Raiders

A couple of years ago Steven Soderbergh revealed that he had spent a lot of time watching Raiders of the Lost Ark in black and white. Now he has actually released a version of the film in black and white with a different score and no dialogue.

The reason?

He wants you to think more carefully about how each shot is staged or visually constructed. I'll let him explain:

"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). "

You can view the film on his page over here. It's worth a nosey around his site too, it's an interesting place.