Movie Trivia #2
The Takeaway
The moving dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were originally going to be made with stop-motion puppets. A single CG test created by ILM overturned that plan.
Here is the story behind it, in brief.
Released in 1993, Jurassic Park was directed by Steven Spielberg and tells the story of resurrected dinosaurs running out of control.
Think of the scene where a brachiosaurus first appears, or the herd of gallimimus racing across a plain. How were those “walking dinosaurs” supposed to be made?
The original answer was: not with CG.
The moving dinosaurs were to be created by Phil Tippett using “go motion,” an evolution of stop-motion animation — a technique in which puppets are moved little by little during filming, with motion blur added to make the movement look smooth.
The close-up scenes would be handled by full-size mechanical dinosaurs built by Stan Winston’s studio. Puppets and machines: that was the original line-up.
ILM’s role was supposed to be merely supporting. They had only been asked to add CG motion blur to the go-motion footage.
But then an ILM animator, Steve Williams, began insisting that the dinosaurs themselves could be created entirely in CG. This was a team that had already built up a CG track record with The Abyss and Terminator 2.
What they produced was a CG test: a short experimental clip of a skeletal model of a Tyrannosaurus walking across the screen.
When producer Kathleen Kennedy visited ILM, the test footage had reportedly been placed where it would catch her eye. And once Spielberg saw it, the decision was made.
The moving dinosaurs would be CG.
Tippett’s reaction on hearing of the change of plan became famous: “I’ve just become extinct.”
The stop-motion craftsman was saying that, along with the dinosaurs, his own job had gone extinct. According to ILM, this remark also became the source of a line spoken by Dr. Malcolm in the film.
But Tippett did not leave the production.
Spielberg kept him on as “dinosaur supervisor.” How a dinosaur moves, how it shifts its weight — that knowledge was still needed, even in CG.
What is more, a device was born to bridge the old craftsmanship into CG: the Dinosaur Input Device (DID).
- A framework model in the shape of a dinosaur, fitted with sensors
- When an animator moves the model by hand, that movement becomes digital data as-is
- A system that lets you move a CG dinosaur with the hands-on feel of stop-motion
The people who had moved puppets by hand could now control digital dinosaurs with the very same feel. Far from going extinct, their craft had gained a new tool. The device later received an Academy Scientific and Technical Award.
Measured in numbers, this revolution was surprisingly small in scale.
- Total time dinosaurs appear in the film: about 15 minutes
- Of that, full-size machines and puppets: about 9 minutes
- CG dinosaurs: about 6 minutes
- Animators at ILM who worked on Jurassic Park: just 6 people
A mere six minutes of CG changed how films are made.
Watch the film again today and you can spot it. Pay attention to how the walking dinosaurs and the close-up dinosaurs are made differently.
The dinosaurs running in the distance are CG; the scenes where a face looms close are real mechanical creations. Because the two methods blend without any sense of mismatch, the film still looks “real” more than 30 years later.
One test clip overturned the plan, a craftsman’s “extinction” remark became a famous line, and handcraft survived inside CG in the form of a device. The Jurassic Park dinosaur revolution was not a replacement of one technology by another — it was a merging of the two.
References
- ILM, “ILM Evolutions: Animation, From Rotoscoping to ‘Rango’”
- ILM, “Making Of ‘Jurassic Park’”
- befores & afters, “The oral history of the Dinosaur Input Device”
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