A Fan-Made Indiana Jones Filmumentary

There are a handful of different DVD versions of Raiders of the Lost Ark, some even carrying boasts like “Special Edition” and “The Complete Adventure Collection." But none of them contain a definitive film commentary complete with director Steven Spielberg’s thoughts and remembrances of making the film.

Into that void has stepped Jamie Benning, a sci-fi film fan who specializes in “filmumentaries” – a film form he first invented to pay tribute to the original Star Wars trilogy. For Dr. Jones, Benning has created Raiding the Lost Ark.

Wired’s Geek Dad blog explains exactly what a filmumentary is:

Raiding follows the same format that Jamie basically invented, with hours worth of interviews and behind the scenes footage condensed and re-edited into the main flow of the film to produce a visual commentary of the movie-making process. Jamie has also added graphical reconstructions of deleted scenes, subtitled facts (many taken from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones ), and scans from the production diaries, offering an unprecedented insight into the first and best Indiana Jones film.

So far Benning has released the first 17 minutes of the film for the internet’s delightful consumption and the result is pretty awesome to say the least:

@jamieswb Raiding the Lost Ark: A Filmumentary - Part 1 from jambe davdar on Vimeo.

And if you haven’t checked out Star Wars Begins, here’s a good primer to get you started on that also.