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www.postmagazine.com 19 POST JULY 2018 SUMMER MOVIES THE DINOSAURS MOVE OUT ILM ARTISTS TAKE A DARKER PATH INTO THE JURASSIC FRANCHISE BY BARBARA ROBERTSON hree years ago, in the 2015 film Jurassic World, the dinosaurs escaped from the eponymous theme park on Isla Nublar. They've been living a feral life since. But now, the dinosaurs are in danger. If a volcano erupting on their idyllic island weren't enough, their rescue crew has ulterior motives. Despite the efforts of Dinosaur Protection Group founder Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and former dinosaur trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), some very greedy people plan to auction the dinosaurs at a mansion in Northern California. That is, all the dinosaurs except Blue, the Velociraptor Owen had trained in Jurassic World. The profiteers have other plans for Blue. But, the captured dinosaurs have their own plans, too, as we see in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It's the fifth film in the Jurassic se- ries, landing on the 25 th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's 1993 Jurassic Park. Directed by JA Bayona, a Spanish film direc- tor known for the horror film The Orphanage, the drama The Impossible and the fantasy drama A Monster Calls, this entry into the Jurassic series is darker and scarier, as the dinosaurs move off their island and into California — into a child's bedroom in California, in fact. Industrial Light & Magic was the lead visual effects vendor for the film, with David Vickery supervising ILM artists and subcontractors while working out of ILM's four-year-old London stu- dio. Artists in ILM London, Vancouver and San Francisco did the bulk of the work on the film, with subcontractors ILP, El Ranchito, Scanline and Image Engine pitching in. NVisible handled on-set graphics and helped in post, as well. The filmmak- ers shot Fallen Kingdom in Hawaii, at Pinewood Studios in the UK and in other UK locations. "One reason ILM set up the London studio was to be close to European filmmakers, with so many films shooting and prepping in the UK," Vickery says. "It made sense to hub this film out of London, with Colin Trevorrow [writer] in the UK and JA prepping here as well. We could be hand in hand with them throughout the process. It made their lives so much easier." Also based in Europe is Spanish cinematographer Oscar Faura, as well as production designer Andy Nicholson in the UK and creature effects artist Neal Scanlan. Scanlan's team created the animatronics for the film. "It was really important for JA to have lots of animatronics," Vickery says. "There's a lot of nostal- gia around animatronics and the way you remem- ber films that feature animatronics. Jurassic Park was a huge part of JA's life as a teenager and as a filmmaker. So, Colin and JA wrote scenes into Fallen Kingdom to feature animatronics and show them at their best." ANIMATRONIC HYBRIDS Scanlan's team built full-size animatronics for the T-rex, Blue, and baby Blue; animatronic parts of a new, hybrid dinosaur called an Indoraptor; and busts for several other dinosaurs. "Neal and I sat down early on to figure out how to work together and bring our strengths to the table," Vickery says. "He was aware of the limitations of his craft, and I was aware of the limitations of digital. Certainly, when you have a physical dinosaur, everybody reacts differently than if you have a ten- nis ball on a stick. And, there are places where the actors have to touch dinosaurs." Often, the full-body animatronic dinosaurs are ly- ing down. When they fight, run and otherwise move a lot, they're CG. In addition to creating CG dinosaurs, the visual effects team touched up the animatronics. "We never went into the process expecting every animatronic we shot to stay animatronic," T ILM served as lead VFX vendor on the film.