sangsara.net

Wired’s just posted a great story about 3 kids who started an ambitious shot-for-shot remake of the Indiana Jones movie when they were 12, and didn’t stop until 7 years later. They even spent 4 years making the giant boulder, and almost burnt a house down. Can’t wait to see it. [Link]

The boys premiered Raiders: The Adaptation in an auditorium at a local Coca-Cola plant in 1989 and then, not realizing what they had, tucked the film away for nearly 15 years. In 2003, a VHS tape of Raiders: The Adaptation fell in the hands of Ain’t It Cool News guru Harry Knowles, who played it at his Butt-numb-a-thon festival. It was a hit. Almost immediately, Strompolos, Zala and Lamb’s phones began to ring.

More info at the New York Times (Eli Roth also played a big part in its ‘discovery’) and some fascinating trivia at IMDB. Examples:

• The Cabin Scene, in which Indy (Chris) and Marion (Angela Rodriguez) have their big kissing scene – was actually the first time that Chris (then aged 13) had ever kissed a girl. They went on to maintain an off-screen teenage romance.

• Raiders Adaptation was shot completely out of sequence over seven years, resulting in the casts’ transformation in voice tone, hair style and body size from scene to scene. For example, in the college classroom scene, the cutaway of Indy (Chris) ‘s reaction to the female student’s “I love you” message written her eyelids had to be re-shot because it was out-of-focus. The shooting schedule didn’t permit returning to that location for another three years. By that time, Chris’s voice had changed with puberty. In the final edited version, the re-shot cutaway sticks out noticeably by Chris’s voice dropping several octaves.