Our friend Jamie Benning has been at it again, not content with making his "filmumentaries" of the original Star Wars trilogy, he has now turned his editing skills to the first part of George Lucas' other great matinee serial, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and he's sharing the first part of Raiding The Lost Ark exclusively with us here on GeekDad.

The first 17 or so minutes are in the can and, even though he still a few more interviews to complete - with the likes of Mark Mangini (Sound Editor), Brian Muir (Sculptor) and Robert Watts (Production Manager and Exec Producer), Jamie is keen to share it with his audience. Since releasing the Star Wars filmumentaries, he has been interviewed for sci-fi and movie magazines all over the world including Sci-fi Now and Starburst, and has picked up quite a following on the interwebz, and this latest film can only serve to increase his profile.

Raiding follows the same format that Jamie basically invented, with hours worth of interviews and behind the scenes footage condensed and re-edited into the main flow of the film to produce a visual commentary of the movie-making process. Jamie has also added graphical reconstructions of deleted scenes, subtitled facts (many taken from The Complete Making of Indiana Jones ), and scans from the production diaries, offering an unprecedented insight into the first and best Indiana Jones film.

The real coup with Raiding, though, comes from the fact that Raiders director Steven Spielberg has yet to release an official commentary track on any of his films, so this really is the next best thing, with many clips from interviews from the last thirty odd years giving a great insight into the way he thinks and how certain, memorable, shots came about. An early gem of background info comes from actor Alfred Molina, who played Indy's guide at the beginning of the film, as he recounts his experiences with all those tarantulas! Makes me shudder just thinking about it. And I love the 'blink and you'll miss it' way Jamie has inserted the title of his film right in with the real title. I'd heard that Tom Selleck was considered for Indy, but it's a real treat to see a bit of his screen test, playing opposite Sean Young as Marion.

Even though this year marks the 30th anniversary of the film's first release, Lucasfilm has yet to grace us with a Blu-ray box set, so Jamie had to make do with an upscaled DVD copy as he chose to make this one in HD, and it's a big improvement. Even though the behind the scenes footage was shot on Super 8, VHS or similar, they've all been upscaled nicely and the extra resolution really helps with the subtitles (all set in an 'Indy' font of course) and scans. YouTube recently changed their terms which meant Jamie could no longer upload long clips, so this one is now hosted on Vimeo, which I think also adds to the quality.

So without further ramblings, here is part one of "Raiding The Lost Ark" – I can't wait to see the rest...

Keep up with Jamie's progress on Twitter and Facebook