Skulls, Whips And Leather Jackets

Intricately Designed Props and Costumes

Bring Indiana Jones to Life

The Fifties. Indiana Jones.

There can't be more iconic imagery than that, and it proved a challenge to the talented team assembled to create the props and costumes for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." From Indiana Jones' whip and fedora to Mutt's biker jacket, they had a complex task of creating a new and yet still familiar world.

Costume designer Mary Zophres, co-costume designer and collaborator Jenny Eagen and costume designer for Harrison Ford, Bernie Pollack, had a challenging balancing act of hewing closely to the look of the first three films while adding new touches. The era provided no shortage of inspiration in the creation of new characters. Producer Frank Marshall explains, "Each of our new characters has been inspired by the '50s, and Mary seemed to have a terrific time creating the look of these characters."

Zophres pored through old Life magazines, 1950's college yearbooks, vintage Russian military handbooks, photos of Mayan ruins and history books to get inspiration for the design of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. "I got every yearbook I could get my hands on from the Northeast, and from Yale in particular," she says.

For Zophres, who received a BAFTA nomination for her costumes on Spielberg's 1960s-era film "Catch Me If You Can," the thrill of designing costumes for the film was partially derived from the enthusiasm of the director. "His body of work means a great deal to me, so when I make him excited and enthusiastic, it's very rewarding. When you make Steven smile it makes your day."

Zophres had her work cut out for her. She had to develop a signature look for femme fatale Irina Spalko, and to do it, Zophres took inspiration from 1930s screen siren Marlene Dietrich. "She had a lot of charisma with a certain amount of edginess and toughness, which I thought would be appropriate for Spalko," Zophres explains. She and her team found a stock of genuine Russian military uniforms to dress Spalko's nefarious crew. "I almost had a heart attack when we found them, but they were only in size 40 and 42, so we found fabric, dyed it to match and then made the rest of the sizes for all the other Russian soldiers," she says. "But we found the real thing. You open up the jackets and there's a real Soviet stamp inside of them."

For the return of Marion Ravenwood, Zophres drew inspiration from a previous era, incorporating the look of 1930s adventurers like Amelia Earhart. "Marion's a little bit of a tomboy," Zophres explains, "but extremely courageous, beautiful and feminine at the same time."

For Mutt, Zophres helped actor Shia LaBeouf express the character through a rebel "uniform" of leather jackets and motorcycle boots. "Mutt was inspired by Marlon Brando in 'The Wild One,'" says Zophres. She and cocostume designer Jenny Eagen found authentic vintage motorcycle jackets and had LaBeouf try them all on until they found the one they liked best -- then they recreated it to have the multiple versions they would need as the on-screen adventure progresses. "We had to make about 30 of those motorcycle jackets, because Shia does a lot of stunts and his costume got worn and dirty," Zophres says.

The far-flung inspiration for the movie's characters continued with Mac, played by Ray Winstone. "Mac has one of my favorite costumes in the movie," Zophres says. "There's this picture I have of Ernest Hemingway, and he's got his foot kicked up in the air with these great high boots on. I found a pair of these high boots with this really interesting sole, so Mac wears his pants tucked in and he's rocking those boots through the whole movie."

As if Zophres' hands weren't full enough, she and Egan also had to create costumes for the scores of extras that populate the film, including more than 200 in the sequences set in Peru -- for which Zophres had to send a buyer to the South American country itself and bring back textiles to use when making the costumes. "Because it's a story that travels the globe, I wanted to go there with the costumes as well. We achieved that through changes in color palettes and stylistic differentiations, giving each locale a distinctive look."

Pollack, who has worked with Ford for 15 years, went on an odyssey of his own to recreate -- and update -- Indy's wardrobe, both as an academic and as an adventurer. "Bernie took Indiana Jones as he was in the earlier movies and then stepped him up into the Fifties," Marshall says. Pollack says some of his task was easy. "Indy is a classic guy who sets his own style and has his own look, and doesn't change it."

As it turned out, Indiana Jones wasn't the only person who hadn't changed much in the time between. "I hadn't worn the Indiana Jones costume for 18 years," says Ford. "Bernie sent that original costume to my house for me to try on, to see where we would have to change sizes. I put it on and it fit like a glove. I felt really comfortable and ready to go!"

While Indy may only seem to wear one costume on screen, in reality, Pollack ultimately had to make 60 pairs of pants and 72 shirts. He also decided to make Indy's jacket slightly bigger, in order to accommodate the padding Ford would need when doing his stunts. Using stills from the original films, he meticulously designed the instantly recognizable leather jacket, then searched for someone who could make it. That search spanned the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. Finally, costume supervisor Bob Morgan brought in a leather clothier named Tony Novak from El Segundo, Calif. Novak said he needed only a sample jacket to make a prototype overnight. But the Lucasfilm Archives, which had kept the original jacket safe for more than two decades, required tight security; Pollack had an assistant accompany the jacket to Novak's offices.

"About nine o'clock that night, the jacket was back," Pollack says. "And it was perfect. I couldn't believe it. So, I asked him to make 30 of them! I love that guy."

Recreating the famous fedora was more difficult. Pollack worked his way through numerous designs, multiple fabrics and scores of hatmakers. While he seemed to find the right haberdasher in Germany, the quick turnaround was daunting -- Pollack had only a month to have someone make and ship the hats to the set. That's when Pollack's German contact suggested Steven Delk of Adventurebilt Hat Company in Columbus, Miss.

"Steven ended up making a lot of different hats, and refining them until he came up with exactly the perfect hat," Pollack recalls.

Award-winning prop master Doug Harlocker's job encompassed finding, buying or making everything from bullwhips to mummies, motorcycles to llamas. And while procuring the wide range of things that fall under the umbrella of film props, Harlocker worked to remain true to the film's legacy while introducing a few new things.

"We constantly talk about how to reprise little things from the previous movies that the audience would enjoy discovering," says Kennedy. "Doug Harlocker has done a great job bringing in several things from the previous movies that the audience can have fun with and, at the same time, he's contributing all sorts of new ideas."

For "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Harlocker and his team assembled a treasure trove of goodies including a Bobber-style motorcycle for Mutt, AK47s and Tacarov pistols for the Russians, a cache of fencing swords, a barn house of animals and, one other indispensable "prop."

"Indiana Jones's one weakness is an absolute pathological fear of snakes," says Harrison Ford. "So, of course, we had to have snakes."

When shooting "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1980, he recalls, "there were laundry tubs of snakes. In one of those containers, you can put maybe 8,000 snakes. We had dozens of these containers in the original scene in the temple in the first 'Raiders.'"

Luckily, there's only one snake in "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." But it's a doozy: a giant Olive Python. "We had the requisite snake, a beautiful snake to us but not to Indy, of course," Spielberg says with a laugh. "It was a rather large python. The audience wouldn't forgive us if we didn't have at least one snake in the movie." In addition to the real snake (two for shooting purposes), Stan Winston's studio worked with Harlocker to create a perfect replica out of rubber.

With the help of the Lucasfilm Archives, Harlocker was able to pull together samples of all the original props and build on them. Indiana's personal items included the whip, the haversack, his gun belt, his whip keep, his journals, his father's pocket watch and his glasses -- and while the glasses would evolve for the film, Indy's haversack would be the very same one he carried through his last adventure.

Harlocker had Indy's bullwhips custom-designed by an Australian company to be more versatile for Ford. That made re-mastering the fine art of whip-cracking a bit easier for Ford. "It's a relatively uncommon skill," Ford says. "And I wasn't terribly good at it -- but I guess I was good enough for show business when I did it the last time. We had a new whip trainer on this movie who had a different technique. So after a couple of weeks of pretty diligent practice, I was able to get it all back."

Seeing Indy's trademark bullwhip brought feelings of nostalgia and excitement to everyone on the set, Spielberg says. "To see Harrison walk on the set, pick up the whip, snap it and wrap it around one of the bad guys was pretty incredible," he says. "It was amazing to see how fast Harrison was with it -- and then to be on the set and see Indy's rucksack and his other props, well, it wasn't just nostalgia. That was when I realized we're bringing this character and everything he's about back to the audience that grew up with him and to new audiences."

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