Movie Theater Jurassic Park!

[Direct Assault]

The first Jurassic park is on right now. Is it me or does the visuals in this movie still blow minds! Is damn near 20 years old and looks a lot better than these stupid cookie cutter movies we have had in the past 5-6 years! Saw 6? Are you joking?!? Most movies suck these days. Im browsing the Hide and im getting side tracked by a 19 year old movie.

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

It was a watershed in visual effects, using a combination of practical model and animatronic work as well as ground breaking computer graphics. To this day some of those wide shots of the CG T-Rex hold up very well and considering it was made LONG before the technology we take for granted today. Nowadays character animators have powerful and fast systems for animating complex characters like dinosaurs, riggers can do muscle and skin simulations resulting in extremely realistic jiggling and flexing flesh. FX animators (like me!) use complex fluid and rigid body dynamics to believable dust, crashing trees, splashing mud, blood, etc. Lighters can use IBL systems to extract the lighting intensity, color and direction from the set after the fact, simulate the way light scatters inside flesh and how it bounces around the environment. And finally, compositors have unrivalled power to assemble and finesse all of these elements together into a final shot. It's a testament to how talented the guys at ILM were who were making those dinosaur shots, like shooting 500m targets with .22LR and iron sights while these days we've got scoped .260Rem

PS. There were a total of 80 VFX shots in Jurassic Park that used CG. We do that much in a week nowadays. In fact, the first "Hobbit" film has close to 2000 VFX shots, many of them 100% CG. Just sayin'

 

[Johnny Sasaki]

Re: Jurassic Park!

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's one of my top 5 favorites.

And Jurassic Park 4 is scheduled for 2014 I believe.

 

[tbird1960]

Re: Jurassic Park!

I especially like the part where the lawyer was eaten while in the outhouse. Perfect place for them.

 

[Ghogs Nightmare]

Re: Jurassic Park!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dogtown</div><div class="ubbcode-body">It was a watershed in visual effects, using a combination of practical model and animatronic work as well as ground breaking computer graphics. To this day some of those wide shots of the CG T-Rex hold up very well and considering it was made LONG before the technology we take for granted today. Nowadays character animators have powerful and fast systems for animating complex characters like dinosaurs, riggers can do muscle and skin simulations resulting in extremely realistic jiggling and flexing flesh. FX animators (like me!) use complex fluid and rigid body dynamics to believable dust, crashing trees, splashing mud, blood, etc. Lighters can use IBL systems to extract the lighting intensity, color and direction from the set after the fact, simulate the way light scatters inside flesh and how it bounces around the environment. And finally, compositors have unrivalled power to assemble and finesse all of these elements together into a final shot. It's a testament to how talented the guys at ILM were who were making those dinosaur shots, like shooting 500m targets with .22LR and iron sights while these days we've got scoped .260Rem

PS. There were a total of 80 VFX shots in Jurassic Park that used CG. We do that much in a week nowadays. In fact, the first "Hobbit" film has close to 2000 VFX shots, many of them 100% CG. Just sayin' </div></div>
.
WTF is that in English? Other than stuff that looks cool

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Ghogs Nightmare</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
WTF is that in English? Other than stuff that looks cool </div></div>

Check out the analogy I used:

<span style="font-style: italic">It's a testament to how talented the guys at ILM were who were making those dinosaur shots, like shooting 500m targets with .22LR and iron sights while these days we've got scoped .260Rem </span>

 

[Ghogs Nightmare]

Re: Jurassic Park!

I saw the analogy you were refering to. Was wondering more in regards to the "ps" portion, or were you just meaning special effects sorta things in general?

 

[High Binder]

Re: Jurassic Park!

I hate the movie but I do like watching it. The effects are great but the story with the little dipshit kids and most of the rest of the cast makes it hard to watch.

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Ghogs Nightmare</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I saw the analogy you were refering to. Was wondering more in regards to the "ps" portion, or were you just meaning special effects sorta things in general? </div></div>

Oh, well a "shot" is just a scene where the camera doesn't change. In a lot of action movies they string together lots of quick shots, but there are also very long single shots like that famous shot in "Goodfellas" where they take the back entrance and the camera just follows along. In "Jurassic Park" there were 80 shots that used some form of computer graphics for visual effects (VFX). And the technology back then was so crude that it still took a large team of artists and technicians a couple years to make those 80 shots. Nowadays, we have advanced so much that the same number of people can crank out far more advanced imagery quicker, but we almost never see a film with only 80 VFX shots anymore. For big VFX films like "The Avengers" you've got close to 2000 shots - that's why it takes more than one VFX studio to do all of the work on the film and why the credits are just a sea of artists and technicians.

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BillPrudden</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Within your profession, what do guys think are the groundbreaking special effects films? I'm wondering about things like the airplane crash in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondant or the exteriors in Outland, if those even qualify to you all...
</div></div>

There's still a lot of respect for the pre-digital folks who did amazing work without the flexibility we have now. Some of the real ground breaking work people still talk about are:

- Willis O'Brien's work on "King Kong"
- Ray Harryhausen's Hydra or Skeleton Army in "Jason and the Argonauts"
- The ID creature in "Forbidden Planet"
- The amazing miniature work in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
- The first successful use of motion control cameras on "Star Wars"
- The Go-Motion rig developed by Phil Tippet et al to animate the stop-motion dragon in "Dragonslayer" with realistic motion blur
- The computer graphics work on "Tron" and "The Last Starfighter"

The list goes on and on.

 

[Johnny Sasaki]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Got any info on the new Jurassic Park dogtown?

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Nope, no info on another Jurassic Park film yet.

There are really two gold standards when it comes to visual effects:

- did you even notice them in the first place

- do they still hold up 10+ years later.

One of the best compliments you can get in this industry is "I didn't know that was visual effects?" If we do our job well, the audience has no idea that what they're seeing isn't reality. Obviously watching Transformers battle it out in Chicago is one thing, but some films use VFX very subtly to make the imagery fit what the director is going for. Take, for example, the work we did on "Shutter Island" back in 2009:

<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rxMPgjhVYuQ&hd=1"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rxMPgjhVYuQ&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"> </embed></object>

The other issue is whether the quality of the imagery holds up over time. Technology is a very effective anachronism so often the most advanced tech in 1985 looks incredibly dated by 2005 and this is especially true with computer graphics. One of my earlier posts in this thread I talked about the leaps and bounds in VFX technology we've made over the last 15 years, it's very quickly making stuff from the mid-90s look dated. But very good quality VFX are ones that still hold-up all these years later. Take for example the bugs in 1997's "Starship Troopers." Yeah, shitty movie, but even to this day those bugs look pretty damned real and the way they rip apart is still pretty solid. Making them nowadays wouldn't be such a big deal, but back then they had such rudimentary animation, lighting and rendering tools. Like my analogy, it's like they were shooting .22LR accurately to 500m while now we make the same shots with .260REM - it says a LOT about their achievement.

 

[Family Guy]

Re: Jurassic Park!

This is one of my favorite movies of all time I was just watching number 3 last night and couldn't believe how much better the first film was. It was truly ground breaking for its time. They originally wanted to use a different style for Jurassic park 1 almost like a claymation type process but Spielberg decided that it was worth the risk to go with the state of the art CG with a combination of live anamotranic puppets for all the closer shots. This movie scared the shit out I me when I was 4 or 5 but I've grown to love it.

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Yup, at the time animatronics (full scale remote controlled puppets) and stop-motion animation had pretty much reached their limits technologically and computer graphics was breaking through through those limits, but it was still in its infancy at the the time. It was one thing to create the water tentacle in "The Abyss" or a liquid metal person in "Terminator 2", but a realistic dinosaur was a huge challenge.

And at the time, the problem wasn't just the primitive nature of animation software, but there were more stop-motion and classic animators available and very few CG animators. So ILM & Phil Tippett came up with a brilliant hybrid solution...

<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VErGD1A_iwA&t=3m37s"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VErGD1A_iwA&t=3m37s" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"> </embed></object>

 

[Family Guy]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Stop motion animation thats what it's called couldn't remember the name but remember they showed Spielberg a few shots in this style and he wasnt happy with it for good reason. Yea T2 was also groundbreaking at the time

 

[leadbullet]

Re: Jurassic Park!

listen to Dogtown, you'll learn cool stuff and some proper English.

 

[Family Guy]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Yea could use a grammar lesson. Plus using an iPhone really doest help

 

[5RWill]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Watching it right now, seem to forget how good this movie is. And yes the special effects are pretty spectacular especially considering the time.

 

[khall540]

Re: Jurassic Park!

I can remember when I was 6 or 7 years old waiting at home for mom to come home from the store when this movie came out on VHS! Stayed up all night watching it twice, I loved it so much. Then for Xmas that year I got a bunch of the action figures and toys. Wish I had hung on to them now some 20 years later.

 

[Dogtown]

Re: Jurassic Park!

Well, that makes me feel old