Indiana Jones - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade3. ON LOCATIONFilming of Last Crusade took place in Almeria, Spain; Venice,Italy; Jordan and at George Lucas's adopted home base in England,Elstree Studios.Principal photography for 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'began in Almeria, Spain on May 16, 1988, after many monthsof pre- production. The art department had begun operationsin late 1987, following the opening of the production office,which was co- ordinating the colossal organizational demandsof the enterprise.

Location selections, costume and set designing,and the rendering of storyboards were some of the preliminaryefforts of the filmmakers. With the beginning of filming,transporting equipment and the large staff of production personnelbecame-as described by production supervisor Patricia Carr-'likean army maneuver.' 'With 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' we set a pattern for whatthese movies were going to be: action, adventure, comedy,and giant globe-trotting locations,' adds Frank Marshall.'

For this film we were faced with the problem of recreatingalmost every form of transportation that was available in1938: trains, planes, boats, a Zeppelin, horses, camels,'Robert Watts says.' The storyboards give one time to fully plan how to achievecertain effects,' says director of photography Douglas Slocombe,who is renowned for his use of lighting to emphasize importantstory elements in each frame of film, so that 'one sees rightaway what is happening without any extraneous image.' 3.1 THE TANK CHASE. 'There was not much written on the chase in the script. Itwas a lot like what they had in the old Lawrence of Arabiascript, 'And then they took Aqaba', without any descriptionof how.

We had one page written on the sequence, but I wantedit to be seven to ten pages long. I wanted it to be the centerpieceof the movie. So rather than writing it, I sat down with mytwo sketch artists, David Jonas and Ed Verreaux and I justsort of made the whole chase up on paper from frame 1 to frame405. That was a great couple of weeks.

Refunction crafts. I think I had morefun creating the chase on paper than I did shooting it inSpain.' Inspired by a sequence in the original Chris Columbus script,Spielberg and his artists designed the tank chase to equalthe impact of the truck chase in Raiders.

'No action sequencethat I will ever shoot will be as good as the truck chasein the first film - so I was not even trying to best thatone. The truck chase is still my favorite. But the tank chasewas different because it had more story to it.

There is actioninside the tank and outside the tank - and there is also humor.And within the chase itself certain characters evolve. Henrybecomes strong in that scene for the first time in the movie.Indy becomes weak in that scene for the first time in themovie. Aside from the story elements, another difference betweenthis and the truck chase was that the truck went really fast,or at least we made it appear to be going fast, but we couldnot do that with the tank because it was a lumbering massof steel and it could only go about eighteen miles per hour.As a result, the pacing had to be different and shooting thesequence took a lot of time. It was still fun, but it wasvery slow.' The 'lumbering mass of steel' was a fully functional replicaof a German 1917 International Mark 7 army tank used in WorldWar I, designed and built by George Gibbs. According to Gibbsbuilding this tank was the most difficult task of the film.These tanks were thirty-six feet long and weighed twenty-eighttons and only seven or eight of them were built for the FirstWorld War.

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The only one left in the world is located in theTank Museum in Bovington Camp, England. Since both Spielbergand Lucas wanted the tank to look as realistic as possible,Gibbs built one on the chassis of an old excavator that alsoweighed twenty-eight tons. The tracks alone weighed seventons and were driven by two Range Rover V-8 engines, whichin turn powered two automatic hydraulic pumps - one to driveeach of the two tracks. It also had big bulldozer motors inthe back to power the whole tank and guns that actually firedblank charges. Overall, the tank was quite accurate. The onlyreal difference between this tank and an actual World WarI model was that the First World War tanks had extra eyeballguns on each side and they did not have a turret that turnedaround.For the construction of the tank Gibbs chose to use actualsteel and not prefabricated materials such as aluminum orfiberglass.

His goal was not only to enhance the tank visually,but also to help it withstand the abuse it would take duringthe intensive weeks of principal photography. 'World War Itanks did not have suspension, so we build ours without suspensionalso. Because of that, I knew the vibration inside that tankwould be absolutely tremendous and would shake a mockup vehicleto pieces. For that reason, I decided to build the tank fromsteel. Also, if any of it ever broke apart we could quicklyweld it back together.

As it turned out, the tank went downthe sides of mountains and over really hard, rocky surfaceswithout any damage at all-and I knew then that I had madethe right decision.' The tank was built in four months and then flown to Almeria,in southern Spain, aboard a British Belfast plane - one ofthe largest aircraft in the world. To transport the monstertank from location to location, it was placed on the backof a low loader truck.

'We were lucky,' said Gibbs. 'Shootingwent smoothly and the tank only let us down twice. The firsttime was because the rotor arm in the distributor broke andit took us a day to get a new one from Madrid. The secondtime, it was so hot that the solder in the oil coolers actuallymelted and flowed around with the oil into the valves, shatteringtwo of them to pieces. So we had to change one of the enginesand that also took one day. I think everyone expected to losea lot more time, but the tank worked really well.'

Drivingthe tank was effects technician Brian Lince, who had to weatherthe extreme heat and the torturous terrain. 'Brian did anexcellent job. Being in that tank was like being in an oven,and he was in there every day for nearly eight weeks.

We hadten industrial electric fans inside to try and keep Briancool, the engine cool and the hydraulic oil cool. Not onlywas it hot in there, but since the tank had no suspension,Brian got rattled around so much that when he came out andtried to take a cup of tea, he would spill it before he couldget it to his lips.' To accommodate an elaborate fight scene on top of the tank,Gibbs duplicated the upper portion of the lumbering vehicleand mounted it on an ex-army searchlight trailer towed bya four-wheel drive truck. The eight-ton partial tank was identicalin detail to its full-size counterpart except that it wasconstructed from lightweight aluminum and had tracks madeout of rubber so the actors and stuntmen could fall on themwithout being injured.

It also featured 'people catchers'on either end in the event anyone accidentally fell off. Intotal it took two weeks to film the ten minutes shot at acost of $200.000 per day. Ford, as in the previous films, did a certain amount of hisown stunts.

He was extremely active and willing to take greaterrisks with his own physical well being than the productioncould quite honestly allow him to do. 'I know in making thesemovies I'm going to get dirty, bruised, and bumped arounda lot,' Ford admitted. 'Bumps and bruises go wth the territory.It's what distinguishes an Indiana Jones movie from any otheradventure film. You sit there in the theater and know I'mdoing it.' Once again Vic Armstrong doubled for Ford and served as thefilm's stunt coordinator.

He staged all the stunts the mostdangerous of which was a heart stopping fourteen feet leapfrom a galloping horse on to the moving tank. 'I had to travelten or 11 feet sideways from a galloping horse, moving headfirst and landing on the back of the tank,' said Armstrong.Though this was one stunt Ford didn't even bother to attempt,he did almost everything else, including hanging off a sidecanon as the vehicle ploughed through a rocky gorge. Armstrongdid confessed that his 'toughest stunt on any movie with HarrisonFord was talking Harrison out of doing it!' For another scene, Ford wanted to jump from a sixteen-footledge, knock a villain from a horse, take the reins, and gallopoff. According to Vic Armstrong, 'The only way I coulddissuade him was with a little white lie.

I dragged him toone side and hissed that if he did stunts he would do me outof money. Harrison was horrified and said, 'Sorry, Vic. Ijust didn't realize. Of course, I'll shut up.' 'Harrison's participation in the stunts is what makes themso exciting and enjoyable to moviegoers,' Armstrong says.'

It enables characterization in the context of the stunt.In some action films stunts and acting never come together.' 'Some of the best character nuances of Indy's personalitycome during an action sequence-an expression after a punch,a shrug after a gag-it's part of the same panache,' StevenSpielberg states.The filmmakers did their work the hard way for the best results,filming stunts primarily without the blue screen process ortraveling mattes. 'It was like putting the clock back,' DouglasSlocombe observed during the filming of a scene set on thetop of a train, 'but it brings something extra to the movie.' 'Stunts are an integral part of the Indiana Jones movies,'Frank Marshall observes. 'A great deal of the action derivesfrom the stunts, so we take a lot of time to storyboard andplan them. The trick is to have them look dangerous and incrediblyhard-how did they do that?-but actually they're very safe.They're quite simple to do - they just require a lot of hardwork.'

Ford maintained that the stunts he did perform were so wellplanned that he was not courting any real danger: 'Bumpsand bruises go with the territory. It's what distinguishesan Indiana Jones movie from another adventure film. You sitthere in the thaeter and know I'm doing it.' Unfortunately, stuntmen couldn't help poor John Rhys-Davieswho at the time of filming suffered from acute sciatica. 'Literallyabout three days before we started, I felt this slight paindown my leg. And I spent my entire damn film taking pain pillsor finding some way to get rid of this damn sciatica. Andriding a horse through that is not to be recommended.

It'sall right when you're actually up on these stirrups and you'vein full gallop. It's the intervening. But the show goes onand we do it,' aid Davies and continued, 'The two that I'vedone with Spielberg, he must think I'm a terrible wimp.

I'vebeen terribly sick on both of them. On the one in Tunisia,we all went down with this damned bug that we had there.

MyGod it was terrible!' With the tank scene completed, the production moved to Majorca,where, on a long-abandoned airfield, scenes involving Nazifighter planes were completed. Then it was on to Granada,where the railway sequences were shot at Gaudix Station, transformedinto a replica of the Middle Eastern town of Iskendrun, completewith complete with camels, goats, market sellers, beggars,and women with yashmaks. A mosque had been built in the backyardfor additional atmosphere rather than added later as a mattepainting effects shot. The actual town of Iskenderun was partof a small sultanate that existed during the period of thefilm. It's a place located somewhere south of Turkey and northof Syria.After three weeks in Spain, Spielberg moved his crew to Englandfor an additional ten weeks on the soundstages at Elstree,where various interiors were completed. 3.2 THE BOAT CHASERight after escaping death in the inflamed catacombs Indyand Elsa are being pursued in the streets of Venice. Duke nukem manhattan project xbox 360.

In theirefforts to get rid of their pursuers the couple employs aspeedboat and the chase is carried on water. The filming ofthe scene was at the Tilbury Docks in Essex, near London andultimately involved two major stunts. In the first, Elsa successfullypilots their craft in between two large ships that are beingslowly pushed together by a tugboat. One of the pursuit boatsfollowing them is crushed and explodes violently toward camera.' Cuing the two big ships was very difficult,' Marshall recollected.' They were really hard to move around, and we had to cablethem off so they would be safe. When the speedboats were goingin between the ships, they did not actually get crushed, ofcourse, but we did have the ships as close together as possible.At one point, one of the speedboats was actually rubbing thesides of the two ships, and we had to make sure that betweenthe time we rolled the camera and the time the boats wentthrough, the ships did not drift in any closer and squishthe boats.

We had a floating platform in between the two shipsand we used that to launch a ghost hull, some dummies andthe fire and smoke. Before the shot started you could actuallysee the platform between the ships, but the instant the explosionwent off the platform was obscured by smoke and the blast.We put the main camera on a floating platform about a hundredyards out into the harbor. We had to do the shot twice becauseon the first take the boat shell landed too short of the camera.When we repeated the stunt the next day everything workedgreat -the ghost hull exploded out so far that it actuallyblew past the camera a hundred feet away.'

After the boat explosion, Indy and Elsa are still pursuedby one remaining speedboat. To make matters worse, their owncraft is crippled by gunfire and begins to move slowly towardthe stern of a large freighter whose spinning propeller protrudesout of the water. Indy jumps onto the enemy boat and as heand the driver engage in fisticuffs, the vessel drifts closerto the propeller until it is actually being chewed up in thehuge steel blades. Filmed in a tank at Elstree, the scenemade use of specially built speedboats constructed with rearsections made out of balsa wood and laced with explosivesto simulate the boat's destruction by the ship's propeller.Additional filming in England was made at Stowe School inBuckinghamshire, which doubled as Indy's college.3.3 VENICE. On August 7, the production moved to Venice for establishingshots of the boat chase in the vicinity of St. Mark's Squareand the Doges palace.

Watts, 'Having shoot in Venice in Augustwasn't that easy, because it was the tourist season and itwas extremely crowded. There was no way I could move it inthe schedule, so I had to specify to the local people that,for the square we needed to shoot in, I had to have somethingwe could control in August. That obviously knocks out certainplaces! All in all, we had very good cooperation and did manageto close of a section of the Grand Canal for a period. Thatwas good, because the film as set in 1938 so, obviously, everythingyou see in front of the camera has to be pit in by us, soit's correct for the period.' Filming in Venice was one ofAlison Doody's most intense memories. 'We did a lot of ourown jumping about and running around.

There was some stuntstuff that was tricky. Running around in high heels and HarrisonFord pulling you along might not seem to de dangerous, butI was at such speed that they had three men standing thereso I could crash into them. Because we were running aroundup and down these steps and things, and I was just runningso fast with Harrison and it's very slippery - when we wentpast camera, that would be it, cut, we couldn't go any further.So, I had three men standing there so I could just go bowlinginto them and they could literally grab me. I was flying.' Later that week, cast and crew flew to Jordan and shot scenesin the ancient city of Petra, which served as the Holy Grail'sresting place. 'Petra is a gorge,' explained Elliot Scott,who first scouted the location with Robert Watts.

'You reachit by going through a narrow corridor in a mountain of rock.This corridor is about a mile long and just wide enough tofit a small truck - although most people go through on horsebackor on foot. When you emerge, you enter a little hidden valley,which is mountain-locked. Petra was a perfect location forus, in part because of its rich sense of history.

It was famousaround the time of Christ for being the only way through thosemountains, and traders bringing back silk from China to Europeoften traveled through there. Back then, the people of Petracharged a fee-and of course became quite rich. The valleyis a mile long, and more than thirty temples line the canyonsides. The temple we used was right opposite the narrow opening.Many of these temples or tombs go back to about 600 B.C.,but I think the particular one we used was built around thetime of Christ.

Nobody knows for sure what it was used for.Behind the temple face are a few small, square rooms, whichare completely empty. Whatever they held was stolen long ago.It's quite an incredible place - like a tenth wonder of theworld.' The production crew filmed outside the remote temple sitefor three days. 'The cooperation in Jordan was fantastic,'Spielberg recalled. 'Queen Noor, who is American and the queento King Hussein, was with us every day.

As a matter of fact,she drove me to the set every day from the hotel with herchildren in the back seat. We would get to the set and shoot,and she and the kids would stay all day and watch.

They hada wonderful time. They opened up their country to us and madeus feel very welcome, and I am sure we'll go back there tomake another movie someday.'

The first scene to appear on film was actually filmed lastand it was the one with River Phoenix as Young Indy. In thisscene young Indiana Jones discovers a group of treasure-huntersunearthing a 16th century cross.

The treasure-hunters arelead by a man who wears a fedora and leather jacket. Fedora,as Boam named the character, would inspire the adult Indy'sappearance and was played by actor Richard Young. Realizingits significance, Indy grabs the cross and flees on his horse.The thieves pursue him in cars and Indy mounts a circus trainand he finds himself being chased from boxcar roof to boxcarroof. In his effort to avoid being caught Indy comes acrossmany representatives of the animal kingdom, some of whichwill mark him for the rest of his life.Originally, the sequence was to have been shot in the prehistoriccliff dwelling ruins of Mesa Verde National Park in neighboringColorado, but when local Indian representatives cited religiousobjections to using the site in such a fashion, the productionagreed to look elsewhere. Finally it was filmed in ArchesNational Park in Utah.

A tourist conveyance plying a narrowgauge run between Antonita, Colorado and Chama, New Mexicoserved as a circus train for young Indy's first escapade.Working with the narrow gauge locomotive proved to be an adventurein itself. 'You can't just stop a train,' noted Michael Lantieri,supervisor of the stateside mechanical effects team. 'If itmisses its mark, it takes blocks and blocks to stop it andback up.

We had to take a lot of safety precautions to makesure that people were aware of when the train was going tomove or stop so that no one would try to board or step offat the wrong time. Since actors and stunt people were runningon top of the cars and jumping between them, we made platformsto fit between the cars. These rode down below and servedas a catch so that if someone slipped, they would not fallinto the coupling and wheels.

Also because the tops of thetrain cars were very smooth, we had to hide handles for peopleto grab onto during scenes where they had to leap from carto car.' In addition to rigging the train, Lantieri and hiscrew were tasked with preparing two vintage cars for the sequence-a 1912 Model A and a 1914 Saxon. Each of the automobileswas retrofitted with a Pinto V-6 engine. To create a dustierdesert environment, the physical effects crew hung sacks ofdust under the cars so they would spew out as the vehiclesdrove along.Though the New Mexico location served well for exterior shotsof the circus train interiors were filmed on a soundstageat Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Lantieri rigged traincars that featured wild sides and ceilings constructed onmakeshift gimbals made from inner tubes that could be inflatedand deflated rapidly to create a rocking motion. The firsttrain car Young Indy stumbles into is filled with snakes.He tries to get through the car by traversing a catwalk above;but when the catwalk gives way, he falls into a pen filledwith slithering serpents, a traumatic incident that establishesand motivates his later fear of snakes.

'We had a few thousandreal snakes and also some rubber ones for River to fall on,'Lantieri commented. 'There were five different types of snakes,including one huge boa constrictor that took three peopleto carry in. The snakes were in old wooden crates piled ontop of one another, and some of the smaller snakes startedsneaking out of the cracks once they arrived on the set -whichfreaked out some of the crew. At the end of the day, we hadto dig through the sawdust on the floor to make sure we hadall the snakes back in their crates so they could be put awayfor the night.'

Leaving the boxcar with the snakes behind him Indy comesface to face with two irritable lions. 'The lions did fine,'Lantieri recalled, 'although they were a little nervous thefirst day.

After all, we were shaking the car and dust wasfalling. We also had lights rigged to flicker through thecracks in the walls of the car, so there was a lot going onthat the lions had to get used to. Some of the shots calledfor River to be in the car with the lions; but for any dangerousscenes, like when a lion goes for his leg and he uses hiswhip to pull himself to safety, we used a stunt double.' Thebullwhip is established as Indy's weapon of choice when hespots one on the wall and uses it to keep the fearsome catsat bay. In his inexperience, however, he cracks the whip andit snaps him in the face, causing a gash on his chin thatcorresponds with Harrison Ford's familiar scar.Young Indy gets pulled out of the lions' car by Fedora andfor one moment stands to face his pursuer. He quickly slipsaway, however, and ducks inside 'Dr.

Fantasy's Magic Caboose'- a tongue-in-cheek nod to co-executive producer Frank Marshallwho for years has performed amateur magic shows using thatpseudonym. Inside the caboose is a horde of magic paraphernalia.With Fedora on his heels, Indy steps into a box on the floorand closes the lid.

Fedora enters a moment later and opensthe box to find the youngster gone. Unlike the other interiorshots, this disappearing trick was filmed on the real trainand was suggested in part by production designer Elliot Scott.' I suggested to Steven that he do it in one shot,' Scott remarked.' The idea was to see the boy run in and climb into the box.With the camera still rolling, the man comes in behind him,collapses the box and realizes the boy has disappeared. Thenthe camera pans up and through the back door and you see theboy running away behind the train.

We did that by puttinga trough under the boxcar so the boy could fall through, andthen we had another boy on the tracks further back.' Withthe shot of the resourceful Indy running off into the distance,the action-packed opening of the film concludes.Ford was present for the duration of the Young Indy filmingscenes and helped Phoenix understand the character better.Phoenix from his side found his days as Young Indy very entertaining,'I love the Indiana Jones films and being part of one wasa lot of fun for me. It's all non-stop action: running andjumping, twisting and turning, fumbling, finding, keepingfrom the bad guys. It's only a small part - only ten minutesat the movie's beginning but I really enjoyed it,' said Phoenix.'

It's exciting to see how a dramatic and dangerous situationunfolds - it's fun to witness it in a movie theatre and it'sfun to make. I did a lot of the stunts because I felt so muchof the character and what he had to do was physical.

It wouldhave been lying to have someone else do the stunts. I wouldjust look at Harrison.

He would do stuff and I would not mimicit but interpret it younger. Mimicking is a terrible mistakethat many people do when they play someone younger, or withan age difference.

Mimicking doesn't interpret true, becauseyou can't just edit around.'