The Music of 'Indiana Jones' (2003) (V)

Director:

Laurent Bouzereau

Release Date:

21 October 2003 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

In this 2003 featurette, John Williams recalls composing the music for the first three Indiana Jones pictures and alludes to the possibility of scoring a fourth. |

Plot Keywords:

Five Word Title | Reference To Indiana Jones | Character Name In Title

Cast

Karen Allen	...	Herself (archive footage)
Kate Capshaw	...	Herself (archive footage)
Roy Chiao	...	Himself (archive footage)
Sean Connery	...	Himself (archive footage)
Denholm Elliott	...	Himself (archive footage)
Harrison Ford	...	Himself (archive footage)
Paul Freeman	...	Himself (archive footage)
Wolf Kahler	...	Himself (archive footage)
Ronald Lacey	...	Himself (archive footage)
George Lucas	...	Himself (also archive footage)
River Phoenix	...	Himself (archive footage)
Amrish Puri	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jonathan Ke Quan	...	Himself (archive footage)
John Rhys-Davies	...	Himself (archive footage)
Steven Spielberg	...	Himself (also archive footage)
John Williams	...	Himself (also archive footage)

Directed by
Laurent Bouzereau

Film Editing by
David Palmer

Distributors

• Paramount Home Video (2003) (USA) (DVD)

Runtime:

USA:12 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Movie Connections:

Features Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Where would Steven & George be without John Williams?

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg introduce this 12 minute spotlight on John Williams. First George calls the scoring process the best part of making a movie, as he can relax and let John Williams weave his magic. Then Steven explains how Williams came up with two possible main themes and Spielberg got him to combine the two of them, the first becoming the main theme and the second the bridge. It's hard to imagine the bridge as the main theme now. In fact, John Williams goes on to explain the difficulty of getting the notes just right in a simple but effective such as the Raider's march.

He then touches upon most of the themes from Raiders as well as the more atonal music he created for the creepy crawly scenes. Spielberg finally has some nice things to say about Temple of doom, mainly about John Williams contributions such as the trek music and the choral parts. As far as the Last Crusade is concerned, Williams mainly talks about scoring the opening sequence starring River Phoenix as young Indy. There is surprising amount of archive footage from the recording sessions of The Last Crusade and Spielberg and Williams saying (at the time at least) that this is their favourite Indy score. Perhaps that is why they inserted the grail theme into the final sequence of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull soundtrack. In fact, John Williams is the only person on the entire 2003 boxed set to mention the possibility of a fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series.

The way John Williams scores perfectly compliment the films of Spielberg and Lucas should not be underestimated. His themes add an extra layer to each one of them. In fact, it seems to me that should Williams ever become unavailable, Spielberg will probably stop making films all together.

9 out of 10