Jurassic Park Special Effects, Animation

Jurassic Park

Special Effects, Animation and Jurassic Park

Special effects and animation techniques are not new technologies per se; according to the online source "History of Animation," Frenchman Paul Roget invented the "thamatroope," a simple disc with a string attached to both sides (1828). And in 1860, the zoetrope (drawings around the circumference of a drum, which was twirled on a spindle to give magic life to the drawings as they spun by) was innovated by Pierre Desvignes. And the first truly animated feature film was Sinking of the Lusitania (Windsor McCay's film) in 1918.

American audiences were thrilled by Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, the first full-length animated feature film. But when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in 1977, American filmgoers were mesmerized and frightened like never before by the beauty and the realism of Stephen Spielberg's space ship and other special effects. The animation in Close Encounters opened viewers eyes wide when character Roy Neary went over to Crystal Lake to investigate a power failure, and was confronted first by brilliantly bright lights, then the deep, rich tones of powerful music, and finally he looks above him and witnesses a space ship, huge and ominous and scary. Many thought this was the best ever, the most profoundly entertaining special effects to be used in film.

Still, the most revolutionary and amazing special effects used in a film, in my opinion, were the computer-generated images produced in Spielberg's 1993 film, Jurassic Park. Never before had movies shown such realism and animated splendor as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. This film opened the door to a new, fantastic, eye-popping kind of realism in animation for movie audiences. It happened that 1993 was the biggest year in box-office history to that point in time (Americans had shelled out $5 billion to see movies that year); and when Jurassic Park (JP) was launched on June 11th it was already a household word, due to the incredibly successful marketing campaign.

In just about every retail store in America the marketing barrage featured JP action figures, lunch kits, videogames, candy, posters, latex masks, playing cards, children's toiletries, and more, according to Washington State University professor Michael Delahoyde (www.wsu.edu).But it is possible JP would have turned a record profit anyway (it made $870 million worldwide and cost $63 million to produce), without all the marketing trappings, because the animation was so intense and realistic. It was almost like these dinosaurs could walk off the screen and into the lobby where popcorn was being sold.

What Spielberg prioritized from the very earliest part of production, Delahoyde writes, is the "realism of the dinosaurs." He demanded as much "full-scale footage as possible over stop-motion post-production," and the approach to the dinosaurs was to make them match "up-to-date paleontological thinking." Previous movie dinosaurs were lumbering, awkward reptiles that moved with jerky motion and strained credulity; Spielberg wanted, and got, "birdlike" and warm-blooded creatures that were "agile" and even endearing (some of them anyway).

The real stars of the film were of course the dinosaurs, but credit must be given to their special effects creators, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, and Michael Lantieri, contractors that are part of the Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) group, developed by George Lucas Studios (LucasArts Digital Services). How did they create such believable monsters? Delahoyde explains that the ILM team created the "vicious velociraptors (alternately animatronic puppets used for stationary shots, and humans in raptor suits for agile movements)" the "dilophasaur" the "brachiosaur," and the "terrifying tyrannosaur" after initially being hired by Spielberg just to do "minor work."

Spielberg had not been aware of how far the technology that ILM used had advanced; ILM had created the liquid metal character in Terminator 2 (1991), and he insisted that the team give him the best they had, which they did; they produced the "vistas of grazing animals, the fifty-foot tall grazing brachisour," along with the "stampeding herd of gallimimus." Incredibly realistic creatures resulted from an emerging computer technology that was handled brilliantly by ILM. The Web site "Library Think Quest" reports that ILM scanned scale models of the dinosaurs to begin their animation work. They used three pieces of software to give the illusion of living, breathing dinosaurs; they used "Sock" and "Envelope" and a new version of SoftImage. Sock had been used in Terminator 2; it allowed the programmers to "join a network of points (called a patch-mesh) which made up each piece of the creature."

Then, the Sock software facilitated the bringing together and controlling of all the pieces and points underneath the surface of the skin; this allowed animators to create the illusion of "muscles moving, bones rotating in their sockets, and even the appearance of breathing," the Think Quest site explained. Using the Dinosaur Input Device (DID) as a model of a dinosaur an animator physically moved it from frame to frame, but did not film the model. Instead, the animator brought the model to the computer, and at that point he had access to the motions he needed, and could apply textures as he went along.

Dennis Muren is the lead animator with ILM; in an article originally published in Flix Magazine (Tokyo), Muren explains that his goal, and the collective goal of ILM, is to "help the audience forget that they are watching a movie - to convince [the audience] that dinosaurs do exist." In this reprint of the Flix piece, the fuel for the animation devices that Muren and his team used in JP was "Go-Motion" - a variation of the technique that was developed for George Lucas at his studios - which uses "tiny computer-driven motors" to produce the movements of the miniature models.

Mark Dippe, the "co-visuals effects supervisor on the JP set, noted that when animators work with wires, cables and rods to support models that have been developed, "you can't move it freely." but, the digital creature, using the Go-Motion software, "is free to move about in any dimension you want, on any axis, or any joint," Dippe told the interviewer. Going ahead without first notifying Spielberg that they were doing this kind of innovative animation, the ILM creators pushed for "certain scenes to be done with computer animation...and once our first tests were to a point where we felt confident, we showed the film to Stephen and it blew him away." So new scenes were added to the existing movie in progress, and the final product featured scenes, "intense" scenes, "involving animals struggling and chasing that weren't in the original storyboards," because at the time the initial footage was shot, "they couldn't imagine how it could be achieved," Dippe went on.

The revolutionary dinosaur images for JP were produced in two ways, the article continues. One method was to copy with laser technology "small models built by the film's conceptual artist, as a blueprint." The precise proportions would be programmed into the computer. And using that data as a guide, "animators could click a mouse to move a creature's joints just as a model animator would manipulate a model's joints."

The only difference was that instead of on film, the information created by the manipulation of the model's joints was stored in computer space. And whereas on a traditional model, new motion would require re-shooting of the scene, with Go-Motion computer animation, "any mistakes" could be easily corrected, repeated, reviewed and stored for further use. And once the "full-animated" dinosaur skeletons were ready to go, the ILM used software they had developed for Terminator 2 to apply layers of coloring to represent muscles and skin, and later rain and dirt could be added to the dinosaur's skin.

Of course the finished product had to actually look like a dinosaur, so the film's special effects professionals hired several paleontologists as consultants, to be as certain as possible that the looks and movements of the dinosaurs reflect "scientifically accepted notions" about what these giant creatures looked like and how they behaved. They visited zoos to watch movements, and took mime classes to perform moves they themselves had not previously done. Spielberg had adamantly requested that the dinosaurs "be animals, and not monsters - certainly not Hollywood monsters," said Phil Tippett, one of the ILM animators.