American Cinematographer - February 1994 - 29

even on

needed

Jurassic Park, they still
a

lot of the

same

tech¬

nologies. Stan Winston's guys
first had to sculpt the dinosaurs
ILM digitized, and they needed
Phil Tippett to oversee the dino¬
saurs' movements. In the future,
I think it's going to be a matter of

Wolf. "I'm sure in the future
there'll be a lot of crossover stuff,
and I'd like to be very much in¬
volved with it. Somebody at my
studio asked recently, 'What hap¬

thing, but it may not be as dra¬
matic as doing it another way.
When we were working on
American Werewolf I wanted to do

pens when they start doing digi¬
tal makeup?' and I said, 'I don't

but

why they would.' It would be
incredibly difficult and ridicu¬

see

getting different creative people

so

involved who can skillfully com¬
bine rubber stuff and digital tech¬

lous."

nology to really do something
that nobody's seen before."

James Cameron's highly touted
but as yet untried Digital Do¬
main effects house, argues that
the changing face of creature

Whatever the "rubber
stuff" of the future will be, Den¬
nis

Muren, ASC, visual effects

co¬

supervisor for Jurassic Park, in¬
sists, "What needs to be done, but
which didn't

quite happen on Ju¬

rassic Park, is we have to go into
each project aware of the limita¬
tions of rubber

technology and

just build to those limitations and
no

further."

Muren, who

supervised
the first morph (Willow) and the
ultimate morph (Terminator 2),
cautions rubber monster makers:

"Don't overbuild, because it's too
obvious what those things can
and can't do. If a full-scale me¬

of creatures, but when you want
a creature to interact with
people
and the shots are short, it's better
to

go

in closer and have your ac¬

tors react to

full-size creature

parts."

manipulate their face on a
frame-by-frame basis in the com¬
puter or to build a 3-D computer
model. If it is eventually more
cost-effective to do it in the digi¬
to

dustry turns to CGI to create
creatures. "I think CGI's a

great

tool but you don't have to use it
for everything," Baker says em¬

phatically, taking time out from
transforming Jack Nicholson into
a
lycanthrope for the upcoming

Recently, I encountered on
project where we'd tradition¬
ally use a puppet or man-in-asuit, but the producers wanted to
do it as a CG character. I argued
with them because I thought
they were wrong; I thought it was
a
poor use of a CG character but
an excellent use of a
puppet. But
once
people start using the right
techniques for each effect, I think
we're just going to see that much
more
good work. We're going to
be able to do things we just can't
a

do with rubber alone."

While

tal realm, and I'm not sure it will

makeup effects
siege since T2

be, then people will do it that way
if the quality is as good, if not
better. But in either case, we'll

have been under

still need

target of Jurassic Park's techno¬

makeup artists. Stan

"We have

first reared its computer-gener¬
ated chromium head, the real

logical push is
a

great

the time-hon¬
ored field of

opportunity right now to
take this tool and shape it

stop-motion
puppet ani¬

until it fits

pioneered by

our

hands."

one of the partners in
Digital Domain, uses a great
metaphor: 'If I want to have a
script written and I have a
scriptwriter who doesn't know
how to type, or a typist who

mation

as

Willis O'Brien,
the man who

The Lost World(1925) and
King Kong (1933). The torch was
picked up by O'Brien's brilliant
protege, Ray Harryhausen, who

Winston,

gave us

doesn't know how to write

Mighty Joe Young (1949) before
striking out on his own, creating
some 15 feature films
including

scripts, who would I rather use?'
I think that really says it wonder¬
fully."

worked at his master's side

on

the classics 20 Million Miles to

Digital Domain

Earth, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,
Jason and the Argonauts and Mys¬
terious Island, all of which em¬

suggests, the entire makeup field

ployed extensive stop-motion

is

shifting, however reluctantly,
towards the computer. "I love my
computers," Baker enthuses. "I
do almost all my design work on
them. I just see the computer as
another tool, and a great tool, but
I'm afraid that people are too
quick to jump on the bandwagon.
Morphing is a pretty amazing

animation effects.

February 1994

American

But

Baker and others in the
field wonder if this prejudice to¬
wards their "big rubber monster
factories" will allow them to co¬
exist with computers as the in¬

head of

effects is all a matter of econom¬
ics: "Right now, it's less expen¬
sive to apply greasepaint and
rubber to an actor's face than it is

technology applied to everyday
problems - something would
walk in and pick stalled cars up
off the freeway at rush hour and
things; they don't work. These
days, I think CGI is the right tool
for performance and for full shots

one shot,
John Landis said, 'No, that's
not as dramatic as doing it in cuts.
That way you can point out spe¬
cific aspects of the transforma¬

tion.'

But Scott Ross,

chanical Tyrannosaurus puppet
could really walk, you'd see that

walk them out of the stream of
traffic! You don't see those

the transformation in

as

volvement in

Winston's in¬

Steven Spielberg so val¬
ued Harryhausen's opinion that
he was virtually the only outsider
to

see

test

footage of Jurassic

Park's CGI behemoths. When he

finally

saw the finished film at a
Universal Studios screening,

Harryhausen's emotions

Cinematographer

were

27
American Cinematographer - February 1994

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