Jurassic World: VFX and what everyone is talking about

Jurassic World released worldwide on June 12^th and just in a week’s time it has made over $181M and $200M. After the stupendous success of Jurassic Park, the new movie had a lot of expectations to live up to. It was a huge leap since Jurassic Park was recognized of creating the milestone over the computer realm. Jurassic Park was huge and the film marked the introduction of the history of visual effects.

Creative Heads behind the Scenes

For Jurassic World, Director Colin Trevorrow returned to ILM together with VFX assisted by Alexander. Colin Trevorrow brought together the original key cast member to function as consultants. In his list were Muren, Phil Tippett, Rick Carter and Gary Rydstrom. Alexander added saying, “ A lot of that came from Colin; he wanted to honor the original while still making something new and it was fantastic to have Murren, Tippet and other original key members to offer advice on the VFX. Alexander recalled a day when they were planning a scene during which “we had miniatures and toy dinosaurs and Phil was jumping up on a table.”

Another noteworthy artist is Muren of course, having won an incredible nine Oscars for VFX for mega success movies like The Empire Strikes Back, E.T: The Extra Terrestrial, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. He introduced the screen to the most visually enticing dinosaurs; a memory that is etched in the mind of every audience.  It was brought together using animatronics and fully computer generated creatures. Muren remembered that while working on Jurassic Park at Lucas Industrial Light & Magic VFX house, ‘George came by, and I said I was hoping that we could do something like 2001: A Space Odyssey. George said ‘you don’t know it, but you’re working on it.’

That very year, Tim Alexander embarked on his first job at Disney’s former Buena Vista Visual Effects. He and his team went to watch Jurassic Park, Tim exclaimed “We were blown away; we weren’t doing anything remotely like what ILM was doing.” Never did Tim expect 20 years later that he would be recognized as the VFX Supervisor for Jurassic World. Even before this, he had already won a BAFTA Award for the best VFX for The Perfect Storm and nominated for the Oscars for The Lone Ranger.

Use of VFX

The whole substance of the film has always been the use of dinosaurs. The team knew they had to do something spectacular to live up to that glory. The dinosaurs used in Jurassic World’s are mostly CG along with a fewer number of animatronics creatures. According to Alexander, the biggest chance with this film was the way they made use of motion capture to present the raptors’ performances. “They were a good size- human size. We had tryouts and we cast people from ILM as each dinosaur. We gave them a tail and motion capture.” For the movie, the team made use of an advanced muscle firing system to fire and squeeze the muscles at the focal points.

In the film, they have introduced another new dinosaur, Indominus Rex which is hybrid created with the use of the DNA of multiple species. Its nickname at ILM was D-rex before its name came into formation. The creature was nearly 50 feet long, weighs few tons, run about 35 runs an hour, have long arms and tail armored with spikes. The artists at ILM referred animals like rhinos, hippos, elephants and ostriches to achieve the overall look, behavior and movement of the animal.

Muren recollects how he advised the VFX team to keep it earthy to make it look realistic. “They are not monsters, but animals. So we have to get the right weight and gravity. Also there were little things we did on the first film to make them scarier, such as adding a little light in the mouth so you can really see their teeth.” He further says to his team, “I thought the guys did a great job,” he said “They look amazingly big and have an incredible sense of power and weight. The motion is more animalistic than anything before.”

As far as the story line of the Jurassic films was concerned, Muren remarked that the previous tales might seem more relevant to people today. “This could be going on right now with genetic engineering,” he said. “I don’t see that not happening. There are people doing things they probably shouldn’t.”

Audiences’ Reviews

Jurassic World was one of the most searched movies of the year and it blew all expectations. Millions of fans are engaging in endless congratulatory social posts. On the other side, many viewers are fuming over a line made in the movie, which goes like this, “The Pachys are out of containment. Phonetically these words sounded like a racist slur to many.

Here are some of the tweets of some of the fans:

-And they put “the pakis are out of containment” in the script and at no point anyone said hold on

-Fam how you gonna be saying “the pakis are out of containment” in one of the biggest movies ever

-Boycott Jurassic World!: https://t.co/cZyetXQYaZThe BNP/UKIP/Racist Dave voted this movie five stars in the first five minutes man!

Nevertheless, the movie is riding high on success. In just one week, it has broken all box office records. For those that didn’t watch the movie, must we say? It is a one hell of a movie.

Anoop Chaphekar

Last updated: October 4, 2024

A Fine Arts Graduate, Anoop brings 20+ yrs experience in the VFX and Animation industry. He brings his expertise in Animation-VFX for Television Commercials to Visual Effects for feature films, TV and Web series.