Dinosaur

Dinosaur

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• Set 65 million years ago, Dinosaur follows the adventures of an Iguanodon named Aladar, separated from his own species and raised on an island paradise by a clan of lemurs. When a devastating meteor shower plunges their world into chaos, Aladar and several members of his lemur family escape to the mainland and join a group of migrating dinosaurs desperately searching for safe nesting grounds. A mi

Movie Reviews of Dinosaur

Movie Review: Disney's Dinosaur....Very Cool.
Summary: 5 Stars

Let's start with computer-animation and video. It really speaks for itself. This movie used both real-life backgrounds and computer-generated design to incorporate such a perfect blend of color and detail. The two meshed seamlessly. Five locations from all over the globe are featured in Dinosaur's opening sequence alone (Florida, Venezuela, Australia, Hawaii, and California). Not only did they film in different locations, they also combined multiple backgrounds into a single scene. Creating the background starts off with the director's vision, and through the story sketches, he let everyone know what he wanted. Then, he would turn it over to the location scout, who would go all over the world to find the ideal spots to film the movie.

The characters are all beautifully animated and designed. The textures of their skin, the amazing expressions on their face, and the soulful look in their eyes make this "experience" seem like it's really happening. The clan of monkeys, called lemurs, was quite a piece of work. Even the very hair on them blew in the wind.

There are many stages involved in bringing the character to the screen. You start with a drawing of the dinosaur to get an idea of his look and personality. A clay model is created, and from that it is sculpted on the computer. Then rough animation begins. It doesn't start out the way it looks on screen; it starts out as a rough illustration of what is supposed to be there. It looks kind of like moving Tootsie Rolls. They then created a program that allowed them to relatively easily create delicate facial expressions (like nose, mouth, and eye movements). The muscle and skin system allowed them to add believable wrinkles, muscle, and skin fat to the characters. The flex and jiggle of their skin was simulated using the same engine. There are also the painters painting all of this beautifully detailed color and texture onto the dinosaurs. That really gives the dinosaur the 'fleshy' aspects that make it look real.

The next step was to create sounds to go along with the characters. They were trying to get the sounds of animals to create the sounds of the dinosaurs and lemurs. The carnotaur (or T-Rex) was quite a vicious creature, so they recorded the snarls and growls of large cats (leopards & lions) to supply the sound effects for him. For the lemurs, they recorded from several types of monkeys and penguins. And here's the weird one. Someone's pet Chihuahua did the sounds for the raptors, believe it or not. It was attacking some bed sheets.

The music score of the movie was very fitting and cool. The music itself does a good job at triggering your emotions. I don't think that they could ask for better. It hit the spot.

The Foley artists created a lot of the sound effects for the movement of the dinosaurs and such. They would splash water, bang rocks together, and even squeeze vegetables to make unique sounds, such as using celery for the sound of vines, or squishing cantaloupe halves for a slurpy sound. For the sound of the dinosaurs moving around, they used boots in the dirt for back feet and baseball gloves for the front feet. It's really amazing how they even do this, much less make it sound so real (or at least what we believe to be real).

The meteor shower seems to be nothing at first, but then the huge meteor comes blazing down into the water, destroying everything in its fiery path. The great cloud of flames that erupts from the site of impact marks the hardest to do visual effect in the movie. They combined live-action explosives and computer-generated images. They used smoke from explosives to create this "monster cloud." The shot was flipped upside down, scanned into the computers, and colored by the digital lighting and compositing team to give it its fiery glow. Miniatures of the island were made to show the effect of the cloud's massive destruction.

The cameras were shooting nothing but scenery for the whole movie (except for the meteor scene). They had to film it like there was actually something there. That can be tough. They even created a "dino cam" that they used to simulate the point of view of a 50-foot dinosaur.

There's not much to do with costumes or stunts in the film, other than that done by the crew. Instead of regular acting, these actors did voice acting, which in my opinion can be harder sometimes. You have to show expression and feeling without actually acting it out with someone.

It is a very detailed film that many people worked very hard on. All of the people whose work really went into this had their name stuck at the bottom of a six and a half minute list of credits. It takes everybody working together to pull off something like this. This film is a landmark that is one of a kind.

Summary of Dinosaur