Raiders of the Lost Ark as a Black-and-White Silent Film (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Raiders of the Lost Ark as a Black-and-White Silent Film (2014)

extension765.com

104 pointskeiferski49 comments

Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect.

Note that the music is only intended to be filler.

Otherwise, watching this in black and white really made obvious how well staged and choreographed the film is. I don’t consider myself much of a Spielberg fan, but I was impressed.

If the music bothers you, try the section at 1:22:35. It goes pretty well with that scene.

I think Jaws holds up very well, too. It is a wonderful transitional film between classic and new Hollywood shot tempo and visual style.

I know this is an easy downvote and foolish statement, but I find very few pre-90s blockbuster movies to be watchable. Spielberg's movies hold up well though. There are a few others, like When Harry Met Sally, that I also still love.

I agree (including When Harry Met Sally) if you include ~1935-1955 which was a of great experimentation. The films that held up well weren’t always the prize winners though.

Just watched Trading Places and it was still really fun.

Clash of the Titans is top notch.

As the page header suggests, this is the work of Steven Soderbergh. He went through a phase of doing several exercises along these lines and posting them to his blog. Intercutting the original Psycho with its remake. Recutting the famous flop Heaven's Gate entirely. He also recut 2001, but took it down at the request of the Kubrick estate.

His Heaven's Gate is pretty good if you get the time to watch it - https://extension765.com/blogs/soderblog/heavens-gate-the-bu...

Just an aside: I was amused when someone pointed out that the plot of "Raiders" would have reached the same climatic end if Indiana Jones were completely removed from the script.

I have noticed too that "This Island Earth" (if you know this old classic sci-fi film) is another such script in which the protagonist could be removed with no change in the outcome.

I've come across that as well. However, I'll add that it's a bit like saying that, in a 400m race (running), all the athletes are back where they started and they'd have been there even without going around the track.

It's a film trying to show the adventures of Indiana Jones.

The people he killed along the way might disagree, if they could.

The bad guys may not have ever found the ark without the information on the other side of the amulet.

But they would have had the amulet.

Except he led them to the amulet in the first place.

Indiana Jones a Nazi collaborator? Film at 11.

The Nazis found the amulet independently; at least that was always my interpretation. There was no indication I could find that the Nazi in Tibet followed Jones.

They show him getting on the same plane as Jones. He’s following him.

Yeah. They don't know that Marian has it.

Or don’t know where to find her (or more likely, her father).

I've seen this observation and it did make me chuckle, but it misses the entire point of the film.

It's true that the "big picture events" of Nazis getting their faces melted off would have happened either way, but Raiders isn't about the Nazis. It's about Jones himself and the change he undergoes between the beginning of the film when he is dismissive of the supernatural to the end where he has at least a grudging respect for it (both turning away from the opening of the ark and his subsequent comments indicate this). The Nazis would have been the same, Jones wouldn't have been and Raiders is a movie about Jones.

I actually made a website called ‘The Artistifier’ at the time the artist was released (8 years ago?).

It let you import any YouTube video, it made it black and white and a bit stuttery, put the music from the artist over the top and let you add silent movie captions. That music had a way of kind of enhancing anything you put behind it.

Unfortunately it is now buried in the mass grave of internet past with all the other Flash websites.

As I was reading that I was going through the implementation in my head, totally doable in current tech

Yeah you could do it again now, but there was a dark age of mobile dev when it wasn't possible. I guess I should put it on the to do list!

I get that they were trying to focus on staging, but unlike old silent films, this is very hard to follow without dialog cards, if you've never seen the original. Also, the music really doesn't fit.

I don’t know, I thought the brilliance of the staging is that you almost don’t even need dialogue to follow the plot. It is all communicated pretty clearly through cuts and body language.

Positives: great idea. it really makes you notice the beats in each scene. The ups downs ups downs. Spielberg is so good at that.

The negatives: music does not fit at all. No dialogue. Would love to see a more deliberate attempt at making this an old b&w movie.

The point is not to make it a complete self-contained film, but to focus the attention of visual artists trying to study the lighting and camera work. Including dialog of any kind would just be a distraction.

Just turn off the audio (optionally, play something else) if it distracts.

It would be so much more enjoyable set to John Williams’ score. I’m sure that fans have constructed the complete score. Many silent films had live musical accompaniments, so it would fit the aesthetic.

I was very disappointed. The overlayed music doesn't match the film period or the visual tone at all.

This is nice.

Sometimes I watch a movie or TV show with the TV sound turned off and a Spotify playlist playing on my speakers or headphones. This works great with old black and white movies, but also with absurd comedies or cult movies you've watched a number of times with the sound on.

Actually one of my weekend project ideas was to create a community-curated library of movies/episodes with Spotify playlists that go well with it.

For example "Un Chien Andalou" (a french silent b/w short film from 1929) goes well with Hemelbestormer - Portal to the Universe (post-metal album).

Possibly combined with some THC for an even more immersive experience.

I've watched my ahem private copy of Raiders many times in B&W _with_ the original sound using VLC's built-in video effects. Highly recommend.

In this version Belloq's head explodes at the end...I thought that footage was lost to time!? It's strange to see it in such pristine quality.

> In this version Belloq's head explodes at the end...I thought that footage was lost to time!?

They preserved it for future generations on the BluRay. What version is there where Belloq's head does not explode at the end?

This would have been better without the music.

Reminds me of the fan-made "Black and Chrome" edit of Fury Road. B&W with all dialog removed, was a interesting watch! Highlights the brilliance of the choreography, even though I wouldn't suggest watching that version the first time!

There was also an official B&W version, but I believe that one had the standard audio tracks with dialog.

Black and Chrome is an "official" version made by director George Miller himself. It does feature the standard audio tracks. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/12/mad-max-fury-ro...

It was originally a fan-edit, based off a comment by George Miller. The official version came later, using the same name.

https://blackandchrome.wordpress.com/ (Although the video is long, long since taken down)

Great film made by people who had long history of making great films.

"Rushes" or rapid prints of the days shooting were b&w and I have no idea if that changed, but as high contrast pushed (speedy development) review footage maybe just mechanistically it influenced shot design?

There's another doc somebody did analysing raiders and treasure of the sierra madre shot by shot.

Do you have the link to the documentary?

https://archive.org/details/antoniamackenzie_gmail_0

Isn't loading fast enough for me to be sure this is the one. Its a comparison, and interesting.

Its not. Its good but the one I'm thinking of runs side by side sequences to show how framing was related.

Turns out it's a "premake" mashup of raiders, and an amalgam of 1950s era movies. Including i believe "treasure of the incas"

https://youtu.be/eE9-FcJnQGA is a shot comparison somebody put together.

I misremembered two things.

Now let's compare to secret of the incas...

You should have written more!

For those who don't know, Secret of the Incas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas) was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. It's a fantastic adventure movie, with some great dialog, and set in pre-tourism Cuzco - all in Technicolor!

Definitely worth watching, for its own merits alone.

Don't forget Carl Banks' Scrooge McDuck comics. Not even kidding.

From my comment lower down https://youtu.be/eE9-FcJnQGA which includes masses of this film transcoded to b&w

Cute! They change camera angles a lot more then they did in the old movies. Missing is the required woman in long skirt and high heels trooping through the jungle. If made in the 40s the temple would have had one giant paper mache spider at the entrance instead of all the live ones. Natives would have all been white guys in black face wearing leopard skin togas. Nazis would have spoken more then three words of German. Spirits in the ark would have been a single skull superimposed over the scene after which all the Nazis fall down and the hero has to explain what happened. Buy war bonds!

This is amazing to watch.

The HN title is very misleading, but the blog title of "Raiders" isn't very illuminating.

Maybe "staging in raiders of the lost ark"?

Wait did you just remove the sound and made it black and white to defeat copyright infringement algorithms ?

Will that actually work?

I liked it

Reply on news.ycombinator.com