Indy’s boulder run
The rumbling is very loud and now we see why: right behind Indy a huge boulder comes roaring around a corner of the passage, perfectly form-fitted to the passageway. It obliterates everything before it…” so went Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay for Raiders Of The Lost Ark, George Lucas’ 1981 pet project, handed to Steven Spielberg when he expressed an interest in directing a Bond film.
Introducing audiences to a maverick antiquities expert in a fedora, this scene was designed to showcase Indiana Jones’ physicality, der-doing and resourcefulness – and was inspired by a Scrooge McDuck comic, The Seven Cities Of Cibola. As Dr. Jones lifts a priceless golden idol from a Peruvian temple, he triggers a series of deadly booby traps, culminating in the rolling rock. A great opener, but could be expensive to render…
Still smarting from the bloated mess of 1941, Spielberg had promised studio Paramount that he’d bring this picture in under budget and on time, so creating elaborate scenes like this one required some intense planning. He meticulously pre-visualised every stage and had a scale set built at Elstree Studios, complete with a fibreglass boulder, 22ft in diameter. Though stunt-safe, the rock weighed a whopping 800lb. As a practical effect (by ILM), the stunt took three elements: Harrison Ford running through the set (that real stumble of his kept in the edit); stuntman Martin Grace making the dive through spiderwebs at Elstree; plus stuntman Vic Armstrong making the exit dive into the jungle on location in Kauai, Hawaii.
It could have looked hokey – but the magic dust came in the edit. Sound effects king Ben Burtt added the noise of his Honda Civic driving over gravel; John Williams’ score upped the ante; and Michael Kahn’s fast cuts, including a judicious J-cut (the sound of that boulder coming in ahead of its appearance), combined to create a thrilling sequence that made audiences gun for Indy from the word go. In the process, it birthed a franchise. That’s what you get when you have top men working on it… Top. Men. JC