Peterson used aluminum foil, miniature railroad tracks and a still Nikon camera to create the famous mine car chase (left) in Temple of Doom. Many of the visual effects that were painstakingly created for the Indiana Jones trilogy would be done with CGI these days.

ILM’s Lorne Peterson, model maker for the trilogy, says the bar was raised higher with each sequel.

Miniature Effects On Raiders And Temple of Doom
Lorne Peterson, of Industrial Light & Magic, made models for the trilogy. Certain highlights of Raiders stay in his mind. “For what we called the burning Nazis scene, when all of a sudden they open the ark, the model shop created the ghosts swirling around the Nazis by running a miniature silk and plastic ghost through a tank of water. We also took one of the receptionists, put her on a big trapeze, and dressed her in silk and white make up. When the ghost comes really close to the camera, it’s her face that turns into a skeleton. The Nazis writhe as the light shoots through them, and we added little light panels to their eyes. We did a miniature set piece that was 18 by 12 feet, shot flames into it, and ran the film backwards. And when the room clears and the Nazis descend towards hell, those were GI Joes in little Nazi outfits we threw up in the air over the camera.”

Peterson speaks of how each sequel had to up the effects ante. “Every director has the problem of doing sequels, with the audience expecting the rung to go higher each time. In Temple of Doom, the model shop did a lot more; it was quantum leaps. There were all the shots with water, water out the miniature rock face wall, water down the tunnel, all of those things. The model shop did the expendable slave who is dropped into the volcano, and then there were also the guards that fell from the bridge, which was a real bridge erected across a 300-foot deep gorge in Sri Lanka. The guards were big balloons, and they each had a string on their cork air-stopper. They would fall for five or 10 feet, and then the cork would pull out, and the guards writhed just like a balloon when you let the air out of it and it flies around the room.”

About the famous mine car chase, Peterson adds, “Imagine a large warehouse room, with the underground cave set made out of very thick aluminum foil, and all kinds of little railroad tracks, and there was a 35mm Nikon still camera that was rigged up, with a bigger magazine. If you look very carefully between the tracks, you can see the little thin cable that would draw along both the cart and the camera. They were on spindles, I think we used fly fishing reels, motorized.” Lorne agrees that nowadays CGI would probably be used to do the scene. “Somebody said that the more camera work and movement, you can more easily use CG — for instance, if you have horses running over a hill through smoke and fog, it ‘s certainly easier to use CG than stop-motion.” Still, as effects supervisor Dennis Muren adds in the bonus effects featurette, “For a dollar ninety-eight, we got some great sets.”

Other Bonus Features
Sound designer Ben Burtt explains the origin of many of the sound effects, everything from Indy’s gun having the sound of a Remington 30'30', to the sound of the boulder from the famous opening Raiders scene being a treated recording of a Honda Civic coasting down a gravel path. John Williams tells of his process of musical composition, his intense focus on creating the main themes of the score, and how traditional practices were intermixed with atonal styles to create supernatural and terrifying moods.

Origins Of A Classic Trilogy
Made in the days when Spielberg was considered the king of popcorn entertainment — the days before his directing Oscar for Schindler’s List and also for Saving Private Ryan — the Indy films seemed to be simple action adventure thrillers at original viewing. Yet in retrospect, the films have a depth and downright religiosity that comes through better over time. The use of the Ark of the Covenant and Nazis is an incredible idea — Hitler himself wanting to steal the power of the Jews! Certainly no adventure epic, not even the novels of H. Ryder Haggard, had used such serious themes on which to base its life and death struggles of good versus evil. Indeed, as a London Daily Telegraph critic said when The Last Crusade came out, “The wit, the action and the pounding pace that account for their prodigious box office success are underpinned by a surprisingly consistent and forceful morality.”