Indiana Jones - Page 6

We also like tits.

Old school tits, that is! Not CG.

Do the depths of your stupidity know no end?

Or claymation tits, like the Harpies in Jason and the Argonauts.

People who truly love filmmaking tend to be interested in the various techniques employed throughout film history to tell stories on the big screen, no matter how obsolete or archaic those techniques might now be. People who don't love filmmaking probably couldn't care less about matte paintings, forced perspective and miniatures, all of which go back to the very beginnings of cinema.

The fact that you took my comment as a snarky sideswipe about anything or anyone is far more damning for you than it is for me. Or the rest of humanity, for that matter. But I guess it's to be expected at this point.

How is it a sweeping statement when we're talking specifically about visual effects and how they affect filmmaking? Do you even read that which you continuously lash out against? Oh wait, the answer is always "no," isn't it?

god damn you two hate each other

When I failed to connect with KOTCS in any meaningful way (beyond: YAY Indy's back!), the cracks (shoddy FX) were all the more visible/unforgivable to me.

I'm sorry I bumped the thread, but I was amused that the term got its own Wiki page.

Nope, I was venting on the subject at large. I have seen people online say they'd take an awful puppet over wonderful CGI. It's such a silly thing.

See, that's my biggest issue with Indy 4's look. I'd argue the CGI as a whole is decent -- there are awful sequence (Shia + monkeys), but the nuclear stuff looks as good as it can, the CG ants are pretty good, etc. But the post-production process, and Janusz's soft look, gives everything an artificial sheen. Colors (especially whites) are so blown out that nothing looks real, even in shots without digital enhancement.

I think it comes down to the concept of the movie and not necessarily the technology involved: 'Shia + monkeys' is a bad idea first, bad FX second.

If you break down Raiders shot by shot, it's not really a 'special effects film'. The production was a comparatively low-budget affair, and the money shots were meticulously spotted. For instance, the truck chase contains exactly two optical effects shots; the basket chase, the Well of Souls and the flying-wing fight don't employ any at all.

Bingo. There's a realness to RAIDERS, due to practical FX and stunts that makes it all the more gripping, grounded, and dangerous. The freedom of CGI allowed for some bad ideas to make it to fruition in KOTCS. If I can just make it happen, there aren't enough checks and balances in place to make me consider if I should make it happen. Laziness, overindulgence, bloat, and ultimately foolishness.

You could make the same argument for the execution of PJ's KONG, but there was a different motivation behind that one. Obsession/passion led to the overindulgence, bloat, and ultimate foolishness. Buuuut, I happen to like that flick a heck of a lot more than KOTCS, due to its emotional beats.

EDIT: Not that I'm clearing away any of Koepp's or Lucas' accountability, I'm wondering how much of Spielberg's desire to work quickly effected the outcome here.

The impression that the vfx quality deteriorated with every Indy installment is understandable but wrong.
It's just that the number of true vfx shots increased tremendously with each one and with quantity come quality issues.
Take the Zeppelin-airplane sequence out of LAST CRUSADE (including the ridiculous tunnel entry) and it feels higher quality immediately.
RAIDERS had effects shots that looked bad but they were rare. There is the one with INDY on the well of souls when the thunderstorm starts. The sky replacement is just bad by today's standards and probably wasn't good back then either. But it was one shot not a whole sequence and the overall number of FAILS was low. And it was a shot done for mood enhancement, not to drive the plot WITH the vfx, which can make a giant difference when it comes to the audience accepting something.
e.g. nobody really cares for the spotty bluescreen shots in the raft down the mountain sequence in TOD but when your plot-driving vfx look bad, you got a problem.

In KOTCS there were a lot of quality issues directly related to the shooting on set. There is the god ugly entry sequence into the warehouse which Steven wanted redone in CG as he wasn't content with what he shot and the nuke is another good example of shoddy or hasty work on set.
The supervisor (Pablo Helman) thought that it would be clever to set up the iconic shot so that the sun angle would be where the nuke's center would be (no shadow hassles) but then Harrison looked in the other direction (dunno why) and they had to change the position of the nuke to match it. So now the nuke and the sun compete for screentime next to each other, which makes it look weird.

I love how you then proceed to elaborately and correctly prove the opposite.

LAST CRUSADE represented the nadir of optical effects of the series. It's not just the terrible zeppelin shots. It's also the German fighter getting pelted with seagulls. It's also the tiny tank turret with the Vogel action figure crashing to the ground. It's also the dodgy Leap of Faith bridge shot (great idea though.)

Like the film itself, CRYSTAL SKULL's digital effects are a whole different animal. And you're right: the volume really seemed to take its toll on the quality. Then again, RETURN OF THE JEDI proved that ILM could handle epic volume in spades, and that was back in the creaky optical era a quarter century earlier. I think one problem these days is that a lot of VFX shots get added late in the game because the director changes his mind in post or figures he can save time by ignoring problems on set and fixing them later digitally. I think there are some pretty terrific VFX shots in CRYSTAL SKULL but they are vastly outnumbered by far more unreal and synthetic shots throughout.

EDIT: I wrote this in response to the previous version of your post before you edited it. Not much difference though.

I don't really understand why Crystal Skull's VFX shots are so uneven. Pablo Helman supervised, and his crew did pretty amazing work on stuff like Terminator 3 and War of the Worlds.

Jedi has more than a couple of clunkers. The shot of Lando walking off to the Falcon is particularly bad. And then there's the bluescreen work in the Rancor fight.

Again, don't automatically blame the technicians. The most expensive words in FX are "I'm not sure what I want, but I'll know it when I see it."

That's what I mean. We know ILM (and his crew, basically) can pump out amazing work, so something got in the way.

Again, I was talking about quality and volume. Compare the VFX quality of JEDI's volume, especially during the final space battle, to CRYSTAL SKULL's, especially considering how vastly more difficult those JEDI shots were to accomplish in 1983.

All I'm saying is: cut half of the shots out of CRUSADE or CRYSTAL SKULL and you'd immediately get the impression that they are high quality works. Some things just were left on the wayside with so much shots on their road to the release date.
Take out the whole dodgy alien room finale + ufo starting and a couple of the jungle fence shots and CRYSTAL SKULL instantly feels more solid.

I'm pretty sure the digital artists working on movies today love film making just as much as the artists working with puppets and make-up.

Sure they do. But I would argue that the huge hierarchical infrastructure, especially in Hollywood, doesn't allow for Joe Artist to have any kind of significant influence anymore on the creative process.
In other words: In '77 when Lucas came around to watch his buddies film their models with motioncontrol he had to trust them doing the right thing and they often had expertise in lots of different technical filmmaking areas. (some of those guys are directors now)
They grew with the challenges, especially when there was no precedent for a certain type of shot.
And don't forget: Animatics back in those days weren't that close to being final shots like it's now with the previz-3d clips that have the camera already locked, the animation in place and most often models and other details already done.

Nowadays it's way more from the top. A normal compositing artist has so many layers above him that he probably can't have the same influence on a finished shot as a Dennis Muren in his time.
He has a rotodepartment underneath him, he get's all his 3d layers from someone else, the particles again from some other department, he doesn't model himself etc...
So basically what can happen in big productions is, that the idea from the top is followed through to the bitter end without much input to try out or change things.

Then again, in smaller teams the vfx supervisor /lead artist can have influence rivaling that of a DOP. See glowing Cylon spine in the BSG: Mini Series. Which was just the idea of a vfx guy and they thought it looked neat and used it.

this is pretty interesting if you have time to kill:
http://moedred.livejournal.com/2009/03/04/

I was wondering when someone was going to find the time to re-type those transcripts out. The one thing I think is interesting about them is how in-the-zone Lucas often was and how completely off-the-mark Spielberg could be. It's really the opposite of common fan wisdom.

Fascinating read, thanks. Spielberg and Kasdan pitching stupid whip gags is definitely an eye-opener.

ETA: and the oblique mentions of Philip Kaufman. I always sensed he was the key element lacking from the later films.

Interesting stuff. I like how they all tiptoe around the original conceit that Indy fucked Marion when she was 15.

1981 (Time magazine):


That transcript displays this loud and clear.

Lucas is so comparatively level-headed here compared to the other two, it's a little disorienting. Spielberg is pitching bits about Indy using his whip to fetch a can of beer, and Lucas is going on about keeping things as real as possible, and not blowing money on crowd scenes that could go to stuntwork. I miss that guy.

That story conference pretty much took place during his peak. He was also nailing all the EMPIRE story beats during this very same period, Flushed from the SW success, the man was on fire. Confident and bold as fuck.

All downhill from there, but every filmmaker has their peaks and valleys.

Where did this guy go? (Both in reference to Lucas and Indiana Jones.)

Also

Where did THIS guy go?

Whoever dug that out of the desert sand has my thanks. That is a real treasure!

EDIT: I've read the first couple pages and it's just fascinating. A lot of the scene ideas that were ultimately discarded, ended up in DOOM and CRUSADE.
e.g. Indy getting ambushed in the plane towards his first destination, him being poisoned in a seedy club, the German love affair girl/double agent, chased by Nazi motorcycles etc...

Thank you so much for posting this!

Wow this is great. How they play ping pong with each others ideas is perfect. They really were at the top of their game back then.
S is Spielberg, G is Lucas and L is Kasdan


S — One thing you should do — He's on this airplane. There are about four or five passengers around him. He's asleep and these passengers are looking at him. We don't know why. They they all get up and put on parachutes, and they jump out the door. He wakes up when he hears the door open, and realizes he's all alone. The door to the cockpit is locked. The airplane begins to go into a spin. He's trapped in this airplane and it's going down. The whole thing was a set up. That's a great cliffhanger, to see how he gets out.

G — That's great. Then what happens? One sentence further and it's a great idea.

S — Well, he's never flown an airplane before, but he kicks in the pilot's door. That would be interesting, he's never flown before, but he brings it down. The other thing would be if he knows how to fly, but he's too late. It's one of those jungle scenes, you've seen where the plane crashes into this dinosaur infested jungle, only now without dinosaurs. He has to bring it down over the tree tops. Either that or he crashes into the Mediterranean, into the water.

G — Part of it is stylistic, but one of the things that works in movies is when the guy gets out of that situation in a unique very bravado sort of way. He has to do something so audacious that you have to say, "I'd never think of anything like that." And he gets away with it.

S — One of the things he could try, although it takes away from the suspense... If I were him, I'd jump at the last minute with a parachute.

G — The way to do it is to have him... You have seat covers or something. He starts ripping off the seat covers and tying them together. Then he jumps out holding all these seat covers. That's sort of unbelievable. If you could make something like that believable. He's over the water. It's James Bond. Not only do you have to get him out of it, you have to do it in a very colorful way. I'm not saying that you actually have to be clever, just make it believable. Sometimes he does it in a totally outrageous way, but it works and it's truly great.

S — One thing he can do is wait until it's almost crashed into the ground and then jump out and land in a tree, or on a roof top.

G — If we take him from Washington, why don't we take him to Hong Kong or Shang Hai. That's a great place. It's more exotic than Hong Kong. So he's crash in the water, with islands and Chinese junks.

S — He does this. Under his seat is a life vest or a life raft. He takes the life vest out from all the seats and he blows them all up and he gets inside, and is completely insulated. Then her jumps out of the airplane. He just surrounds himself with these huge cushioned items.

G — Did they have those things in '36?

S — They had them in all airplanes.

G — That's a little research item. They might just have had life preservers. If they had life preservers, you could more or less do the same thing. If he's over water, the plane could be going down at a steep angle.

S — The other thing he can do that's more in keeping with the heroic side is, rather than abandon the plane, he could kick down the door and we see the ocean just coming up at him. He'd pull the plane up at just the last moment. That's the old cliche shot. The plane is bellying on teh water. The water bursts through the cockpit. The plane begins to sink, and that would be interesting. He gets out of this sinking airplane and finds a vacuum. He takes a big bteath of air. He can't climb out until the pressure is equal. That means the whole plane has to be under water before he can climb out the window. Then he just climbs out the window and swims to the surface.

G — I like the part where he jumps out. That's a clever idea.

L — What if he makes himself into a ball with the life preservers and just goes skipping into the water.

G — If he like he ties himself into a ball with these preservers and he jumps out at the last minute.

L — If there were a life raft he could enclose himself in it.

G — That's a good idea. I'm just worried they didn't have life rafts then.

S — They had life rafts all through the second world war that were inflatable. I wanted him to be on a clipper. It's a big plane.

G — Is there one we could use for take off and landing, and use a miniature for the crash.

S — I heard that there's one left in South America someplace.

G — I just want to send a second unit to shoot it taking off and maybe get some extra stuff. If we send him to Shang Hai we could have him going to see his enemy and we could connect it rather than having it unconnected. The only reason we're talking about the Orient is that it's exotic. He's going to leave Washington and go to three exotic places. He'll go to the Orient with the crowded streets and dragon ladies. Then we send him to the Himalayas, with the snow. And then we send him to Cairo. Going from the Himalays to Cairo he would be going over water.

L — He could land in the snow. One thing about landing in the water that bothers me is that we end up in the water on the sub.

G — Actually, he could land in the snow.

S — When he hits, the raft comes open and he has a toboggan ride.

G — It's even better, because when he thinks of the raft over, well that's why he thought of it. But if he thinks of it over snow, that's even more clever. And snow is soft.

S — If the plane gets to crash in the mountains, there would be a huge explosion that we wouldn't have in the water. The plane is going into a box canyon and the guy has to jump. On top of a mountain he jumps out. The plane hits the mountain adn there's a big fire ball. The pieces go everywhere. He's on the raft holding onto the ropes, coming down the mountain. And for comic relief he should go right through some sort of village, with a fiesta or something happening, with llamas. He knocks a llama over.

L — There could be a ceremony with monks... (garbled) They're all looking up.

G — It can be amusing, but at the same time it has to be very realistic. It has to be what would really happen. You have to believe that someone could live through it like that. We have to concentrate on keeping it clean and not go through unnecessary explanations. The fun part of that flight is that it comes out of nowhere. You just don't expect it. It's great if it's the second flight in the movie. We'll cut to him flying various places. We want to get all that great period stuff. We have all these flights, and then suddenly you cut inside to all this craziness going on. I think he should go to Shang Hai to find this guy, his enemy. We get a little more information about the enemy. Also, maybe he gets a piece of the puzzle that sends him to the Himalayas.

Lucas is a fucking badass in these transcripts. I can kind of understand now why the guy is able to talk people into something like Crystal Skull (assuming he's still like this). He just has these ideas laid out so vividly, it's probably hard not to get caught up in all that enthusiasm and creativity. Plus, you can imagine Lucas coming in with something so clearly laid out and Darabont or someone questioning an idea and Lucas just giving him a look that says "you really think you've got a better idea than that?" I'd like to read some of those transcripts.

Oh and if you keep going down to the bottom (pg. 117) there's a transcribed conversation between Kasdan and Kaufman (edit to add) as well as Lucas researcher Debbie Fine. Good discussion about all the Ark research.

or Tony Jaa kneeing someone in the face.

So how's everyone else's cognitive dissonance level doing?

Off the friggin' charts.

This is all pre-divorce for Lucas (I think) and pre-Capshaw for Spielberg. Coincidence, or did the divorce fuck up Lucas that badly?

Could the divorce really have caused the Lucas we all know and love/hate today? What I think happened is his children started to get older and so he wanted to make films geared to them. He comes off as an amazing father, and after getting to meet his daughter and son at Celebration 3, I believe it to be true. So it's no surprise that he is going after HIS Star Wars and Indiana Jones with a different mind set then he did before he had Children.

i would like to add a big thank you for that journal, I'm going to be printing that sucker and reading it

Completely agree. It's no lie when they say children change your life. Even Spielberg was quoted as saying that the Spielberg of today would never have had Richard Dreyfuss leave his family at the end of Close Encounters.

And Paul Greengrass liked Shrek 3 because his kids loved it so much. He's a great father! Because Shrek 3 sucks.

Personally, and I know this is weird, but I think I'm starting to blame Spielberg for the prequels.

Really? how so? I'm now curious

Even Spielberg was quoted as saying that the Spielberg of today would never have had Richard Dreyfuss leave his family at the end of Close Encounters.

How I miss that old Spielberg, the old Spielberg would have had the son die in World of the Worlds, not show up at the end.

That's the same Spielberg who followed that incongruous happy ending with Munich, possibly the most misanthropic film of his career.

I always did, so at least this justifies my view.

Following the interviews and making-of's over the years, it's consistently been Spielberg who's said the things I didn't like, and claimed responsibility for the ideas that I felt didn't work. He's the one who now disowns Temple of Doom (my favorite of the sequels) because it's "too dark", and was the driving force behind the whole "the quest for the grail is the quest for the father" concept in Last Crusade, which I thought was a bust.

As he's gotten older, Spielberg has become better and better at making serious, "important" films, and progressively worse at fun popcorn entertainment. Once he became a family man, he somehow lost his grasp on the appeal of the genre.

He can still do popcorn, but it seems to have to be centered around characters rather than set pieces. Then again, the initial invasion sequence in War of the Worlds really had that old school Spielberg feeling, so who knows, maybe he's just really selective about what he really gives a shit about.

I don't think the problem with Crystal Skull was that it was centered on characters rather than set pieces. Honestly, what was the last really good summer blockbuster film he made?

Please don't say Jurassic Park. No matter how many childhoods it touched, it's not a good movie. And The Lost World is worse. War of the Worlds was terrific until it developed brain damage in the third act.

Summer blockbuster? None readily spring to mind. But Catch Me If You Can (released in December) was damn good popcorn entertainment, even if it wasn't the big scope action movies he cut his teeth on. Minority Report is also damn good, although it has the same chronic Spielberg Ending Syndrome.

Also, the characters instead of set pieces comment was meant to comment that he's more interested in films about characters and their moral dilemmas rather than movies where the hero gets dragged behind a truck for a couple miles. When he does the former, he's engaged, when it's the latter, he seems disinterested.

Not only did Spielberg come up with the boring Grail plot of Last Crusade, he turned down the idea of having the movie take place in a haunted castle. Who wouldn't want to see Indy take on some ghosts? Spielberg from Crusade to Jurassic Park was at his weakest, creatively speaking.

The reason Temple Of Doom's tone is schizo is because Spielberg fought every chance to lessen the darkness of the story. Lucas had a desire for Doom to be the "Empire" to Raider's "Star Wars". On paper, the story and subject matter (Demonic death cult, children kidnapped/slaves) is definitely there. But Spielberg admitted that wherever he could, he would inject silliness to offset this, because he was not comfortable with the tale.

Hence, Doom ends up being darker and lighter than Raiders at the same time.


And to me, the War Of The World's terror sequences work because he is actually using more of his Schindler's List/Saving Private Ryan mojo, than his "popcorn thrills" one. Or perhaps a synthesis between the two?

It makes think that what separates "Jaws" and "Close Encounters" from his modern blockbusters is that regardless of their genre, these films were treated by Spielberg the same way he treats his historical films now.

I think that's a good point. He treated Close Encounters like it was his Lawrence of Arabia. He cast Truffaut in it, for god's sake, he had to have believed in it. You wouldn't catch modern Spielberg taking a big effects film that seriously. He seems to draw a hard line between his entertainment films and his "real" films, to the great detriment of his entertainment films. The lack of care shows.

What was wrong with Jurassic Park? I'm asking because this could be a good debate..