To celebrate the release of Jurassic World, let's take a look at 12 things you probably
didn't know about the fourth film in the dinosaur franchise.
Although movies now tend to use visual effects and CGI rather than animatronics, director
Colin Trevorrow was keen to use an animatronic dinosaur in Jurassic World as a way of paying
tribute to special effects legends like Stan Winston who brought to life Jurassic Park's
T-Rex, Velociraptors and Brachiosaurus.
And, on top of that, Trevorrow thought an animatronic dinosaur would help the actors
achieve the right intensity in their interaction with the giant creature.
An animatronic Apatosaurus was created over a period of about three months by John Rosengrant
and his team at Legacy Effects.
The completed Apatosaurus was operated by Rosengrant and a team of four puppeteers,
thanks to whom the creature could lift and turn its head, breathe through its nose and
mouth, and blink and twitch its eyes.
In fact, Chris Pratt found the creature so life-like that it gave him goosebumps!
In tribute to Richard Attenborough and his character, John Hammond, who featured in the
first two movies as the creator of Jurassic Park, a memorial statue stands in front of
Jurassic World's Hammond Creation Lab.
Like in the original movie, in his hand, Hammond has a cane which features a piece of amber
on top with a mosquito inside, a nod to the fact that dinosaurs were brought back to life
through DNA found in amber-trapped mosquitos.
Jurassic World's Main Street was built from scratch in the enormous parking lot of an
abandoned Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.
The lot used was around the size of six football fields.
While filming was taking place in Hawaii, four hundred craftspeople constructed the
Main Street sets, which feature everything you'd find at a real theme park including
restaurants and stores complete with all kinds of theme park merchandise.
In the movie, Jurassic World visitors looking for something to eat have lots of restaurants
to choose from including Winston's Steakhouse, which is a nice nod to special effects legend
Stan Winston, who won an Oscar for his work on Jurassic Park.
The huge raptor arena, where Chris Pratt's character Owen works, was built for real using
steel and cement, rather than fake set walls.
Chris Pratt was blown away by the design team's work on the arena and said it felt strong
enough to hold real-life dangerous animals!
Many of the movie's interior sets including the Visitors' Centre, Dr Wu's genetics lab,
and the Control Room were built and filmed on six stages at Big Easy Studios, which is
located at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
Other big movies that have filmed at the Louisiana-based studios include Dawn Of The Planet Of The
Apes and Terminator: Genisys.
The Control Room, from which Bryce Dallas Howard's character Claire watches over the
park, was made as immersive as possible for the actors.
For example, while they were filming scenes there, the control room's wall of monitors
displayed real footage, a lot of which had been shot during the production.
Often a movie would place that footage on the monitors during post-production rather
than playing it live during filming.
Like the first three movies in the franchise, Jurassic World filmed in Hawaii.
Filming took place for just over 30 days on the islands of Oahu and Kauai, and began at
Honolulu Zoo, which was turned into Jurassic World's petting zoo.
The design team built a full-scale paddock for the movie's new genetically modified dinosaur,
Indominus rex, at Kualoa Ranch, which was also used for exterior locations such as Gyrosphere
Valley.
According to producer Patrick Crowley, Jurassic World's filmmakers wanted to avoid a repeat
of the hurricane that destroyed all the sets during filming of the first movie, Jurassic
Park!
So, on the first day of the shoot in Hawaii, the movie's crew took part in a spiritual
blessing ceremony, which they believed would pay homage to the sacred lands where they
were filming.
World-renowned palaeontologist Jack Horner has been a consultant on all four Jurassic
movies.
In fact, Horner's book "Digging Dinosaurs" was an important part of author Michael Crichton's
research when he was writing Jurassic Park, and the character of Alan Grant was partly
based on Horner.
Horner's current research focuses on dinosaur evolution and includes reverse-evolving a
dinosaur from a chicken, as birds are dinosaurs' closest descendants.
On Jurassic World, Horner worked with the filmmakers as a technical consultant, particularly
on the movie's new genetically-modified hybrid dinosaur, Indominus rex, and on designing
the educational displays in the park's visitor centre.
According to Jack Horner, when the original movie hit the big screen back in 1993, palaeontologists
were starting to discover that dinosaurs actually had feathers.
Nowadays, it's known that many carnivorous dinosaurs likely did have feathers; however
this is not reflected in the Jurassic films because, as Horner says, the dinosaurs 'have
to be consistent through all of the different movies.'
Well, there you have it, 12 things you probably didn't know about Jurassic World!
Now, let me know in the comments below, which is your favourite dinosaur from the Jurassic
movies?
And what would you like to see happen in a Jurassic World sequel?
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Thanks for watching!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!