Mike's JP HQ - BEHIND THE FX: How They Made Jurassic Park

~*~ BEHIND THE FX ~*~
How ILM and Stan Winston Changed Movies FOREVER

THE DAY MOVIES CHANGED FOREVER
OK fellow movie nerds, buckle up because this is my FAVORITE topic to talk about. How they made Jurassic Park is one of the most amazing stories in filmmaking history. When Spielberg set out to make this movie in 1991, he originally planned to use stop-motion animation (like in the old Ray Harryhausen movies) with go-motion improvements. Phil Tippett was hired to do it all.

Then something INCREDIBLE happened. Dennis Muren and his team at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) showed Spielberg a test of a computer-generated T-Rex skeleton walking across a screen. Spielberg was blown away. Phil Tippett reportedly said "I think I'm extinct" and Spielberg loved that line so much he PUT IT IN THE MOVIE (Ian Malcolm says it).

What followed was a revolutionary combination of TWO groundbreaking approaches that made the most realistic dinosaurs anyone had ever seen on screen.

INDUSTRIAL LIGHT AND MAGIC (ILM)
The CG Revolution

THE TEAM:
Dennis Muren (VFX Supervisor), Steve "Spaz" Williams, Mark Dippe, Eric Armstrong, and the incredible artists at ILM's CG department.

THE TECH:

Silicon Graphics workstations - The Onyx and Indigo2 machines that ILM used cost about $100,000 EACH. They were the most powerful graphics computers money could buy in 1992.
Alias PowerAnimator (now Maya) - The 3D modeling and animation software. Each dinosaur model had thousands of polygons and took weeks to build.
Custom rendering software - ILM's proprietary renderer handled the final look of the dinosaur skin, lighting, shadows, and compositing into live-action plates.
DID (Dinosaur Input Device) - This is SO COOL. Phil Tippett (the stop-motion guy) wasn't made extinct after all! They built a physical armature connected to a computer. Tippett could move the puppet and the computer would record the movements and apply them to the CG model. This gave the digital dinosaurs the weight and physicality of stop-motion animation but with CG rendering. GENIUS!!!

BY THE NUMBERS:

Total CG dinosaur screen time in JP (1993): approximately 6 minutes
That's right, SIX MINUTES. And it changed movies forever.
Each frame of CG took 2-4 HOURS to render
About 50 CG shots in the entire film
The T-Rex was modeled with about 3,000 polygons
Total CG work took about 18 months

MIKE'S MIND-BLOWN MOMENT: When I found out there's only 6 minutes of CG in the entire movie... my brain melted. It FEELS like it's all CG because those 6 minutes are so perfectly placed. The Gallimimus stampede, the T-Rex at the fence, the kitchen raptors (parts of them), the Brachiosaurus... every single shot is PERFECT. Quality over quantity. Take notes, Hollywood!!!

STAN WINSTON STUDIO
Practical Magic - The Animatronics

THE MAN, THE LEGEND:
Stan Winston was already the GOAT of practical effects before JP. He did the Terminator endoskeleton, the Alien Queen, Predator... the man was a GENIUS. For Jurassic Park, he and his team built full-size animatronic dinosaurs that are, to this day, the most incredible practical effects ever created.

THE BUILDS:

DINOSAUR	SIZE	WEIGHT	OPERATORS
T-Rex (full body)	20 feet tall, 40 feet long	9,000 lbs (!!!)	12+ puppeteers
Raptors (full suits)	6 feet tall	~100 lbs each	1 performer inside
Triceratops (sick)	Full size	Several thousand lbs	8 puppeteers
Dilophosaurus	4 feet tall	~200 lbs	Cable controlled
Brachiosaurus (head)	Head and neck section	Several hundred lbs	Hydraulic

THE FULL-SIZE T-REX:
This is the crown jewel. Stan Winston's team built a FULL-SIZE T-REX animatronic. It was powered by hydraulics, controlled by a combination of puppeteers and a telemetry rig. The skin was made of foam latex over a steel skeleton. When it rained during the T-Rex breakout scene filming, the foam latex absorbed water and the Rex became even HEAVIER. The crew reported it would start shaking and moving on its own because of the extra weight. TERRIFYING. Imagine being on set with a 9,000-lb robot dinosaur that starts moving by itself!!

THE RAPTOR SUITS:
Real humans in raptor suits!!! Performers (including John Rosengrant, one of Winston's top guys) wore full-body raptor costumes for many of the shots. The heads were cable-controlled for the eye movements and lip snarling. This is why the raptors feel so REAL - there's an actual person inside giving them weight and movement and intention. The kitchen scene uses a combination of these suits and CG, and you literally CANNOT TELL which is which.

MIKE'S MIND-BLOWN MOMENT: The T-Rex in the rain. That shot where it crashes through the Plexiglas roof of the Ford Explorer and the glass is supposed to break but it was TOO STRONG so it started crushing the car for real, and the kids' screams are 100% genuine because they thought they were going to die. ACTUAL TERROR captured on film. Spielberg kept the take. That is filmmaking, baby.

THE MAGIC FORMULA
CG + Practical = PERFECTION

Here's why Jurassic Park's effects STILL hold up in 1997, four years later, and will hold up for decades to come. It's the COMBINATION.

THE RULE: Close-ups = animatronics. Wide shots and full-body movements = CG. This meant you always had REAL PHYSICAL WEIGHT in the close-ups (because it IS a real physical thing) and you got impossible camera movements and full-body action in the wide shots.

EXAMPLES:

T-Rex breakout: Close-up of the Rex eating the goat? Animatronic. Full-body Rex stepping over the fence? CG. Rex chasing the jeep? CG. Rex looking through the car window? Animatronic. You go back and forth and your brain accepts ALL of it as real because the real parts anchor the CG parts.
Kitchen raptors: Raptors walking around, head movements? Suit performers. Raptors jumping on counters, wide shots? CG. The blend is SEAMLESS.
Brachiosaurus: The first reveal is CG. The sneezing scene? Animatronic head on a crane. Your brain smooths it all together.

This is why I get SO MAD at modern movies that do everything in CG. You LOSE something when there's nothing real on set. The actors in JP are reacting to REAL things. Sam Neill is touching a REAL breathing Triceratops. The kids are being crushed by a REAL T-Rex head. That fear is REAL. That wonder is REAL.

Spielberg understood something that many directors today forget: the best special effect is the one you can't tell is a special effect.

THE LOST WORLD: EVEN MORE FX

The Lost World (1997) pushed everything even further:

The CG got better. More dinosaur species, longer CG shots, improved skin texturing and muscle dynamics. The Stegosaurus attack sequence is almost entirely CG and it looks INCREDIBLE.
The animatronics got better. Winston's team built a T-Rex that could walk on a track! The practical Rex in Lost World is even more sophisticated than the first one.
The Compy swarm - Dozens of tiny CG dinosaurs moving independently. This would have been impossible in 1993. The technology advanced THAT FAST in just 4 years.
The San Diego sequence - A T-Rex loose in a city. This required extensive CG compositing with real cityscapes. The shot of Rex drinking from the pool is CG perfection.

ILM rendered the Lost World effects on SGI Origin 2000 servers - a massive upgrade from the original film. More processing power = more detail = more dinosaurs on screen at once. The raptor attack in the tall grass features about 8 CG raptors moving independently through practical grass. My jaw hit the FLOOR.

MIKE'S FX SPECS CORNER
(I memorized all of this and I'm not sorry)

JP (1993): ~50 CG shots, ~6 min CG screen time, 18 months CG work
TLW (1997): ~90 CG shots, ~10 min CG screen time, ILM's biggest project at the time
Hardware (1993): SGI Onyx, Indigo2 workstations
Hardware (1997): SGI Origin 2000 servers
Software: Alias PowerAnimator, ILM proprietary tools
T-Rex animatronic weight: 9,000 lbs / 4.5 tons
Total dinosaur animatronics built for JP: 6 full-size + numerous parts
Stan Winston Studio crew size: ~40 artists and technicians
Academy Awards won for JP VFX: YES (1994 Best Visual Effects)

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