Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the final Fortune and Glory piece for today, focusing on a handful of rare and awesome production art images created by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's production designer Elliot Scott.
If I had a ton of money there are a few movie-related things I'd collect. One is movie poster art. I love it so much and finally got my first piece earlier this year (Tom Jung's poster art for the Burt Reynolds hixploitation extravaganza White Lightning), but only managed to do that by the skin of my teeth.
The other thing I will heavily collect whenever I win the lottery is production art. If you don't know exactly what Production Art is or why it's important, the quick version is that it visually sets the tone and color palette of a film. These are usually done for different sets so that every part of the crew and creative team is on the same page as to the director's vision. Tim Burton's early production art pieces are notoriously amazing (do a search for any of his Nightmare Before Christmas art and you'll see what I mean).
What I love about this kind of art specifically is that it's usually a rough version of what will soon become a very recognizable location in a film. It's recognizable, but still a little fluid. The realities of a location or size of a studio or availability of certain materials and a million other factors will come into play later, but at the time the production painting is made it's the full, unrestrained vision of a moment in the movie.
Production Designer Elliot Scott did many such paintings during preproduction on Temple of Doom and the good folks at Lucasfilm opened up their archives and shared a few of those rare images with us. Thanks, Lucasfilm!
Below you'll see Scott's concepts for how the Indian village looks (both barren and prosperous), a Pankot Palace hallway, the wind tunnel leading to the temple of doom and (my favorite) the Temple of Doom itself. Enjoy:
Cool, right? I could stare at these things all day. Beautiful.
That's it for Fortune and Glory today. Come on back tomorrow and I'll have more Indy stuff for ya'. I'm actually traveling to Washington DC tomorrow, but will still make sure to post some of the cool shit I have left, including some revelations from the early drafts of the script. Stay tuned!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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