Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011494
42 cgw | e d i t i o n 3 , 2 0 1 8 J U R A S S I C E V O L U T I O N : 2 0 1 5 the aviary, the final battle, and all the scenes with Indominus rex. Those in Singapore used assets from San Francisco and plate photography to create the gyrosphere sequence. The Pteranodon attack happened in Vancouver. Meanwhile, ILM's London-based team was on other films. In addition, Alexander, with the help of Tony Plett, supervised work at Hybride and Image En- gine for this film. Hybride created the graphics and did environment work, and Image Engine created scenes with raptors when they weren't with Indominus. "We sent raptors that we built and painted in San Francisco to Image Engine, the models and the textures," Alexander says. "It was amazing how very accu- rate and similar the turntables they created were to ours. Glen [McIntosh] did all the motion capture at ILM in San Francisco, sent that to Image Engine, and they applied the motion to the raptors. That way, we could keep the look and action consistent." The crew size totaled close to 500 at all the facilities. "When you look at the num- ber of shots – 1,000 visual ef- fects shots broken down among the facilities – we were pretty efficient," Alexander says. The second film Alexander had worked on at ILM was The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the second in the series. For that feature, he had composited several sequences, including one in which the hunters in jeeps attempt to capture dinosaurs, shots of the Pter- anadon with the sun behind at the end, the classic shot of Stegosaurus walking through a forest, and the unforgettable shot of a trailer going over the edge of a cliff. "It was exciting to supervise this one," he says. "To figure out how to bring the series into the future, and having all these people at ILM who had been on the original was super cool. Geoff Campbell, for example, modeled the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park and returned to ILM to supervise the modeling of the dinosaurs for Jurassic World. Dennis would come to dailies. We would look at lighting from the original, and Dennis would explain why they did that. He'd give us suggestions. It was fantastic to have that secondary eye. When he liked something, he'd say, 'This is awesome. I've never seen anything like that before.' " For McIntosh, it's hardly sur- prising that his favorite scene in this movie is the big epic battle at the end. "I finally got to do what I had wanted to do in the third film," McIntosh says. "As good as that one was, I got to make this one even more epic, which was really fun. There's a scene in this battle where the T. rex crashes through the skeleton of a Spinosaurus. It was Colin's way of giving the T. rex revenge because the Spinosaurus had beat the T. rex in Jurassic Park III. I asked if I could animate that scene. I love the T. rex. And, I loved get- ting back at the Spino. I hope the audience cheers and applauds." He needn't have worried. Whether or not people in the audience are fans of the series enough to understand and cheer that particular scene, the rush to the ticket office for this film should gladden the hearts of the filmmakers and, espe- cially, the visual effects artists who worked on this film. ■ Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. Petting Zoo In the movie, young visitors to the Jurassic World theme park can ride baby Triceratops and Gallimimus dinosaurs in a pet- ting zoo area. To film the sequence, the crew had gray-suited stunt actors playing the baby dinosaurs crawl around on their hands and knees in a warehouse in Hawaii. "I would meet with the stunt actors and give them ref- erence of baby rhinos," says Animation Supervisor Glen McIntosh. "Rhino babies are ungainly. Cute and juvenile as opposed to the adults." The kids sat on the actors' backs in English saddles padded with foam and rode around while the actors tried to remember what they had learned in McIntosh's baby Tricer- atops school. Later, ILM would replace the actors with the CG dinosaurs. "The actors really tried to act like cute baby dinosaurs, which was hard to define," McIntosh points out. "We would adjust the saddles and carve the foam so they could try many different movements. It was a fun time, to be as creative as possible. It probably looked very weird, though." –Barbara Robertson