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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Directed by Steven Spielberg · Shot by Douglas Slocombe · Cut by Michael Kahn · Music by John Williams · Ratio 2.35:1 · 115 min
How it was made
- Storyboard artists produced roughly 6,000 images covering more than 80 percent of the script, letting Spielberg pre-visualise scenes and cut down setup time on set.
- Spielberg had miniature sets built with 1-inch-tall figurines for major sequences, including the Well of Souls, the Tanis dig site and the Cairo marketplace, to plan blocking, lighting and how many extras would be needed.
- Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, production designer Norman Reynolds and editor Michael Kahn were all hired because Spielberg admired their previous work.
- Paramount mandated an 85-day shooting schedule, but Lucas, Spielberg and producer Frank Marshall set themselves a tighter 73-day target to avoid repeating the overruns of Spielberg's previous film, 1941.
- An early plan to give the villain Toht a mechanical arm that could swap for a machine gun or flamethrower was scrapped during storyboarding because Lucas felt it pushed the film into a different genre.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Steven Spielberg
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