Additional footage, interviews and behind-the-scenes secrets make the Oct. 21 release of the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD special. Steven Spielberg (right) couldn’t get enough snakes, insects and creepy critters in the first installment. All images © Lucasfilm & TM. All rights reserved.

The long-awaited Oct. 21 debut of the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD (Paramount Home Entertainment, $49.95), complete with a value-added fourth disc featuring a full-length documentary on the making of each film, and featurettes on the effects, sound, stunts and music, is a milestone for the format and a reminder of the pre-digital glory days. The documentary features in-depth interviews with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, along with all of the primary cast and technical supervisors. Early screen tests from Raiders show Tom Selleck and Sean Young reading the roles of Indy and Marion; paintings and storyboards show the transition from concept to finished scene; test sequences, such as a video ride through the Temple of Doom mining caverns and the original animatics cartoons of the finale from Raiders, show the attention given to detail of many memorable scenes.

Behind-the-scenes footage makes it clear that some of the fun in the films came from the lively atmosphere of the location shoots. We see Spielberg always plagued by never having enough snakes, rats and bugs, and having to fly in more creepy stars at the last minute. For Harrison Ford, who endured many injuries over the making of the trilogy, it’s all “just another day at the office.” It’s well known that the name Indiana was taken from Lucas’ Malamute dog, but by the time Temple of Doom came around, both Kate Capshaw’s character Willie, and Indy’s sidekick Short Round, were named respectively from Spielberg’s and screenwriter Willard Huyck’s dogs.

Unlike the Star Wars re-release, no additional scenes or CGI-enhancements have been added to the trilogy. Additions simply were not necessary — in the case of the Indy films, the originals are the director’s cuts!

Silk and plastic ghosts, a receptionist and GI Joes were used to sell this memorable burning Nazis sequence to viewers in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Dusting Off Indy
John Lowery, founder of Lowery Digital Images, had the job of digitally cleaning up the films. “The films were, in our opinion, in quite good shape compared to most. Raiders, though, had a very serious scratch on about 30-some-odd-thousand frames, and a blue line that was right across all the faces and eyes of the actors. That proved to be an interesting challenge.” Technicians scanned and converted the motion-picture imagery into digital information at high-resolution, and examined it frame-by-frame for imperfections. Flaws were corrected using proprietary software. “We will do a number of things with the granularity, sharpness, and the stability of the images, dirt, scratches, flicker — the whole range of things that really come about from the film being used over and over through the years.” He did a great job; the films look perfect. The images are consistently clean, the colors beautiful.