Phil Tippett on Animatics:
"Storyboards don't show you any of the temporal cadences, the sequence, the timing of it. And the animatics allowed us to block out the entire sequence so that Steven on the set would have this template that he could use, to show the actors, 'this is the way it's gonna look'."

Phil on realism:
"Steven's directions from the very first day was that he knew that there were things with big pointy teeth chasing people and trying to eat them, monster movie on his hands. I mean, that was a given but he didn't wanna have these things portrayed as monsters. He wanted to bring them back down to a naturalistic level and he wanted them portrayed as animals. So we spent a great deal of time working with the paleontologists and doing a lot of field work."

Jack Horner on dinosaurs:
"The whole idea is to get people to look at dinosaurs more like birds than as reptiles. And one of the scenes, some of the model-makers had made a tongue come out like a lizard or a snake."
Phil: "I came up with this routine for the raptors where they, they were genetic mutations to a degree so I thought, we'll have the raptor stick out his tongue. And Horner saw the animatics of that; he just came down on us like a tonne of bricks. He said: 'Whose stupid idea was that?' I just: 'Mine, sir.' And he said: 'They could never do that!'"
Horner: "We know that they didn't do that. So, had that been left in the scene, all the work into making these things birdlike would have been gone."

CGI
Phil: "Dennis had kept me informed about all the tests that he was doing. And I was thinking: 'This is it.' We're gonna be in big trouble now."
Steven: "But I didn't dare call Phil at that time and say: 'Hey Phil. We'd like to replace what you were gonna do on the film, creating a hundred shots with the best go-motion ever done in history, with CGI.' I didn't have the heart to do that then. 'Cause I wasn't completely convinced until I saw a fleshed dinosaur outside, in the worst harsh sunlight."
Steven: "When I saw that, and Phil saw that with me for the first time and there we were watching out future unfolding on the tv-screen, so authentic I couldn't believe my eyes. And it blew my mind again. And I turned to Phil and Phil looked at me and Phil said: 'I think I'm extinct.' And I actually used Phil's line in the movie. I gave it to Malcolm to say to Grant when they're walking up the stairs:

Grant: We're out of a job.
Malcolm: Don't you mean extinct?

That's what Phil said to me so I kind of rubbed it in by using it in the film itself."

Phil: "The change was devastating. I had different concessions, building equipment, building puppets, building all this stuff. And all of a sudden the plug was pulled."

Steven: "Phil, I think, felt very bad that I wanted to go a hundred percent CGI and no go-motion at all. Which we have no go-motion in Jurassic Park. But I think Phil was able to turn himself into the director of the CGI-dinosaurs."
Dennis Muren: "Eventually Phil realised there was a place for him, and I was able to convince him there is a place for you and your shop on the show. He had some really terrific animators there that understood how we could make these dinosaurs move naturally."
Steven: "He knew so much about dinosaurs and the behaviour of animals that he became an animal trainer. He became, basically, a paleontologist and he became the Alan Grant of ILM."

Phil on the ending:
"We just got on the set and blocked out the actions and: 'How are we ever gonna maintain this kind of continuity?' But if we can it's really gonna be neat."

Phil on movement:
"One of my big things is to try to get the animators to pantomime with their bodies. So we had instituted these mime-classes."

Phil on computers:
"As a result of this huge technological breakthrough you can do anything that you want. It's opened everything up. You're no longer constrained by materiality. You can do what you imagined but it is a tool in its infancy."

Phil on Jurassic Park:
They didn't match the expectations so much as they matched the hope. [Laughs] You know, oh please God please let this all work together."

Details:
Jurassic Park



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