DGA Monthly

A U G U S T 2 0 2 6 I 1 5 SCREENPULLS: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT This grove of trees was an unbelievable location in Kualoa Ranch, very close to where the original visitor center of Jurassic Park was shot. The Indominus doesn't fit into the frame. It's all aided by the amount of sunlight pumping into the depth of that environment, which allows the foreground to have some really deep blacks in it. We shot with the gyrosphere there as a reference but had the kids upside down on a gimbal on a stage in New Orleans, and then laid it in. We could do anything with the gyrosphere on the stage. The camera is always moving. If it was ever static, Steven would have written to me, "Why are these people just standing around? What's happening?" 7 The gyrosphere isn't moving so we were on location for this. Again, you barely see the Indominus here. Anytime you can see all of it, it would suddenly start to feel small. We were usually on 65 to 85mm lenses on the dinosaurs, or 50mm for big wides — anything wider, they started to look snouty. We would always compress to make people feel closer to them. It's a movie about corporations eating our dreams so I color timed with a bluish-green hue — cooler than the original Jurassic Park — but I actually put a little bit of warmth back into the 4K that you can see now. 8 This was on location. The underside of Indominus is all black and his eyes are in shadow. I think that embracing the darkness was a big part of what made this work. If it was perfectly lit, I would probably find it unbelievable. We had the gyrosphere lifted up and our doubles were able to fall right out of it and hit the ground. It's a one-second shot — Steven would say, "If you cut to the next scare fast enough, they'll never see your footprints in the snow." So, we cut into continuous movement of the ball smashing back down on the real kids, and you don't have time to register that maybe these are stunt doubles. There's a fast, emotional brother- protecting-brother moment here, keeping it on story, even in action. 9 Zach helps his brother and the kids run out of frame as Indominus smashes the gyrosphere and roars after them. I remember Nick starting to take care of Ty and making him feel more comfortable. So, what was happening with the characters was happening with the actors. This is one of those shots that could have looked like a composite but Tim Alexander, our visual effects supervisor, would drop rectangular greens behind the actors, even though we were on location. They're running with their hair and rustling clothes and he didn't want to have to rotoscope them. It made all the difference to have the same light on them and the plates. In every moment, our mission was to have the only VFX element be the dinosaurs. Everything else was practical, which is what made it work. 10 SHOT TO REMEMBER Continued from page 13 — Director Colin Trevorrow on Jurassic World. See more images and text from this article online at www.dga.org.

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