How one maverick changed Jurassic Park - and the movies forever
You may not know his name, but you've probably seen his work
I love summer movies!
I can tell you about the summers of my childhood around the movies that played in the theaters between May-August.
And 1993 was a big year for summer movies.
It gave us Tom Cruise in The Firm.
Harrison Ford in The Fugitive.
And Steven Spielberg and dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
Spielberg didn’t spend a lot of money hiring big stars for his film.
Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum are good in their roles, but the draw to the theatres wasn’t the actors as much as it was the dinosaurs.
You may not think so now (given the sea of CGI films made today) but when Jurassic Park came out, it was incredible.
When those dinosaurs appeared on the screen, we had the same reaction as Dern and Neill in the movie:
But how did those dinosaurs make it to the screen?
I was curious…
When Steven Spielberg began production on Jurassic Park in 1991, he hired Oscar-winning special effects and visual effects experts.
They were tasked with creating large animatronic dinosaurs and puppets, and Spielberg’s plan was to capture their movement on film using a well-established process called stop motion.
But there was one problem.
Stop motion footage can appear jerky on screen – or even worse – fake.
So Spielberg hired Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to add effects to improve the stop motion footage.
And working at ILM was a 29-year-old animator named Steve “Spaz” Williams…
Williams was tasked with adding blur to the footage to improve the appearance of the stop motion dinosaurs.
But Williams and some of his colleagues at ILM saw an opportunity.
Instead of using stop motion, why not build the dinosaurs using computer graphics?
But this was 1991, and no one believed computer graphics were capable of creating a dinosaur that looked real and could move – or they were too scared to try.
But not Steve Williams.
Williams had already been pushing the boundaries of what was possible, working on the effects in films like The Abyss and Terminator 2.
Even though his boss had explicitly told him not to, Williams secretly began building the bones of a T-Rex in computer graphics.
“We were mavericks. We always questioned established systems,” Williams said.
“ILM was a lab. We were inventing and experimenting with things.”
Spurred by his curiosity (and a desire to convince others he was right), he spent months experimenting, and managed to create an incredible CG walk cycle of a T-Rex.
But he knew his boss would never show it to the film’s producers.
So he got creative.
Williams knew that Jurassic Park producer Kathleen Kennedy would be visiting the ILM office for a routine screening, so he set up a monitor by the door that showed his T-Rex creation, ensuring she would see it as she walked down the hall.
When Kennedy saw Williams’ CG T-Rex, she was immediately impressed – and suddenly stop motion didn’t look like the best option anymore.
With Kennedy’s endorsement, Williams got the green light from his boss at ILM to continue building his CG dinosaurs.
He spent the next 4-5 months building the skin of his T-Rex (to match the animatronic versions that had already been created), before it was unveiled to Spielberg, George Lucas, producer Kennedy, and a few others working on the film.
When they saw the CG dinosaur moving on the screen, they were amazed.
And it changed everything.
When Spielberg saw what was possible with CG, he knew it was a game changer.
And the well-defined process of stop motion was suddenly on its way to being extinct.
In fact, Spielberg was so enamoured with the T-Rex, he re-wrote the end sequence of the film to include more action with a T-Rex.
Williams had built the creature, but now he and the team at ILM had to make it run.
Phil Tippett, who had originally been hired to create the stop motion work on the film, was given a new role on the film.
His job title was now “Dinosaur Supervisor”, and he was responsible for helping the animators understand the kind of movement they would need to create in computer graphics.
At the same time, the team at ILM had to make sure their CG creations aligned with the animatronic dinosaurs and puppets Stan Winston and his team were creating.
The final Jurassic Park that arrived in theaters in 1993 included a combination of CG dinosaurs (visible in the wide shots), animatronics, and puppets.
And when Jurassic Park opened in June 1993, audiences couldn’t believe how realistic the CG dinosaurs were.
The film was a smash hit, raking in more than $900 million, and becoming the highest-grossing film at that time.
Steve Williams followed his success of Jurassic Park with more impressive work in the 1994 film The Mask.
But as the 2022 documentary Jurassic Punk asserts, “an appetite for anarchy and reckless disregard for authority” may have cost him the recognition he deserved.1
But Williams deserves credit for the groundbreaking work he did with computer graphics, and bringing dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park.
Although many initially doubted what computer graphics could do, Williams was always a believer.
“I love the term, ‘You will never’,” Williams said.
“If I listened to the people who said, ‘You will never…’, T-Rex wouldn’t have been built.”
One More Thing…
When Steven Spielberg decided to use computer graphics in the film instead of stop motion, he had to break the bad news to stop motion expert Phil Tippett.
After telling Tippett he was being replaced with computers, Spielberg asked him, “How does that make you feel?”
Tippett responded, “I think I’m extinct.”
Spielberg responded: “That’s a great line for the film.”
And Spielberg added the line to the film.
I’m Still Curious…
So, since writing last week’s story Why Are Tennis Balls Yellow? I received my copy of the only source I found that credited Sir David Attenborough with the idea: 2,024 QI Facts to Stop You In Your Tracks.
But this is all it says:
This isn’t going to cut it for me, so I’ve gone straight to the source, writing a letter to Sir David Attenborough.
I don’t know if he’ll respond, but I did enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope in the hopes of helping my chances!
I figure, if I don’t write to him, I definitely won’t know the answer. And if I do, there’s a chance I might!
You never know, I had a good response when I wrote a letter to someone famous in 1996.2
I also queued at Wimbledon this week (and got in!) but found no tennis balls trivia while I was on the grounds…
And one more bit of tennis trivia for you…
Did you know the winner of the 2024 men’s singles at Wimbledon will get £2.7 million?3
And so will the winner of the women’s singles!
But men and women haven’t always received the same prize money at Wimbledon, and I wrote the woman who WROTE A LETTER4 and changed Wimbledon forever.
Read all about The Greatest Wimbledon Victory of 2007.
And speaking of writing letters…
32 cents changed my life’s path
That’s not a clickbait headline — it’s true!
And I talk about it (and many other things) with the incredible Jo Wallace in her latest Good Girls Eat Dinner podcast.
Find out how curiosity (and communication!) first connected us, and why I believe good old fashioned manners never go out of style.
How can I help?
I’ll keep saying it: Communication matters.
Here’s my favorite communication moment of this week:
During a concert in London on Wednesday, US band The Killers broadcast the end of England’s semi-final victory at the Euros — and then launched into their smash Mr. Brightside5.
Talk about knowing your audience!
If you want to improve your communication (and get all the good things that come with that), I’m your gal.
So many companies could reap massive rewards – from performance and culture to retention and engagement – by improving their communication.
So, if you know someone who could benefit from some help (as even the most seasoned leaders do), please get in touch and check out my website for more information.
You can also see my Top 10 list of what I can (and can’t) do for you here.
And if you see any communication examples (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that you think are worth analyzing or sharing, please send them my way!
Stay Curious!
-Beth
In this documentary, you can see how talented Williams is. You can also see how difficult he could have been to work with.
And since we’re talking about Spielberg, I also wrote him a letter in the 1980s. And he (or rather, someone who worked for him) did write me back. He did not follow my suggestion to make a Goonies sequel, but 2024 Beth says that was a good call on his part.
£2.7 million?! Yowza!
The power of communication - again!
Do I really need to link to this song? Or are you already hearing a few bars in your head? Well, just in case…
Steve was genius. If you haven’t seen the ILM documentary, do yourself a favor. It’s fascinating