Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011494
50 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 8 work into how that fit with photos we got with the Alexa mini," Vickery says. Production designer Andy Nicholson's team also built an entrance to the house and other partial sets that the ILM crew seamed together, fit with the aerial shots, and augmented. "We had a huge glass roof on the set, 40, maybe 50, feet long and 20 feet wide be- cause we needed to put the actors on top," Vickery says. "In post, we had to replace it." Indo Stalks The sequence puts young Maisie and Owen on top of the mansion's glass-domed library roof. They're trapped at one end. There's a sheer drop below. The Indoraptor is stalking, coming toward them. But, he's so heavy that as he steps out across the glass, it cracks, eventually breaks, and aer some scary bits, the dino drops through. "We rebuilt the practical set faithfully so we could have the interaction of the glass cracking and Indo falling through," Wuttke says. "It was a mix of practical photography supplemented with CG extensions and CG cracking glass. There are also fully CG shots. They had rainmakers on the stage, but when we added the dinosaur, we had to add additional rain around him, and the rain falls on him, as well. So we needed rivulets of water and drops of rain falling off him and bouncing on his hide." Wilson's texture artists helped with that. When the dinosaurs are in the rain, the artists provided drip maps that compositors synchronized with the water simulations to provide a final effect. "The process on this film was about trying to increase the quality of the dinosaurs beyond what we'd done previously," Wuttke says. "A lot of that happened through de- tailed texture maps and displacement maps." And More In addition to those two main locations enhanced with CG, the visual effects artists created some all-digital shots for the film. They replaced all but a small section of "main street" in the Jurassic World theme park, which had been shot in Hawaii. They created a CG lion, the CG environment, and a CG T. rex for a shot in- tended to be in a wildlife park in California. And, they created an all-digital sequence for the beginning of the film. "That was work by ILP in Sweden, managed by ILM," Vickery says. "J.A. again wanted to shoot a miniature, but even at one-third scale, which was the smallest I wanted to go, the submarine wouldn't fit in any tanks. So, we had a full-scale submarine built, and shot it on a soundstage with a 50-foot technocrane doing camera moves around it. Then, we added the digital water." Vickery points to a shot toward the end of the first act, though, as his most difficult. The volcano is erupting, but our heroes Claire and Owen and the rescued dinosaurs have been loaded onto a boat just in time. The boat is leaving, and they're looking over the stern at Isla Nublar. They see a lone Brachiosaurus working its way up the pier, consumed by smoke and steam, her long neck reaching out and above the smoky clouds. "It's an incredibly emotional moment in the movie," Vickery says. "It's a poetic shot, incredibly difficult technically. There's light coming through pyroclastic clouds. The sim- ulations took five days to run. The renderings another five days. The artists had to do multiple versions. It's truly a beautiful shot." About halfway through production, a trailer was released with one shot from this sequence. "J.A. got a tweet from someone who had screen-grabbed the shot," Vickery says. "The tweet said, 'Be very careful, J.A.'" Vickery continues: "J.A. came to me and said, 'I just got this tweet with a picture from Nublar. We've got to be very careful, Dave.'" "I said, 'What does that even mean?'" "He said, 'We've just got to be very careful.'" "So," Vickery adds, "this shot was tech- nically difficult, aesthetically difficult, and we needed to convey a subtle emotional message that J.A. wanted, plus someone on the Internet was telling us to be careful." Wuttke puts any fears to rest. "We don't harm the Brachiosaurus," he says. "We just see it disappear into a bunch of steam." Difficult shots aside, for Vickery, the best part of working on this film was the collab- oration between visual effects artists and those working with animatronics. That, and being part of film history. "We breathe life into our CG characters, but being able to work with Neal [Scanlan], who is a master of his art, and see how he breathes life into the animatronics was great. I've worked at ILM only two years, and being able to work for ILM on a Jurassic Park film is a really wonderful thing." Few film franchises have had the staying power to last through 25 years, and stay exciting. But, the combination of a Span- ish film director known for horror films, animatronics created by a master of that cra, and visual effects artists riding on the shoulders of 25 years of expertise and technological advances at ILM has resulted in a sensational film that can still stir the imagination of Jurassic fans. Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. A CG LION FACES A CG T. REX IN A CG ENVIRONMENT.