One of the things that first inspired Speilberg the director to make Jurassic Park was one of the very creations Scott Bukatman was talking about in his article, “Zooming In and Out”. Universal Studios is a veritable playground inside a movie set. One of the attractions there features King Kong grabbing at the ride tram in front of a Universal Studios back drop. The animatronics of this life sized, giant ape inspired Speilberg who was then considering animating his dinosaurs by way of stop animation. The 7-ton 30 foot tall Kong creation, conceptualized by Bob Gear was the largest and most complex animatronic figure in existence for many years. At those specs, it is not difficult to understand why Speilberg eventually made the decision he did.
The design team, consisting of Stan Winson, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, and Michael Lantieri came up with all sorts of ideas, branching off from life sized animatronics, small clay models and the “animatics” which were essentially 3D storyboards put together by Phil Tippett. The process even involved the expertise of famed paleontologist, Jack Horner, who advised the design team on the realism of their creations. Horner, one of the foremost theorists on how we view dinosaurs had some very pertinent advice to give when it came to creating models to mock real dinosaur behavior. “In one of the scenes, some of the model makers had made the tongue come out, like a lizard or a snake, had that been left in the scene, all the work into making these things bird like would have been gone.”
Until this point, all of the wide shot of the dinosaurs were set to be shot using Phil Tippett’s ‘go motion technique”. But Speilberg wanted to push the envelope just a bit further.
“Phil Tippett had perfected the motion blur, which gave go motion a closer resemblance to real life, but it wasn’t 100 percent. I come home with my kids and go over this stuff again and again and again and they go ‘whoa dad! It’s a real dinosaur’, but I still saw the jerks, there was still something a bit “go motion” about it.”
It was here that Dennis Muren, of Industrial Light and Magic stepped in. His previous projects included T2 and he had limited knowledge of computer animation software. He proposed that Speilberg let him have a go at the animation. Muren, and ILM build a skeletal model of a T Rex and had the model scanned in at Cyberware labs using a revolving laser beam that transfers topographical data into the computer for manipulation. “The T1000 was easy, but the dinos needed skin, dirty spots, yellow teeth, watery eyes, muscle movement ect…” He used three different types of technology: Sock, for the individual pieces, Envelope, to animate beneath the skin, and SoftImage, which provided greater animation control and allow animators to move pieces individually without reanimating.
The result was something audiences hadn’t seen in 60 million years. Not only were people able to re-engage with a species long extinct from the world, but once again people were brought to higher awareness through technology. But it remains with a warning. As the actors in the movie interact with these technological marvels, our fragility is no more present in the scenes in which the actors are fighting for their lives. In a literal sense, technology should never be bigger than we can manage, lest we become extinct ourselves.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_Encounter
http://library.thinkquest.org/3496/zjurassic.html
Jurassic Park DVD “The Making of Jurassic Park”
