page_title: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade / Production / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Petra, Al Khazneh Deutsch: Petra, Khazne al-Firaun
context_page_description: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third installment in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford returned the title role, while his father is portrayed by Sean Connery. Other cast members featured include Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies. In the film, set largely in 1938, Indiana searches for his father, a Holy Grail scholar, who has been kidnapped by Nazis.
  After the mixed reaction to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg chose to tone down the dark tone and graphic violence in the next installment. During the five years between The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, he and executive producer Lucas reviewed several scripts before accepting Jeffrey Boam's. Filming locations included Spain, Italy, West Germany, Jordan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
  The film was released by Paramount Pictures in North America on May 24, 1989 to mostly positive reviews and was a financial success, earning $474.3 million at the worldwide box office.
context_section_description: Mechanical effects supervisor George Gibbs said the film was the most difficult one of his career. He visited a museum to negotiate renting a small French World War I tank, but decided he wanted to make one. The tank was based on the Tank Mark VIII, which was 11 metres (36 ft) long and weighed 28 short tons (25 t). Gibbs built the tank over the framework of a 28-short-ton (25 t) excavator and added 7-short-ton (6.4 t) tracks that were driven by two automatic hydraulic pumps, each connected to a Range Rover V8 engine. Gibbs built the tank from steel rather than aluminum or fiberglass because it would allow the realistically suspensionless vehicle to endure the rocky surfaces. Unlike its historic counterpart, which had only the two side guns, the tank had a turret gun added as well. It took four months to build and was transported to Almería on a Short Belfast plane and then a low loader truck.
  The tank broke down twice. The distributor's rotor arm broke and a replacement had to be sourced from Madrid. Then two of the device's valves used to cool the oil exploded, due to solder melting and mixing with the oil. It was very hot in the tank, despite the installation of ten fans, and the lack of suspension meant the driver was unable to stop shaking during filming breaks. The tank only moved at 10 to 12 miles per hour (16 to 19 km/h), which Vic Armstrong said made it difficult to film Indiana riding a horse against the tank while making it appear faster. A smaller section of the tank's top made from aluminum and which used rubber tracks was used for close-ups. It was built from a searchlight trailer, weighed eight tons, and was towed by a four-wheel drive truck. It had safety nets on each end to prevent injury to those falling off. A quarter-scale model by Gibbs was driven over a 15-metre (50 ft) cliff on location; Industrial Light & Magic created further shots of the tank's destruction with models and miniatures.
  Michael Lantieri, mechanical effects supervisor for the 1912 scenes, noted the difficulty in shooting the train sequence. "You can't just stop a train," he said, "If it misses its mark, it takes blocks and blocks to stop it and back up." Lantieri hid handles for the actors and stuntmen to grab onto when leaping from carriage to carriage. The carriage interiors shot at Universal Studios Hollywood were built on tubes that inflated and deflated to create a rocking motion. For the close-up of the rhinoceros that strikes at (and misses) Indiana, a foam and fiberglass animatronic was made in London. When Spielberg decided he wanted it to move, the prop was sent to John Carl Buechler in Los Angeles, who resculpted it over three days to blink, snarl, snort and wiggle its ears. The giraffes were also created in London. Because steam locomotives are very loud, Lantieri's crew would respond to first assistant director David Tomblin's radioed directions by making the giraffes nod or shake their heads to his questions, which amused the crew. For the villains' cars, Lantieri selected a 1914 Ford Model T, a 1919 Ford Model T truck and a 1916 Saxon Model 14, fitting each with a Ford Pinto V6 engine. Sacks of dust were hung under the cars to create a dustier environment.
  Spielberg used doves for the seagulls that Henry scares into striking the German plane because the real gulls used in the first take did not fly. In December 1988, Lucasfilm ordered 1,000 disease-free gray rats for the catacombs scenes from the company that supplied the snakes and bugs for the previous films. Within five months, 5,000 rats had been bred for the sequence; 1,000 mechanical rats stood in for those that were set on fire. Several thousand snakes of five breeds—including a boa constrictor—were used for the train scene, in addition to rubber ones onto which Phoenix could fall. The snakes would slither from their crates, requiring the crew to dig through sawdust after filming to find and return them. Two lions were used, which became nervous because of the rocking motion and flickering lights.
  Costume designer Anthony Powell found it a challenge to create Co
caption: Al Khazneh (The Treasury) at Petra, Jordan was used for the entrance to the temple housing the Holy Grail.
exif: {"Image Make": "PENTAX Corporation", "Image Model": "PENTAX K10D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "K10D Ver 1.30", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:10 13:31:40", "Image Artist": "Berthold Werner", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "b'GNU-Lizenz f\\xfcr freie Dokumentation'", "Image ExifOffset": "46802", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 33, 0, 1, 0, 22, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "47270", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5636", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:11:10 13:31:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:11:10 13:31:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "19", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2112", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3359", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "47240", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "3"}