See How The Animatronic Apatosaurus Was Created For ‘Jurassic World’
While there’s a lot of love out there forJurassic World, one can’t help but wish that the massive blockbuster sequel was a little more loyal to the originalJurassic Parkby having more practical dinosaur effects.
Digital effects bring most of the dinosaurs to life inJurassic World, but at least one pivotal scene made use of an impressiveanimatronic apatosaurus, for what is probably the most believable dinosaur sequence in the entire movie. And now you can find out how they brought the apatosaurus to life. Watch theJurassic Worldapatosaurus featurette after the jump!
Here’s the video showing howLegacy Effectscreated the apatosaurus:
Combining state of the art technology and good old-fashioned sculpting and painting, Legacy Effects was able to build the convincing dinosaur forJurassic World. And the practical creation of the apatosaurus really helped the audience latch onto it as a “real” creature. The fact thatChris PrattandBryce Dallas Howardwere actually able to touch the dinosaur in front of them added a legitimacy to the scene that might otherwise not have worked with a digital dinosaur.
My favorite part of this featurette is when the crew at Legacy Effects talks about their initial build of the apatosaurus, and howSteven Spielbergtold them that it needed to be much bigger. And so the team went back to work rescaling what they had done previously. Just goes to show you that as an executive producer, Spielberg had integral input on this sequel. (It was also his idea to add the hydraulic dropping crowd seats at the mosasaurus show.)
I must say, while it’s fantastic to see Legacy Effects put in this time of work to make a working apatosaurus animatronic for this one scene in the film, it feels like it’s not quite as impressive as the animatronic work that was done on the originalJurassic Park. The Tyrannosaurus rex, velociraptors and dilophosaurus did so much more in the original movie than the animatronic dinosaurs (there are some practical raptors in addition to the apatosaurus) ofJurassic World, and I wish that wasn’t the case.
Anyway, clearly audiences weren’t disappointed with how the dinosaurs turned out inJurassic World, because the film is the king of the box office, and we’re undoubtedly going to be seeing more dinosaurs sometime in the next few years.
What did you think of the animatronic apatosaurus? Did you want to see more practical dinosaur effects?
