Jurassic Park: Before and After

I watched the first Jurassic Park film again the other day, and while it’s still a great, fun movie, a lot of the CG effects are starting to show some age. Like those gallimimus dinosaurs that run around in a herd – those things look pretty fake by today’s standards. But while some of the effects are aging, others hold up remarkably well, and here’s the thing: there are a bunch of shots on display in this video that completely fooled me. For example, I didn’t realize that the wide shot of all the dinosaurs in the lake with the characters in the foreground was such a massive composite. I thought they had just shot the actors sitting on a hill in the foreground with a lake in the background, and then they dropped some CG dinosaurs into it. But man, there was barely anything in that shot that was real! Or how about the raptor sniffing the ladle? I thought that was an animatronic suit! This video really blew my mind, and I guess I’m kinda eating my words now about the special effects not looking as shiny anymore.