Soderbergh: study Raiders of the Lost Ark as a silent black & white film

How very strange. I find it fits just fine.

Did you watch past the first five minutes? He doesn’t just loop the same track. It changes each scene/setting, more or less.

Couple of interesting things I’ve noticed so far:

When Indy goes to brush the spiders off his back, there’s a cut and his back is deep shadow when he actually brushes with the coiled whip. When he does the same for the henchman, Indy’s torso obscures the spiders as he swings the whip, and then it cuts to a very low shot of spiders hitting the ground. This is presumably because they used live tarantulas, which don’t take falls very well. Cunningly cut.

Back at the university, I remember the one student flirting with Dr. Jones, but I never noticed before that at least 80% of the class is raptly gazing co-eds. I think there were only two or three visible male students in a packed classroom. :smile:

2 Likes

Did you notice the henchman was Alfred Molina, though?

4 Likes

Real “silent films” had musical accompaniment as well, though it was often performed live along with the film. There was a bit of art to playing to the action, which is why a “score” that fit the film would be better and a more accurate representation than a bunch of songs crammed together as background. I will say it would have been a lot more effort and possibly cost for those that put this together.

Edited to add: I get the point about visual staging, but telling me to focus on it and then providing completely incongruent music is going to distract me more from the staging than telling me to focus on it in the first place.

2 Likes

I think the music works fine. Perhaps there are better choices, and if anyone would like to make them, they can mute the video and listen to their own playlist.

3 Likes

Good point. [Runs out to hire an organ player].

1 Like

Help is at hand! :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Did you know it’s possible to open Youtube in two windows at the very same time? Not only that, but you can mute the one and hide the other… and make your own damn soundtrack.

I still don’t get why you feel the music MUST match the piece and not clash. This is what Soderbergh put on there. It is his experiment. Why not just enjoy the educational look at one of the finest pieces of cinema ever created and not bitch about it? Oh that’s right, its the internet…someone has to complain about something.

2 Likes

And yet, one could easily say that you are going exactly what you decry.

I don’t like the musical choice. You like it. That’s all well and good - but I’m just as entitled to say I don’t like it as you are to say you do, so kindly take your hypocritical, self-important dismissal of my opinion and stuff it.

I’d like to see the storyboards superimposed on this, too.

1 Like

Wasn’t Soderbergh the one crying fowl about movie piracy a few years ago. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091101/1818186751.shtml
Since when did he support creative commons

Anyone know where this music comes from? (I’m still in the opening Temple scene). I’m going to let this play in a small window in the corner of my screen all day. Good work music.

For some reason I thought it was going to be speeded up as well, with some wacky Keystone Cops piano music in the background. Doh.

It’s always OK when another artist does it, because Reasons. Especially when it’s to a different artists work, not their own. It’s only wrong for the filthy pirates to do it. Clear now?

3 Likes

In the ealy 90s I took a course in Manhattan on the subject of cinematic staging from director Benjamin Hayeem (1933–2004). It was quite thorough, interesting and useful. A lot of people are unaware of this information but they want to act like experts, so they shoot whatever angles strike their fancy without regard to continuity, flow and story, insist “there are no rules” and actively resist learning the century-old cinematic traditions that make possible that “high level visual math shit.”

1 Like

My speakers have this funny thing called a volume control. I thought it was a pretty common feature, but from the number of complaints about the music choice, it would seem to be quite rare.

I used it to turn the sound down low enough that it didn’t distract me, but was still there to serve its purpose of preventing me from having to endure the entire film in silence.

1 Like

On the other hand people don’t always appreciate just how much of the dramatic tension of those films has less to do with visuals or dialogue than John Williams’ contributions. Case in point:

1 Like

I think it’s like the way BMW don’t fit indicators to their cars.

2 Likes

Copied and edited in a University library using analogue technology, of course.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.