Content
Jointly with Reeve's narration, the documentary shows special effects scenes which reconstruct dinosaurs and their era, along with interviews with the most famous paleontologists at the time of the documentary shooting, including Jack Horner, Robert Bakker, Phil Currie, and Dale Russell.
After a short introductory sequence and the subsequent opening credits the film starts with the mating of Hadrosaurus, a species which in the documentary is identified as "hadrosaur", "the duck-billed dinosaur" or "duck-bill". The female soon lays a clutch of eggs that are eaten by a Struthiomimus , except for one. When the Struthiomimus eats the last egg it stole, it is then hunted and killed by a pair of Deinonychus . The remaining hadrosaur egg hatches and grows into a juvenile. While it is out grazing with its parents, it wanders off and it almost gets killed by a Tyrannosaurus rex , but the parents hear its cries and come to the rescue. While one of the parents looks after the juvenile, the other one faces the theropod and knocks it over with its strong, 2,000-pound tail. Once down, the Tyrannosaurus could not get up easily, so the herbivore is given a chance to escape. Once all three hadrosaurs are happily back together and the Tyrannosaurus is back on its feet, the latter defeatedly walks back into the forest.
Next, a herd of Brontosaurus is shown, busy eating leaves from tall trees. They use their long necks to reach high branches.
Next, a herd of Monoclonius is seen grazing. One member wanders off into the forest in search of flowers. Night falls and it tries to find the herd. It soon stumbles upon the remains of a killed hadrosaur and becomes wary. The Tyrannosaurus then ambushes it and bites hard on its back. The Monoclonius breaks free and stabs the Tyrannosaurus in the shin, which only infuriates the predator. The Monoclonius becomes cornered and is killed.
That night, all seems calm. Suddenly, an asteroid crashes into Earth and kills the dinosaurs. After that, a small mouse-like mammal (live-acted by an opossum) is seen climbing out of a hole in the ground, among the bones of a dead hadrosaur, signaling the start of mammals ruling the Earth.
The documentary also discusses the overgrowing popularity of dinosaurs, as well as the possibility of living cryptids such as the Loch Ness Monster and Mokele-mbembe.
Origins of the project
Immediately before working in the full length television documentary Dinosaur!, Phil Tippett had been working in an experimental sequence lasting ten minutes. [4] Conceived and created by Tippett with the help of Industrial Light & Magic stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs), [5] this original sequence was titled Prehistoric Beast and tried to improve go motion animation special effects techniques. The story of the short was simple: the chase and predation of a Monoclonius by a Tyrannosaurus . This short animated film was only released in specialized animation festivals in 1984, but it convinced Robert Guenette and Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order to transform it into a full-length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realise new sequences with other dinosaur species, like Hadrosaurus, Deinonychus , Struthiomimus and Brontosaurus , while stock footage from the 1979 film Meteor was used to depict an asteroid, the one supposed to have crashed into the Earth, causing the dinosaur's extinction. Adding all this new material to the material from Prehistoric Beast resulted in the 1985 Dinosaur! documentary.
The go motion animation technique was first used by Tippett in the Star Wars original trilogy of films (1977, 1980, 1983), especially in the second installment, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), animating the tauntauns and the AT-ATs seen in the film. In 1983, when his work with the original Star Wars trilogy was finished, Tippett went on to improve his animation technique by means of Prehistoric Beast (1984). He further improved the technique when his Tippet Studio was appointed for the special effects of Dinosaur! (first aired in 1985). Tippet's experimental work on those two films about dinosaurs helped with the animatics and CGI animated dinosaur sequences he made later for Jurassic Park (1993).
Shooting, airings and VHS releases
Dinosaur! was mainly shot in New York City and Los Angeles, and in some fossiliferous locations of the United States. Christopher Reeve was a "Dino fan" and demonstrated his enthusiasm for the shooting by flying with his own airplane to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and requesting himself the re-shooting of several scenes.
The special effects were mainly made in Phil Tippett's garage. [6] Tippett received assistance from Industrial Light & Magic stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs). [5]
Some excerpts from old films were shown in Dinosaur! in order to explain how popular dinosaurs were in cinema. One of those excerpts was a scene from King Kong (1933), in which a character pronounces the words "prehistoric beast", which is the title chosen by Phil Tippett for his experimental short. [7]
Dinosaur! was shown again on the Disney Channel during the 1990s before it went from being a premium pay channel on cable to a standard channel. It had a VHS release on May 5, 1993, by Family Home Entertainment.
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Willis Harold O'Brien, known as Obie O'Brien, was an American motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer, who according to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history," and is best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935) and Mighty Joe Young (1949), for which he won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for Mighty Joe Young (1949) with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien ; his first color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958); and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which featured a sword fight with seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 American science fiction monster film directed by Eugène Lourié, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, and Kenneth Tobey. The screenplay is based on Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story "The Fog Horn", specifically the scene where a lighthouse is destroyed by the title character. The film is about the Rhedosaurus, a dinosaur that is released from its frozen hibernating state by an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle and begins to wreak a path of destruction as it travels southward, eventually arriving at its ancient spawning grounds, which includes New York City.
The Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 American fantasy Western film produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen, directed by Jim O'Connolly, written by William Bast, and starring James Franciscus, Richard Carlson, and Gila Golan.
Dinosaur is a 2000 American live-action animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, The Secret Lab, and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 39th Disney animated feature film, the film was directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton. It features the voices of D.B. Sweeney, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Max Casella, Hayden Panettiere, Samuel E. Wright, Julianna Margulies, Peter Siragusa, Joan Plowright, and Della Reese. The story follows a young Iguanodon who was adopted and raised by a family of lemurs on a tropical island. After surviving a devastating meteor shower, the family moves out for their new home and befriends a herd of dinosaurs along the way while on a journey to the "Nesting Grounds". However, they face harsh circumstances with its Darwinistic leader while being hunted down by numerous predators, such as Carnotaurus.
Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation which incorporates motion blur into each frame involving motion. It was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett. Stop motion animation can create a distinctive and disorienting staccato effect because the animated object is perfectly sharp in every frame, since each frame is shot with the object perfectly still. Real moving objects in similar scenes have motion blur because they move while the camera's shutter is open. Filmmakers use a variety of techniques to simulate motion blur, such as moving the model slightly during the exposure of each film frame, or placing a glass plate smeared with petroleum jelly in front of the camera lens to blur the moving areas.
The Son of Kong is a 1933 American Pre-Code adventure monster film produced by RKO Pictures. Directed by Ernest Schoedsack and featuring special effects by Willis O'Brien and Buzz Gibson, the film stars Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack and Frank Reicher. The film is the sequel to King Kong, being released just nine months after and is the second entry of the King Kong franchise.
The Lost World is a 1925 American silent fantasy giant monster adventure film directed by Harry O. Hoyt and written by Marion Fairfax, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name.
Phil Tippett is an American movie director and Oscar and Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation. Over his career, he has assisted ILM and DreamWorks, and in 1984 formed his own company, Tippett Studio.
Tippett Studio is an American visual effects company specializing in computer-generated imagery (CGI) for films and television commercials. The studio has created visual effects and animations on over fifty feature films and commercials, garnering an Academy Award, four Clio Awards and two Emmy Awards. The company currently consists of approximately 150 employees, with offices located in Berkeley, California.
Dinosaurus! is a 1960 science fiction film directed by Irvin Yeaworth and produced by Jack H. Harris.
Creation is an unfinished feature film, and a project of stop motion animator Willis O'Brien. It was about modern men encountering dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals on an island. The picture was scrapped by RKO studio head David O. Selznick on the grounds of expense, and Merian C. Cooper, the studio producer who recommended the film's cancellation, considered the storyline to be boring, due to lack of action. The completed footage ran 20 minutes in length, although approximately eleven minutes of footage is all that survives today. Cooper later used some of the miniatures and dinosaur armatures and O'Brien's stop-motion animation techniques for King Kong.
Tyrannosaurus rex is unique among dinosaurs in its place in modern culture; paleontologist Robert Bakker has called it "the most popular dinosaur among people of all ages, all cultures, and all nationalities". Paleontologists Mark Norell and Lowell Dingus have likewise called it "the most famous dinosaur of all times." Paleoartist Gregory S. Paul has called it "the theropod. [...] This is the public's favorite dinosaur [...] Even the formations it is found in have fantastic names like Hell Creek and Lance." Other paleontologists agree with that and note that whenever a museum erects a new skeleton or bring in an animatronic model, visitor numbers go up. "Jurassic Park and King Kong would not have been the same without it." In the public mind, T. rex sets the standard of what a dinosaur should be. Science writer Riley Black similarly states, "In all of prehistory, there is no animal that commands our attention quite like Tyrannosaurus rex, the tyrant lizard king. Since the time this dinosaur was officially named in 1905, the enormous carnivore has stood as the ultimate dinosaur."
When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a two-hour American television program that first aired on the Discovery Channel on July 15, 2001. The show features the reign of the non-avian dinosaurs in America over the course of more than 160 million years, through five different segments, each with their own variety of flora and fauna.
Journey to the Beginning of Time is a 1955 Czechoslovak science fiction adventure directed by Karel Zeman. Produced in color using a combination of 2-D and 3-D models, the film uses a documentary style to show extinct animal species behaving naturally in their own environments. It was the first of Zeman's productions to include actors in conjunction with stop-motion and special effects. It won awards at the International Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim.
T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous is a 1998 American edutainment adventure film shot for the IMAX 3D format. The film is directed by Brett Leonard. Executive producer/co-writer Andrew Gellis and producers Antoine Compin and Charis Horton also make up the production team. Liz Stauber and Peter Horton star, alongside Kari Coleman, Tuck Milligan, and Laurie Murdoch. When a museum accident transports teenager Ally Hayden on an adventure back in time, she explores the terrain and territory of life-sized dinosaurs, even during a nose-to-nose encounter with a female Tyrannosaurus. The film is among the few IMAX films that are considered "pure entertainment", though it still is considered rather educational by the mainstream audience.
The Animal World is a 1956 American documentary film that was produced, written and directed by Irwin Allen. The film includes live-action footage of animals throughout the world, along with a ten-minute stop motion animated sequence about dinosaurs.
Prehistoric Beast is a ten-minute-long experimental animated feature film conceived, supervised and directed by Phil Tippett in 1984. This sequence is the first film produced by the Tippett Studio, founded by Tippett. Made with the go motion animation technique, scenes from Prehistoric Beast were included in the 1985 full-length documentary Dinosaur!, first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985.
The Dinosaurs! is an American television miniseries produced by WHYY-TV for PBS in 1992, featuring some of the then-modern theories about dinosaurs and how they lived. It aired four episodes from November 22 to November 25, 1992.
