Jurassic Park

The Film Society at Staffordshire University, during the first few weeks of the first semester of 2014/ 15, showed the film Jurassic Park

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Made in 1993, Jurassic Park was seen as a success after it broke records at the box office making over $47 million in it's opening weekend. The film held the title of being the highest grossing film for 4 years (IMDB, 2015).

The film has a high usage of post production using animatronics and CGI to have dinosaurs within the film, However it is estimated that within the film there is only 15 minutes of the film which contains footage of the dinosaurs, 9 minutes of Stan Wilson's animatronics and 6 minutes of ILM's (Industrial Light and Magic Company) CGI. Stan Wilson's animatronic dinosaur weighed over 12,000 pounds. This meant that all of the crew and actors had to undertake health and safety tests before going on set.

To create the effects of the dinosaurs both miniature and full sized dinosaurs were made. The creation of these took 2 years with Stan Wilson starting his work in early 1991. These animatronic figures were then both superimposed and shot with the actors, where required. It was put together by the team at ILM which was headed by Dennis Muren.

Throughout the film, stunt doubles were used when physically challenging stunts were required, one of these is when Lex hung off a ledge within the film. This was performed by the double, and they accidentally 'faced up'. This was only noticed within the post production element of the filming process. The editor then was tasked with superimposing Ariana Richard's face on to the body of the stunt double.

Editor Michael Kahn is believed to have had a rough cut ready just a couple of days after filming was completed. His previous work has been credited highly including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Poltergeist and Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

Jurassic Park is well edited, using sound and visuals to create emotion. There's a high usage of cut to motion throughout the film. The 1990's was a important decade for post production. Electronic CGI had came advanced greatly and films were beginning to be edited at a quicker pace. This revolution in digital compositing, CGI and animatronics began in the late eighties but it quickly became a trend of feature films such as Terminator, Forrest Gump and Jurrasic Park. This was the beginning of a gold mine and  a new way of thinking for film makers.