Imagine a rainy day.
You are stuck in traffic.
You're throat's parched, and you sip on a glass of water.
Suddenly, thump, thump.
A percussive force ripples rings across the surface of your water.
And, even though it has been 57 million years since the K-T extinction event,
you can't shake the thought that you're about to be eaten alive by a Tyrannosaur.
Luckily, you know exactly what to do.
- (Noise) When you gotta go, you gotta go.
- Now that we have your undivided attention.
Welcome to 'Jurassic Park' as we break down the innovation, creativity and
straight up hard work that went into creating the T-Rex panic attack.
We'll explore how that one scene seem so heavily influenced CGI techniques and
the ripple effect it had on filmmaking overall.
(Sound) Sorry, I couldn't help it.
(Music)
In 1993 'Jurassic Park' brought dinosaurs to life on the silver screen with
a breathtakingly convincing, if not completely faithful adaptation of
"Michael Crichton's" bestselling novel of the same name.
However "Steven Spielberg" didn't pull off this feat by genetically manipulating dino
DNA but rather by assembling an A team of the era's premiere special effects houses.
"Industrial Light and Magic", "Stan Winston Studio" and "Tippett Studio".
Now most CineFix film fanatics are familiar with the first two
legendary shops, but unless you're a stop motion aficionado the name "Phil
Tippett" likely leaves you scratching your head.
But you're certainly familiar with his work.
"George Lucas" hired him to create the stop motion clay chess
scene on Millennium Falcon, in 'Star Wars, A New Hope'.
And rehired him to head up Industrial Light & Magic Animation,
to build the tauntauns and AT-ATs in 'Empire Strikes Back'.
In between the two films, "Tippett" co-created,
what would be the final significant advancement in stop motion technology.
In traditional stop motion, the animation appears unnaturally crisp.
This occurs because the motion of the object is actually a series of still
frames shot of motionless objects arranged in rapid sequence.
The result is undeniably impressive,
but doesn't pass as believable due to the lack of motion blur.
The momentary image fuzziness that occurs when an object moves
faster than the naked eye can track.
The animation comes off more human than human, or, in this case,
more skeleton than skeleton.
What "Tippett" co-created between 'Star Wars' and 'Empire',
was a process that approximated this real world motion blur called go motion.
Prior to "Tippett", motion blur technique consisted of rudimentary hacks
such as smearing petroleum jelly on a sheet of glass held in front of the lens.
Bumping the puppet moments before the still frame is snapped or
lately during the table or background set during exposure.
These painstaking processes create miniscule blurs during the individual
still shots.
That, when linked together, roughly scan to the eye as motion blur.
Very, very roughly.
However, "Tippett's" revolutionary Go motion elevated motion blur approximation
to new believability by applying computer-forward approach to film making.
"Phil's" team would create stop-motion puppets around a skeleton of rods attached
to motors linked to computers.
The animators would move the puppets to the positions they desired and
the computers would record the rod and motor orientation.
After sufficient puppet movements were made to execute the desired snippet of
an animation sequence, the puppets would be reset to their starting position.
"Tippett" aimed the still camera to shoot and
then triggered the computers to send playback data commands to the motors,
making the puppets move as the camera shot a still frame.
Since the puppets were going,
the motion was captured on film with an authentic blur.
Hence, Go motion.
Look, "Phil" was an inventive guy, except when it came to naming his (Bleep).
The success of "Phil's" new technique led him to forming his own company,
"Tippett Studios", which was hired to animate the ED-209 film 'RoboCop', and
won a primetime "Emmy" for its work on the 1985 CBS documentary, 'Dinosaur'!
Thus, it came as little surprise that "Spielberg" would tap "Phil" to
bring the T-Rex, Velociraptors, Gallimimus,
Brachiosaurus, and Dinosaurs to life for 'Jurassic Park'.
As shooting began on August 24, 1992, "Spielberg" had a clear plan of attack.
The dinosaurs would be created on a small puppetry scale by "Tippett" and
on a large animatronic scale by "Stan Winston".
Then in post production, Industrial Light and
Magic would composite the special effects footage together, as well as apply slight
digital painting effects, including enhancement of the motion blur.
"Stan Winston Studios" had already been hard at work starting in 1991 on a 25
month pre-production process.
By that point in his unparalleled career, "Mr.
Winston" was the unquestioned king of creature building.
He won Oscars for 'Aliens' and 'Terminator 2'.
He received nominations for 'Predator', 'Edward Scissorhands' and 'Heartbeat'.
And gained international renown for 1990's 'A Gnome Named Gnorm'.
That's "Gnorm" as in G-N-O-R-M.
The G is silent twice, it was a weird time.
With apologies to "Sam Neill," "Laura Dern," "Samuel L.
Jackson," and "Jeff Goldblum," "Spielberg" knew the dinosaurs
would be the true stars of the film.
And none loomed larger than the T- Rex in the paddock scene.
In the words of creature designer "Shane Mahan," the character had to feel 100%
real, or the film just did not work.
That's why "Spielberg" brought on renowned paleontologist,
"Jack Horner", to consult with the pre-production team.
Spielberg wanted the dinosaurs to be viewed as animals, not B movie monsters.
For the T-Rex,
"Stan Winston's" team initially built a small one-fifth scale sculpture.
Then sliced it into subsections, projected those subsections onto a wall.
Traced the outline and then recut the larger scale wood pieces,
which were then bolted to the existing metal armature.
The body was then lined with chicken wire, and fiberglass, and roma clay and
then was sculpted around the framework.
This process alone took 16 weeks.
The sculpture was then converted into molds into which foam latex was poured to
make the skin.
Simultaneously, the robotic skeletons were being built around pressurized valves
that push 60 gallons of hydraulic fluid a minute to move the beast.
When, at long last, the skin was fashioned over the skeleton and
painted, the result was over 13,000 pounds of Engineering and
artistry on a 20 foot tall by 40 foot long remote controlled frame.
In parallel to this process,
"Tippett" suggested to "Spielberg" that their unprecedented
undertaking of bringing dinos to life, required a new approach to storyboarding.
Rather than having a storyboard artist sketch out static comic book styles
images, "Tippett" proposed he make 3D clay motion animatics
to demonstrate the movement of the dinosaurs relative to camera.
"Spielberg" approved, and "Tippett" sent to work, and
almost immediately earned the ire of "Jack Horner".
"Jack" expressly made it known that dinosaurs should be represented
as birdlike, not reptilian, which is why he asked "Whose stupid idea was that?".
When he saw "Tippitt's" claymation animatic of the Velociraptor
flicking it's tongue like a cobra in the kitchen scene.
Fully chastised, "Tippitt" and team redoubled their efforts,
studying animal motion at zoos in order to perfect dinosaur motion.
>From tongues to talons, the final result is the animatics of the T-Rex
panic scene strike a striking similarity to what "Spielberg" eventually shot.
But not striking enough, as "Tippitt" would soon discover.
"Spielberg" appreciated the movement and
the rhythm of "Tippett's" early Go motion raptor tests, but
still was left unconvinced that he was looking at a dinosaur.
The sentiment was shared by ILM's visual effects pioneer,
"Dennis Muren", who asked "Spielberg" to allow him to experiment with
the technologies they had developed making the T-1000 in 'Terminator 2'.
Knowing that his animator "Steve Williams" had already been working in secret,
after hours, on exactly such a project.
(Laugh) "Dennis Muren", you sneaky (Bleep).
Using cutting edge computers from Apple and Silicon Graphics,
"Muren's" team were able to capture to motion of a herd
of Gallimimus with unprecedented realism except for one small problem.
They were skeletons.
Like the liquid metal, or
plastic To surface the T-1000 mimicked in 'Terminator 2'.
Bone was a far simpler surface to portray than the studded, craggy dinosaur skin.
It wasn't until "Spielberg" saw the screen test of "Steve Williams'"
fully fleshed CGI T-Rex in the harsh light of day.
That he knew his production in film making had just radically evolved.
>From then on, if a director could dream it, a computer could create it.
ILM techies had finally harnessed the power of the microprocessor and
making movies would never be the same.
When "Steven" showed "Mr. Gomotion" the footage,
:Phil Riley" responded- - 'I think I'm extinct.'
- Lucky for him,
it couldn't have been further from the truth.
"Spielberg" repurposed this line from "Malcom" in the movie.
- 'Don't you mean extinct?' - And repurposed "Tippett" and
his animators to work with "Muran's" ILM to oversee the CGI dino's body motion,
as they were still the preeminent experts.
With all the pieces in place, animatronics and CGI to replace the Go Motion.
At last, it was time to actually shoot the T-Rex panic attack.
The principal filming was shot on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
The cast and crew moved to Stage 16 on the Warner Brothers lot.
To work with the behemoth animatronic T-Rex.
The robotic creature took 12 men to operate and
only a little fake rain to ruin.
The fine-tuned calibration became unbalanced as the foam latex skin took on
water, resulting in the T-Rex getting a bad case of the shakes.
Shooting with stop as the T-Rex was dried off with massive fans and
shamis until he could move without quivering like a leaf.
While the scene features the T-Rex wreaking chaos on its environs
on set it was an orchestrated mechanical ballet.
"Michael Lantieri" was tasked with making the set respond to the T-Rexs' rampage
even if that particular shot the T-Rex was completely absent, and
would be added later via CGI.
He and his team rigged the (Inaudible) restraining wires to snap,
the fence posts caved towards the car, the jeep to crush like a sardine can, and
even the water cup to ripple, with practical on set effects.
The rippling water was just a cup they rigged to a guitar string
that was plucked by a man hiding beneath the jeep.
Movie magic.
Yet to "Spielberg's" eye the interaction of the CGI T-Rex
tossing around the real world jeep like a hockey puck still didn't scan.
As before ILM saved the day, the original jeep was digitally painted out and
replaced with a CGI jeep mocked up completely from scratch.
But this paled in comparison to the heavy lifting they were about to
undertake in post production.
After "Spielberg" saw an early cut of the film,
he felt confident enough to go direct 'Schindler's List', in what must be
the most dramatic directorial back to back total shift in history.
In his stead, he left one of his director buds, who knew a thing or
two about visual effects himself, "George Lucas".
"Lucas's" employees at ILM had,
of course, already scanned in "Stan Winston's" dinosaurs into their servers,
arranged it into their data with a program called Alias.
Used Soft Image 3D to assign joint placement on the dinos, rigged up
the digital armatures to manipulate those joints in motion, and then used ViewPaint
to illustrate the skin texture and map it over the data in the computer.
But now they had to do it for every CGI shot in the movie,
not just a two second screen test shorter than most modern day GIFs.
Whatever, I hate technology.
Initially, "Phil Tibbett's" team worked with ILM's animators and
were retrained to use the computer programs to clack away at the keyboards to
digitally illustrate the T-Rex's movement.
However, the traditionally hands-on "Tibbett" compared this to
animating while wearing boxing gloves.
By now, you know he's not one to give up on a problem and he devised an ingenious
solution, modify his go motion puppets into being dinosaur input devices.
With a few software tweaks, now when his team of animators moved the puppets,
it sent their positional data into ILM's computers
which then adjusted the graphically rendered CGI dinos accordingly.
With the method of animation settled,
there came came the logistical issue of putting the computers to work.
Processing the data into images.
Despite having assembled the most turbo-charged suite of computer graphics
in history, each shot in the T-Rex jeep chase sequence took 12 hours to render.
For reference, this clip,
where the T-Rex breaks through the log is seventy five frames long.
That was twelve hours to render.
You just watched it in what?
Like three seconds?
- Rude.
- After the CGI, itself, was rendered, it needed to be composited together
with live live action shots involving the actors.
The entire process of CGI building and
compositing lasted from May of 1992 to May of 1993.
But at long last, the scene was translated to film.
"Spielberg" was so impressed by the CGI that he changed the ending of the movie
mid production to feature the T-Rex battling raptors.
Saying the audiences would hate him if he didn't give them another
view of the film's superstar.
"George Lucas" was so impressed by the CGI
that he said it inspired him to finally make the 'Star Wars' prequels.
- God damn it.
- Because of the techniques the 'Jurassic Park' team came up with in the T-Rex
padock scene and how successfully they were executed, nearly every blockbuster
summer (Inaudible) relies on the blend of CGI and practical effects to this day.
But few, if any older begins the originator of them all.
When "Spielberg" and ILM revolutionized filmmaking
forever back in 1993 when CGI dinosaurs ruled the earth.
(Music)
(Sound) - We've digged down on dinosaurs enough
for today, but we hope you guys are happy to see new episodes of 'Art of the Scene'.
So subscribe to CineFix on the way out or if you had unsubscribed for spite,
now's a great time to re-subscribe.
And also let us know in the comments
below what you'd like to see on a future episode.
Thanks for watching.