Jurassic park - VFX review

Preface----
The year was 1996, the time when  VHS, Deck & the Big bulge CRT TVs were a luxury. I remember watching Jurassic park at my hostel TV for the first time. I remember each part of the movie and have a digital copy of it with me on my PC.

Jurrassic park is a masterpiece to this date in it's own glory & in the field of animatronics & Visual effects. but what it also had was a great setting and a storyline that connected to each other. the charachters were rememberable, you could point out most of the main charachters by their personality and laugh about them or argue about how they would have done things if they were in other roles. also the depth of a big story was present from start to finish.

As kids we all were amazed by what it had in it's sleeves. but what i didn't know was it was going to amaze me in the years to come and would shape my career! we watched the film, I started collecting info about dinos, and was looking forward for a sequel and attended computer classes. and when i so a program on Discovery channel which was called "mega movie magic" few years after, the dots connected! it showed what and how the effects were done and how the computer 3D graphics came into play. Animatronics were an interesting field but still it was the computer VFX that pulled me in. OK enough of how the dot's connected and lets get down to what I feel about the VFX on this movie.

Actual review-----

Movie - jurrassic park I
released - 1993
Director - steven spielberg
Cinematography - Dean Cundey
VFX - ILM (Industrial Light & Magic)
Animatronics - Stan Winston

The movies plot is a simple theme park gone wrong type which ends in a bad but still an entertaining way. Starting with a very calm trip to the island and presenting the main subjects of the film (of course the dinosaurs) in a mild manner at their hatching in the lab, the movie sets the stage for the main drama of what to come by showing you the scale of things.

Movie uses animatronics & computer generated imagery (CGI from here forward) to show the once live dinosaurs brought back to life. If you watch the movie you will notice that for the entire running time of the movie you get less than 20 minutes (rough estimate) of dinosaurs on screen.

Unlike movies nowadays which use visual effects from start to finish, the movie uses actual locations & mockups, adding to the realism of the movie. Originally the film was planned to have stop motion dinosours, but the tides changed when guys at ILM showed spielberg what they could do with CGI.

but still spielberg was careful enough to use CGI only when critically needed & also sought the assistance of stan winstons animatronics team. The Big T REX & parts of brachiosoures and also the sick triceratops and many other parts were animatronics. practical effects were used all over the film and the CGI scenes were very few & were pulled off perfectly above expectations for the time.

As of 2017 the film is still a masterpiece & a must watch by every fan of dinosaurs & VFX students.

in this clip you see the Animatronics T rex getting ready for it's take, and how much of work it needed to set this giant machine in place at the set. because the hydralics & the creature was huge, the set was built around it in a studio