Jamie Benning Releases Raiding The Lost Ark

Undeterred by the recent removal of his previous “Filmumentaries” from YouTube by 20th Century Fox, Jamie Benning has embarked upon a new adventure. This time turning his attention to the first film in the Indiana Jones “Trilogy” (his words, not mine), “Raiding the Lost Ark, A Filmumentary” is the culmination of eight months’ worth of hard work reading though books, trawling through video tapes and archives, tracking down and interviewing members of the cast and crew, and finally the gargantuan task of editing it all together.

Speaking on the YouTube takedown, Jamie had this to say:

It’s always disappointing when a big franchise such as Star Wars comes down hard on its fans, especially when many of the fans projects are non profit making and creating things with genuine affection for the films.

20th Century Fox are of course well within their rights to ask for the removal of my filmumentaries from YouTube and I blame no one individual. I suspect it is merely the corporate machine grinding along.

The fact that the entire film of Star Wars still exists on YouTube makes it clear than their views on copyright infringement are sloppy at best. I would have been much happier to have some sort of dialogue with Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. I would even be happy for them to charge to download or stream my content and let them take all the profit.

The success of these three Star Wars filmumentaries — between them they clocked up over 3 million views before Fox yanked them — has allowed Jamie to land interviews with a couple of pretty big names in the movie business, including Wolf Kahler (who played Colonel Dietrich), Brian Muir (the legendary sculptor), Mark Mangini (part of the Oscar winning sound team), and most surprisingly, actress Sean Young. I already knew that Tom Selleck was considered for the part of Indy, but I didn’t know that he screen-tested some scenes with Sean Young in the part of Marion Ravenwood. These specially recorded interviews lend the production an even more professional feel and show the level of commitment that Jamie has to his craft. He’s also got an article on Empire magazine’s site and an interview with NPR that’s scheduled to run on Tuesday 7th February.

As with his previous filmumentaries, Raiding is jam packed with amazing facts and insights into the creative process. We find out that the charming professor was actually having an affair with one of his students, the amazing amount of effort involved in filming the bar fight, how that famous scene with the big sword guy came about and just how Indy made it to the island for the film’s climax. The gallery above shows a few snippets of these moments (as well as some great poster art created for Jamie), but head over to Jamie’s new blog at filmumentaries.com to watch to whole thing.

Best be quick, just in case those nasty lawyers come around again.