"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is my favorite film of all time. I've seen it 12 times in theaters and countless other times on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. If so inclined, I could write thousands of words on the film and, heck, I would watch it right now if I wasn't busy writing this...
As it turns out, Oscar winning director Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape, Erin Brokovich, The Knick) really digs "Raiders of the Lost Ark" too...and not just for the pulpy action or for the golden, Harrison Ford quips.
Soderbergh has removed the color and added a special soundtrack to the film, which sounds like downright heresy at first blush to a super-fan of the film such as myself. But he did this in order to let people study the film's immaculate staging, which he defines as "how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated."
He writes in a blog post that "Raiders" director Steven Spielberg forgot more about staging by the time he made "Raiders" than Soderbergh knows today.
"See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot - whether short or long - held for that exact length of time and placed in that order?" he writes. "Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. 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."
You can watch the stripped-down version of "Raiders" here to marvel in its silent, two-tone glory.
