Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom (1984) Filming Locations
The majority of this film was shot on sets at EMI Elstree Studios in England, while some location shooting was done in Sri Lanka & Macau.
The interior of the night club was built on Stages 1 & 3 of Elstree Studios.
The outside of "Club Obi-Wan" & other Shanghai street scenes were filmed in the Inner Harbour area of Macau. Unfortunately, the building used for the club has since been torn down and replaced with the Best Western Hotel Sun Sun (thanks to Alex Hogg's Blog Ultimate Location Travel Guide for finally tracking this down!). The bottom left photo was taken early on during a location scout prior to filming.
Address:
MacaoPraça de Ponte e Horta, 14 E號16號
The ensuing chase scene through the streets of Shanghai was filmed in Macao's Inner Harbour area, specifically Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (thanks again to Alex Hogg).
The Shanghai Airport was the old Hamilton Army Airfield north of San Francisco, CA. The specific location is the northeast side of Hangar 9, looking south. This same location was seen again in Tucker: The Man and his Dream.
GPS Coordinates:
38.060803, -122.515286
The Ford Tri-Motor airplane is now on display at the World's Greatest Aircraft museum at 1400 Broadway Blvd. SE in Polk City, FL.
Plane montage shots were done with a plane model against bluescreen. Plane interiors with actors were likely done on a set at Elstree. As for the shot of the plane scraping the mountaintop, this was a model filmed on the roof of Stage C (now 32ten Studios) at ILM in San Rafael.
For the shots of the raft landing & traveling down the snow slope, a combination of locations were used. Apparently these were shot on the "Crest Ridge Run" at Mammoth Mountain in CA. Close-ups with the actors were shot against bluescreen on the ILM stage. The plane crash was filmed as a miniature and combined with live-action footage (illustrated above).
The shot of the raft going off the cliff was filmed on the cliffs over the Snake River near the Perrine Memorial Bridge near Twin Falls, Idaho. The middle photo has been flipped to match the shot on the left. For the initial shot (left), ILM enhanced the scenery above the cliff with a matte painting and composited the raft in.
For the shot of the raft landing in the water, the 2d Unit dropped a raft off the Lumsden Bridge over the Tuolumne River in California.
The other rafting shots (especially the close-ups with the actors) were shot on the American River in the California Sierras.
As they approach the village, I believe these shots were done on the Kandy River in Sri Lanka, near the bridge location.
The Mayapore village was built on the grounds of the Oodewella & Hantana Tea Plantations in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The exact location is quite remote and difficult to find without a guide. However, in recent years some adventurous and determined fans have managed to locate the remains of the site: Alex Hogg, Jean-Christophe Quenot, and "Chiliana Jones." The large boulder housing the altar for the Sankara stone still remains intact (although the site is so overgrown it is basically unrecognizable).
The jungle trek shots with the elephants were filmed on the Pinnewela Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka.
Stage 7 at Elstree Studios was home to the jungle campfire scene.