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www.postmagazine.com 18 POST JUNE 2015 t's been 23 years since Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park wowed audiences worldwide (it was the high- est-grossing film ever, until Titanic) and re-wrote the book on VFX, bringing to magical — and scary — life such di- nosaurs and prehistoric creatures as Brachiosaurus, Triceratops and, most memorably of all, the rampaging female killer T. rex. Now she's back — older, nastier, and hungrier than ever. And joining the T. rex on Isla Nublar's dinosaur theme park, now a luxury vacation destination com- plete with golf courses, five-star hotels and gourmet restaurants, is a brand new, genetically-engineered hybrid dinosaur called Indominus rex, created especially to boost park attendance. Of course, things go wrong — very wrong — when the creature, which can run at 30mph, escapes, threatens not just the resort's visitors, but such stars as Chris Pratt (velociraptor trainer), Bryce Dallas Howard (operations manager) and Vincent D'Onofrio (head of security). With apologies to the cast, of course the real stars of the movie are not the hu- mans but the blood-thirsty and terrifying creatures, now on the loose. Orchestrating all the junehem in the franchise's fourth installment is an unlike- ly figure, director Colin Trevorrow, who makes his studio film directorial debut with the reported $180 million produc- tion after Spielberg and co-producer Frank Marshall hand-picked the 38-year- old on the strength of his only other feature, the 2012 whimsical time-travel piece — and Sundance breakout — Safe- ty Not Guaranteed. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Trevorrow, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Derek Connolly (Safe- ty Not Guaranteed) and at press time was deep in the final stages of post production, talks about working with Spielberg and his invaluable input, the challenges involved in making the film, his love of post, the complex VFX, and why filmmakers and chefs have so much in common. You went from a small indie to a mas- sive studio production filled with tons of VFX and logistical hurdles. Just how big of a transition was it, going from Safety Not Guaranteed to this? "It wasn't as big a leap as you'd think. In the end, it's a small group of people trying to figure out how to make every moment feel real. The key difference is the number of concentric circles full of people spreading out around you. On a movie like Safety, which cost $750K, you have two circles. On Jurassic, you have about 20. Each department is 10 times as big. But they're all working togeth- er in a similar way, so by the time you reach the center, it feels familiar. The key differences on this film were the things that weren't there. Major characters never worked a day on-set. They were on computers at ILM. You had to imagine those performances. That takes a kind of belief system — we'd call it "faith-based filmmaking." You can't see it in front of you, it's just a promise. You make your decisions and trust that everything will be waiting for you on the other side." How much input and advice did Steven Spielberg give you on handling it? After all, it's been his baby for over two decades and he's shepherded every sequel in the franchise. "Steven was both extremely helpful and totally hands off. He showed me a level of professional respect that I hadn't necessarily earned yet. This film is a very singular vision, and he trusted in that. The creative circle was very small — Derek Connolly and I were given a remarkable amount of freedom to make our film, both from the studio and Steven himself. But when I needed him, he was there. The three of us worked on that script together for a long time. His story- telling ability is unrivaled, and there's just nobody who can do what he can do. But instead of holding that over your head and using it to assert some kind of pro- ducorial authority, he pushes you to be better. He challenged us to rethink and rebuild, both in the writing process and the editing room. He put us through the same gauntlet he puts himself through to this day. That's why his movies continue to be great. There's no complacency there. It's a constant push toward some- thing better." What sort of film did you set out to make, and how did you put your own stamp on it, considering it's the fourth in a famous franchise? "I never thought of it as a fourth in- stallment. It was always meant to be an original movie, set in the same world as Jurassic Park. There are elements that connect it to the first film, so it's tech- nically a sequel, but the whole thing felt like my own stamp. If anything, the challenge was finding how we could work in the connections to the earlier films without being derivative of them, which is hard because a sequel is inher- ently derivative." BY IAIN BLAIR I ON MAKING HIS STUDIO FILM DEBUT WITH A FRANCHISE SEQUEL COLIN TREVORROW: JURASSIC WORLD DIRECTOR'S CHAIR Pratt and Trevorrow on-set. The feature was shot on film.