Posted Mon Jan 14, 2019 at 06:40 PM PST by Steven Cohen
Ever wonder how filmmakers rehearse for a dinosaur attack? Check out this fun behind-the-scenes clip!
The Stan Winston School of Character Arts has posted a fun behind-the-scenes video showcasing some of the practical animatronic and stunt work done for Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Recorded back in July of 1996 at the Stan Winston Studio, the clip features one of the film's stunt crew members rehearsing the Dr. Burke death scene. Serving as a test victim for the movie's animatronic T-rex, the stunt performer is seen being lifted up and thrashed about by the dinosaur's massive bite -- offering an amusing showcase of the studio's impressive ingenuity.
Check out the clip below!
As detailed in a related blog post, Stan Wintston's team created two full-size partial-body T-rex puppets for the scene. Unlike the full-body version created for the first film, each rig used in The Lost World only reached from the head to mid-torso, covering just what viewers would need to see in the shot. Meanwhile, scenes that showed the creatures' whole body relied upon CG instead.
To provide an enhanced sense of forward and backward motion, the practical T-rexes were then mounted to motor-driven carts, allowing the team to move the heavy rigs across eighty feet of track on the set. And thanks to this freedom of motion, the crew could actually ram the animatronic puppets into the RV featured in the sequence, allowing the dinosaurs to physically smash up the vehicle for real.
"I think out of everything on this movie, we had the most fun smashing up the RV with the two T-rexes," said effects supervisor Shane Mahan "At first, we were hesitant, thinking that we had to be careful with the rigs. But it got to the point where we were just, 'Ah, to hell with it,' and we just demolished that trailer with the T-rex rigs. That scene wasn't faked. Those T-rexes were really slamming into that thing, breaking glass and shaking it. I think the scene really works because we went for it like that. You can tell that something truly violent is happening."
For more behind-the-scenes footage and various special effects and make-up tutorials, be sure to check out the Stan Winston School of Character Arts Facebook page and YouTube channel.
Source: Stan Winston School of Character Arts (Facebook), Stan Winston School Blog
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