The groundbreaking special and visual effects of Jurassic Park

This video has been making the rounds over the last few days. It focuses on Jurassic Park’s groundbreaking use of CGI and it’s impact on the visual effects industry (it killed stop-motion stone dead). However, it leaves probably the most important thing about the film’s use of visual effects until last - the fact that CGI accounts for but a fraction of the film’s effects. In fact, the majority of effects in the film are practical - achieved using complex animatronics designed by Stan Winston. What’s extraordinary is how seamlessly the film cuts between animatronic and digital dinosaurs, resulting in possibly the most convincing creatures ever put on screen.

I find it strange that more films haven’t imitated Jurassic Park in this regard. While many films continue to use, say, miniatures in conjunction with CGI, it’s rare to see a creature created using a combination of practical and visual effects anymore. This was the norm in the pre-CGI ‘80s when stop-motion simply wasn’t convincing enough. But since the advent of CGI filmmakers nearly always opt to go fully digital when creating non-human characters, despite the frequently less than convincing results. The argument for doing so is consistency, yet I think most people will agree that the CGI/animatronic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look probably better than any almost any wholly CGI creature since.