Hello!
I was re-watching the Last Crusade and noticed something in the scene directly after the opening young Indy scene where Indy is on "The Coronado" trying to steal back the Cross of the same name. His hat seems to hold its shape against water really, really well. It retains its shape for the majority of the scene, despite buckets of water being dumped on it. To my understanding, the felt used for the Temple of Doom and Last Crusade hats was the same, if not very similar, but the hat in this scene seems to repel water a lot better. What are your opinions on this? Is this movie magic, with a scene being shot over a long period of time and the hat drying out between shots? Are there multiple hats at work here? Am I obsessing way too much over a wet hat? Probably.
I just thought I'd see if anyone else had thoughts on this.
I would lean toward your guess - many takes and multiple hats in rotation. The scene is heavily edited, which generally indicates the action was filmed in short bursts. Also, knowing there would be so much water, they may have added additional water repellent to the hat.
Indiana Jeff wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 6:11 pm
I would lean toward your guess - many takes and multiple hats in rotation. The scene is heavily edited, which generally indicates the action was filmed in short bursts. Also, knowing there would be so much water, they may have added additional water repellent to the hat.
Regards,
Indiana Jeff
Yeah that makes sense. Seems like the most probable answer.
Unless I'm mistaken, this is the only scene in The Last Crusade where we see the hat get wet. We don't really get a (more or less) continual shot where the hat goes from dry to wet like the swing into the river in Raiders. As you said, it's more of a drawn out action scene that was filmed in quick sections, which probably gave them plenty of time to dry the hat out or switch hats.
I also wonder if they may have taken extra measures to keep the hats in their recognizable shape in this scene since the transfer from young Indy wearing a/the fedora (don't wanna get into that debate haha) to present day Indy wearing a/the fedora is so important. The distinct shape of the hat had to be recognizable after that cut, so maybe they did add some kind of water repellent.
There’s definitely a couple of blink and you miss it shots of it completely losing shape too. LC is my favorite Indy movie but it’s definitely rife with continuity errors.
Darthbauer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 9:52 pm
There’s definitely a couple of blink and you miss it shots of it completely losing shape too. LC is my favorite Indy movie but it’s definitely rife with continuity errors.
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Thanks for pointing that out!!! Just went back and watched the scene again.
I did notice a few parts where the crown looked pretty out of whack. (Apologies for the following not so great screenshots) It looks like towards the middle of the scene, the hat has one side of the crown raised higher than the other, which seems to continue into a few of the later shots in the scene. It also becomes kind of bucket-hatty. (Let's just pretend that's a word ) Then towards the end it's got almost like a Gambler crown type thing going on... I guess from Ford's head pushing against the wet felt. In most of the close ups though, the hat looks quite nice for being absolutely drenched. All of this I suppose cycles back to this being a scene that was shot in quick segments and edited together, as Indiana Jeff pointed out.
Probably. 
) Then towards the end it's got almost like a Gambler crown type thing going on... I guess from Ford's head pushing against the wet felt. In most of the close ups though, the hat looks quite nice for being absolutely drenched. All of this I suppose cycles back to this being a scene that was shot in quick segments and edited together, as Indiana Jeff pointed out.