Director Colin Trevorrow completed the modern Jurassic World trilogy in dramatic (and famous) fashion with Jurassic World Dominionwhich brought back many of the original characters and dinosaurs from the original Jurassic Park movies.
The Power the team did this through a combination of practical and visual effects, in keeping with the franchise’s storied tradition of mixing in-camera cinematic magic with groundbreaking digital animation techniques. With a visual effects team led by ILM’s David Vickery, Power he relied on the John Nolan Studio to create practical, animatronic creatures that added a physical component to the film’s menagerie.
Digital Trends spoke with John Nolan, who was the live dinosaur supervisor on the Jurassic World Dominionabout the work he and his team did on the film.
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Digital Trends: It’s so hard to see the divide between animatronics and CG in a film like this, so what was the scope of your team’s work on the film? How many dinosaurs did you end up creating?
John Nolan: Well, it was the most in any of the Jurassics [films] far. We made a total of 14 different species and 48 dinosaurs. Giganotosaurus, that was the biggest. That one was crazy.
What goes into building dinosaurs and getting them to look and move just right?
All the dinosaurs were actually designed by Kevin Jenkins, the production designer, and his team. And then, of course, there’s Steven Spielberg, Steve Brusatte, the paleontologist, and everyone else. So that job is easier for us.
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In terms of movement, we might look at previous films to animate dinosaurs walking and such, but there’s always some artistic license in our work. For example, if a dinosaur needs to walk around, we can look at the walk cycles from ILM and then have our puppeteers perform those walk cycles. In terms of eye, mouth, tongue and other movements, we can also have a little artistic license there and try some things. As long as the dinosaur is the right size, with the right amount of scaling, and moves in the right way, we can actually have a little fun with all these smaller features and try to make them as organic as possible.
How do you go about making the dinosaurs expressive in their facial movements and such?
Puppetry is tricky, but if you have a puppet and you have up to 12 puppeteers, it’s almost like an orchestra. The moment you pick up that doll, there are so many different looks you can get from her and so many different expressions. You give a sock to a good puppeteer and he can turn it into a character, you know? We worked with great puppeteers. Derek Arnold, our master puppeteer, is amazing. It’s a challenge, but it’s an exciting thing for us.
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You mentioned this earlier, but tell me about your work on Giganotosaurus. Still, it was one of the stars of the film.
Well, initially we had a list of dinosaurs and Giga wasn’t on it. After a year of work, we heard that Colin might want this dinosaur for some on-camera scenes. So we had about six months to build it, but because of the COVID and the schedule and that, we started losing time. The producers said, “We have three months to do this. Do you think you can put it off any longer?” What was good about Giga was that it was ultimately the work of three departments working together. We had visual effects, special effects and creature effects working as one department to create this character.
When we were trying to find stuff that existed in ’93, there wasn’t that much material. We basically started with a model from ILM — a sort of 3D model in the Z-Brush sculpting program — and we talked to Colin and worked out exactly how much he wanted to achieve in camera. He wanted it to be right in front of Gigi’s shoulders, going down the back of her neck.
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So what went into making a hands-on version of the dinosaur?
Using a robotic arm, we cut a 1:1 version of Giganotosaurus out of polystyrene, which became the basis of our sculpture. Then we coated the polystyrene — almost like icing on a cake — with oil-based clay, and 20 sculptors replicated all the details that exist on the CG model. Then we modeled it, skinned it, built the robot, and then we actually had a visual effects animation team on set controlling the puppet along with our live control. This allowed Colin to be able to shoot as much as possible with the camera and then just extend the back of the dinosaur which is not there in post production. It was a really nice way of working because it combined all three disciplines.
What about Therizinosaurus?
I like that one, but you know what? All we did was head on a stick.
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Really?
That. That’s what’s so good about the quality level of ILM and David Vickery and his team. We had a huge creature shop and built so many practical dolls, and their team would often look at what we were doing for reference. They would film our hands-on puppets and apply that live, puppet performance to their animated characters. So even though we didn’t do anything for that character, there was such a wonderful overlap and appreciation between the departments. We were influenced by them, and they were influenced by us. And I hope that you can see that in all the characters.
What about Pyroraptor?
We were asked to create an animatronic head for that, but not to use it in camera at all. But the reason they wanted to make an actual functional doll was so that the visual effects team could see the feathers and how they moved around the neck. Finola McLennan, our head of feathers and fur, had her team paint each individual feather to match Kevin Jenkins’ artwork. Each individual feather was entwined in a net that went onto the animatronic’s head. Even though it didn’t make it into the film, it was such an amazing tool for ILM to shoot.
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Moving on from dinosaurs to other made-for-film creatures, giant grasshoppers, what went into their creation?
Yes, they were disgusting. Just horrible. But seriously, it was nice, because we could take a 3D model and then 3D-print all the grasshopper parts. We had about 120 small, tiny parts. There were eight mandibles that could eat food. We had to keep all the animatronics away from the head though because Colin wanted a bunch of wet slime in his mouth. The head could move in all directions, the body could lift up and down and spin around, and the four wings could lift and flap.
In the movie, when they go crazy, we knew there was going to be a visual effects takeover, so they could improve our animatronics and spice it up with even more movement. So when you see the grasshopper puppet in the movie, it’s CG enhanced and it looks so good. We were very happy with it, because it’s great for Colin and John Schwartzman [the director of photography] to have something that I can actually shoot and light, and for the cast to interact with. It’s another great crossover between departments.
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Which scene was the most challenging for your team? Was there a scene that had more animatronic characters than others?
There were eight practical dinosaurs on the Malta scene. What a crazy scene that was. For Lystrosaurus, there were five puppeteers in a box under the floor. There were three people painted with visual effects around the Dimorphodon. We had someone with a hand raised on the back of Stygimoloch, which looked like someone was trying to give birth to a cow. You can see it on the “Making Of” DVD.
But really, I’d like to know if people think some of the characters are CG or in-camera, because that’s part of our job: all we care about is that they believe in the character and believe that it’s real.
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Many elements have been brought back from the original Jurassic Park for this movie. What was that experience like for you and your team?
To receive the baton for the dinosaurs in the Jurassic movie is simply an incredible honor. You look at the artists and studios that came before, and it’s just amazing. To have Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern come into the creature shop and touch those dolls and tell us their anecdotes from filming in ’93. — it was an incredible honor to be given the opportunity to do this. This is what many of us got into this business for.
Directed by Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World Dominion is now available on 4K, Blu-ray and Digital On-Demand in a special extended edition.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn