ILM got involved in Fallen Kingdom early in pre production and served as a linchpin of the production, due to the virtual production services provided to the filmmakers. ILM Stagecraft was used early on to plan the shoot and again during the shoot to refine shots director J.A. Bayona wanted a hand-held look to the camera operation.
Production visual effects supervisor David Vickery and his ILM effects team worked with creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan on dinosaur designs for the film’s menacing genetically-engineered creature the Indoraptor. Rather than creating camera-finished animatronic dinosaurs, Scanlan’s team would take ILM’s dino model and create a hybrid full-size 1:1 head that could interact with the director and actors on set, with the knowledge that it would be fully replaced in post. This would give the actors a realistic dinosaur head to perform against and serve as a great lighting reference for the visual effects team when they replaced the stand-in head with it’s digital likeness.
ILM animation supervisor Jance Rubinchik oversaw the work of a team of 52 animators contributing to the various dinosaurs on the film. While Blue and the Indoraptor are the lead characters in terms of the digital creatures, there was also a herd of stampeding dinos, and the beloved T-rex. Even in cases where the full size animatronic raptor was used the visual effects team augmented the performance to add complexity of motion making the hybrid performance a seamless blend of animatronics and CG. The team also had to contend with digital doubles, and Gyrospheres but in true Jurassic fashion, it was the dinosaurs that everyone connected with the most.
Fallen Kingdom was nominated for 3 Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards and the Satellite Awards for BEst Visual Effects.
