little drawings of the shots that he wanted and then I
would spend two or three days trying to do it. Some of the shots
were a real challenge. For example, snakes aren't afraid of any-
thing: they'd even go right into a fire. So we had to invent a way
to get them to stay away from the fire. And then we had to get
them coming in after the torch goes out. Well, the other thing is
they're not real fast. And they don't ever go where you want them
to go. So we had to devise ways to get them to cooperate.
The hardest thing was to get them to strike. We had a lot of
pythons, which aren't poisonous but do bite.
So it was a question of getting them up into a
position where they would strike at the
camera or somebody's leg. I was dancing
around with little handkerchiefs trying to get them to strike. If
you got close enough to them then they would strike at your hand, but
you had to get your hand out before it got bitten.
THE CATACOMBS
Frank Marshall (Producer): this poor guy was holding the snake through the back of the mummy.
The snake's head stuck out of the mouth. And we were teasing it to get it to snap at the camera.
Then you just hope you get your hand out in time so it's not in the picture.
THE RAVEN BAR
Frank Marshall (Producer): We did have real snow. We bought a snow-making machine, and
later sold it to a snow cone factory that sold snow cones down in Piccadilly Circus.
We also had some sort of styrofoam for snow: when you walked in it, it felt like snow - it
crunched and everything. And it was highly flammable. But not enough of it caught on fire to
cause a problem. Actually, I don't know how we survived that one
Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood): It's a wonderful establishing scene, a great introduction to the
character, from the very first moment that you see Marion. She's queen of the Raven bar. She
can drink all these men under the table, and throw out people she wants out - basically do
whatever she wants to do.
Kathy Kennedy (Associate to Steven Spielberg): Karen really shines in the Raven scene.
In terms of stunts alone, the scene is spectacular. All the fight scenes had to be carefully
choreographed.
Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer): Water is probably the most difficult thing to work with.
Fire is the next. We had both.
Frank Marshall (Producer): Even when you have a controlled fire, things burn. And if the fire
goes on too long, it gets out of hand.
We had firemen there, and they were serious about their work this time, because it had gotten
too hot up high. I looked up and the fire was licking at the top of the stage - the rafters had
caught on fire.
Kathy Kennedy (Associate to Steven Spielberg): The bar was one of the few sets that had to be
shot in continuity. We were going to burn all the area above the bar, and then move the camera
and burn the back door; and then we had this curtain of fire come down and start the top of the
staircase on fire. All of those things were carefully planned, so that when edited together, it
would look as though the whole thing went up in flames. But the whole thing did go up in
flames, and we couldn't always have the camera on the part that was burning. So we had to
build back what had burned by mistake. When the overall effect you want is to have the entire
thing burn down, it usually means that, at some point, the fire's going to get out of control. And it
did.
Steven Spielberg (Director): I always envisioned the character of Indiana Jones as a real
throwback movie hero: a lover and a cad and a two-fisted hellion. In the early sequences of the
movie, while he's teaching a class, he looks the picture of a well-dressed professor. But the
moment he puts on his fighting clothes—his leather jacket and his hat—he suddenly is dressed
also with half an inch of dust, and dirt around the cheeks and under the nails. And, unlike James
Bond, he doesn't win every fight he's in. He gets to the edge of the cliff, and sometimes he goes
over the other side. He doesn't necessarily survive every cliffhanger unscathed. That was one of
the things I was determined to do. I didn't want this man to get into this kind of action and come
away with white teeth and washed hands. Instead he comes away cut and
bruised and battered and wonderfully in pain.
THE BANTU WIND CABIN
Robert Watts (Associate Producer): we dealt with a company called Animal Actors. We'd ring
them up and say, "I want fourteen grey rats".
Frank Marshall (Producer): The rats I hated the most. For some reason the snakes didn't bother
me after a while. But seeing big rats—it was kind of creepy.
Kathy Kennedy (Associate to Steven Spielberg): We were doing some pick-up shots in the hold
of the Bantu Wind, where the Ark is being carried. And the hold is full of rats. Richard Edlund
(Photographic Effects Supervisor) had to do a special-effects shot because the swastika on the
front of the crate holding the Ark melts. As the camera's dollying in to the Ark the rats scatter
toward the Ark, but because of the hum that's coming from the Ark, they then turn and run
away.
The camera kept running over the tails of the rats. We'd have to stop because we'd hear
"EEEEEEeeeee" Richard would yell, "Stop! Stop !" and we'd look under the camera and there'd
be some little rat. We'd pull him out—they weren't hurt, just had their tails stepped on—and
start all over again. We finally got the rats so they'd start to run toward the Ark; and most of them
scattered to the corners, which were dark. And that was great. But there was this one rat that, all
of a sudden, ran toward the Ark, and then stopped and started turning around in circles. It just
kept turning in circles, which was perfect, because it looked like the hum from the Ark was
hurting its ears. Richard and I were dying because we didn't know what was wrong with it—we
thought it had the plague or something.
We found out from Mike Culling (Animal Trainer) that he'd had the rat since it was a baby,
and it was deaf and also had an equilibrium problem.
The square of vivid blue in the background of the dramatic shot of the bound Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) during the climax of the movie is called a blue screen. A unique matte photographic technique, the blue screen gives the filmmaker a great deal of creativity in setting a scene and adding special effects. When the blue color is removed from the picture negative, the background disappears and forms a frame around the figures in the foreground. A new background, which might include special effects or a different time of day or location, can then be added to the scene. The result in this particular shot is a dark starry night filled with strange and evil creatures who have escaped from the Ark and threaten Indy and Marion.
THE ALTAR
Steven Spielberg (Director): Harrison is a very original leading man. There's not been anyone
like him for 30 or 40 years, and he does carry the movie wonderfully. Harrison was more than
just an actor playing a role, he was a collaborator and really was involved in a lot of decision
making about the movie. And this wasn't be contract, it was because I sensed a very good story
mind and a real smart person and called on him time and again.
Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer): It wasn't easy shooting in Tunisia, but Steven's
attitude was, "We're going to get the work done fast and well" He didn't complain about the heat,
or the dust, or the sickness. And his attitude permeated the entire crew.
Pamela Mann (Continuity): When one's working with amateur extras, that brings great problems
with continuity. If someone wants to put on a sun hat because the sun's burning his head, and he
didn't have it on in the last shot, he sees no reason why he shouldn't put on the sun hat. one
tries to keep an eagle eye out for that sort of thing, and hopes that one doesn't see something
horrible in rushes that one's missed.
Steven Spielberg (Director): Essentially George had a "hands off" policy. Once the movie was
launched he pretty much left us alone to make the movie. He spent a week on each location—so
out of the 14 weeks scheduled, George was down for about three-and-a-half weeks. And he was
nothing but encouraging and supportive.
George Lucas (Executive Producer): I try to be very sensitive to the director and what his
problems are, because I've been a director. And Steve is open to suggestions; I mean, I offer lots
of suggestions, and he takes some of them and doesn't take some of them. And we've never
really had completely different points of view on the way something should be done.
Lawrence Kasdan (Screenwriter): I'm a great admirer of these old movies that are just
entertaining to beat hell. you are taken to a special kind of world where things happen in a very
vivid and big way. It relates not just to serials, but to old-time movies, and big adventures. I think
Raiders has as much to do with Casablanca as it does with serials.
The futuristic Flying Wing was chosen by director Steven Spielberg to represent the ominous and advanced state of aeronautics in Hitler's Germany Production designer Norman Reynolds used a Northrop Corporation prototype of the Flying Wing and drawings by Ron Cobb to design for Raiders of the Lost Ark thisstrangeplane thathas no tail and nofuselage. deplane was builtin England by VickersAircraft Company and painted atEMIElstree Studios in London. In order to ship the elaborate prop to Tunisiaforfilming, it had to be disassembled and sent in parts, then rebuilt on location. In the film the Flying Wing is in Egypt (the Tunisian location)for the top secret mission of transporting the sacred Ark of the Covenant. But before theArk is even aboard the plane, a series of dramatic events results in the fiery destruction of the Flying Wing.
Kathy Kennedy (Associate to Steven Spielberg): I walked out to the air strip and there was
nobody but Steven out there. He was walking around the Flying Wing, really pondering. I asked
him what he was thinking about. He said, "I'm trying to think of how I'm going to edit together 120
shots for this flight sequence. I'm about half way through it in my mind" we hadn't even started
shooting it yet. That was a whole choreographed scene that he was editing in his head before he
had even begun to shoot it.
Frank Marshall (Producer): The stunt coordinator came up to me one day and said,
"Look, I've run out of faces, do you want to play the German pilot?" So I said, "Sure" Now I see
why I was asked—first, the guy gets whacked over the head; then, it's 130 degrees and he sits in
the cockpit with the top closed, wearing a jumpsuit and a little hat. So the temperature ended up
around 180.
The Tunisian fire department's hoses not only pulled apart at the joints, the hose
caught on fire and the fire department had to put out their own hose. It was like a slapstick
comedy, with the fire department falling down, and the
hoses breaking and running out of water. They'd say, "Fire it up!" and this little dribbled come out
of the hose.
Larry Kasdan (Screenwriter): Once we were up at Industrial Light and Magic (Lucasfilm special
effects facility) and I was helping George [Lucas] hang these giant enlargements of photos. One
of them is a guy jumping from a horse onto a truck,
and George said that that image had been the heart of Raiders.
Robert Watts (Associate Producer): It was a very complex picture logistically because we shot in
four countries in the space of 73 days—and it wasn't a story about two people and a dog, it was
a big story. What was also extraordinary was that we shot it 12 days under schedule, and yet we
didn't leave anything out. In fact, we had more shots than were in the script.
After an exhaustive search for Indiana Jones's South American escape plane, this l930s Waco biplane was finally located in Junction City Oregon. Owned and cherished by Henry and Alice Strauch, the plane was the only one found that fit all the requirements of the movie - single engine, open cockpit, and the original floaters which allowed for landing and taking off on water. Production designer Norman Reynolds had the plane painted to match the aircraft of the period, and added a small touch of humor as well - note the use of the two Star Wars characters OB (as in Obi-Wan Kenobi) and 3PO as the plane's identification numbers. This valuable antique plane finally returned home to Oregon and its regular routine - Henry Strauch flies it to work and back each day.
Edited by Ann Holler
Assistant Editor, Kristine H. Johnson
Designers, Melanie Paykos and Rio Phior
Originally published in 1981.