Steven Soderbergh takes viewers to class with Raiders of the Lost Ark

Director Steven Soderbergh (OCEAN'S 11, TRAFFIC) has stepped down from directing feature-films for theaters, but the man stays as busy as ever while overseeing The Knick on Cinemax, as well as handling cinematography duties on MAGIC MIKE XXL. For those unaware, he also contributes to a blog entitled Extension 765. Chock full of interesting insight and information, Soderbergh recently took to his site to talk a little bit about the importance of staging, using one of the all-time greats as an example: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

Here's a portion of what Soderbergh had to say:

So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging, and this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are—that’s high level visual math shit).

There is no embed for the video, but you can check out it out here. While I didn't watch the whole movie, I did watch a bulk of the opening. I can see why Soderbergh removed the classic John Williams score, as it forces you to focus on the imagery instead, but I would just mute the sound if I were you. He strikes some great points, though, and it's easy to see why RAIDERS is one of the greatest action/adventure flicks of all time when you take a look at each individual aspect and recognize how well-crafted they were.

Steven Soderbergh's next picture (as Director of Photography) is MAGIC MIKE XXL, which is currently shooting and aiming to hit theaters on July 1, 2015.