BITS OF BEAST
Special-effects gurus deconstruct the dinosaur flick’s new star
ACTORS come and go, but the “Jurassic” franchise roars on, thanks to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original, “Jurassic Park,” which made dinosaurs the true stars of the show.
The tradition continues with “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the fifth flick in the series. Out Friday, it features 20 species of dinosaurs, including the Velociraptor from 2015’s “Jurassic World” and a few new creatures, a vicious Baryonyx and an adorable Stygimoloch among them.
Neal Scanlan’s creature effects team gave human stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard tangible scene partners — in the form of puppets and animatronics — to film with. Working with Scanlan’s team, David Vickery, a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, led more than 600 people in crafting the digital imagery.
Some dinosaurs seen in the completed film are totally animatronic, with others entirely digital or a mix of both.
“There are certain pieces in the movie where I’m not sure even now which shots are . . . digital,” Vickery tells The Post. “And I spent a lot of time working on it!”
One of their most terrifying creations is the indoraptor, a genetically engineered horror that spent most of its life confined to a cell and experimented upon. Once it breaks free, it’s every human’s nightmare.
“We really wanted to have this kind of rejected creature that you can feel sorry for,” “Fallen Kingdom” director J.A. Bayona tells The Post. “But at the same time, you can feel terrified.”
Here, he and Vickery break down the making of their mentally unhinged dinosaur.