Fact Finder - Movies

Fact
Jurassic Park and the CGI Breakthrough
Category
Movies
Subcategory
Hollywood
Country
USA
Description
In 1993, Steven Spielberg’s 'Jurassic Park' fundamentally changed how Hollywood viewed digital effects. Originally, the dinosaurs were supposed to be created using 'go-motion' (a refined version of stop-motion). However, a small team at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) created a digital test of a T-Rex skeleton running. When Spielberg saw it, he was so impressed that he pivoted to CGI for all the wide-range movement shots. Despite its reputation for digital wizardry, the film only contains 14 minutes of dinosaur footage, and of that, only 6 minutes are CGI; the rest are massive animatronics built by Stan Winston. This seamless blend of practical and digital effects was so convincing that George Lucas reportedly realized during a screening that the technology finally existed to make his Star Wars prequels, signaling a new era for big-budget filmmaking.