Development After founding his own
namesake studio, special effects artist
Phil Tippett directed
Prehistoric Beast (1984), an experimental animated short film in which a
Centrosaurus is stalked by a
Tyrannosaurus. Tippett's skill at creating
go motion animated creatures led to the 1985 CBS animated documentary
Dinosaur!. A year later, Tippett was hired to work on the special effects team for
RoboCop (1987). During filming, in December 1986, Tippett recalled, "When
Jon Davison and I were shooting the live-action plates where
ED-209 falls down the stairs, there was some kind of delay.
Peter Weller's shoes didn't fit. so we had to wait for someone to get the right stunt shoes." Frustrated by the delay, Tippett suggested to
Paul Verhoeven that they should produce a "dinosaur picture". That way, according to Tippett, "[w]e wouldn't have to be held up by actors in robot outfits." Verhoeven was excited at the idea and suggested an approach inspired by
Shane (1953) in which "you follow a lead character through a number of situations and moving from a devastated landscape into a promised land." Once Green had finished his treatment, Disney's finance department calculated the film's production budget would total $75 million, opposite to the studio's insistence to cost approximately $20 million. Verhoeven told
Cinefantastique he had calculated the project's preliminary budget to be $45 million, but then Disney chairman
Jeffrey Katzenberg felt there wasn't "enough of an audience to justify that cost." Despite a successful stop motion test, and being impressed with early computer animation tests, Tippett felt stop motion was not the right approach for the film. Meanwhile, Green was prompted to write a "voice-over" treatment where the lemurs would narrate the story, though he remained unsure if "this'll work or not." Further meetings with Katzenberg reached an impasse to the point Green, Davison, and Verhoeven told Tippett that they were going to skip another scheduled meeting. By this point, producer
Kathleen Kennedy approached Tippett with a
galley for
Michael Crichton's then-upcoming novel
Jurassic Park. Verhoeven then called Tippett stating, "I know
Spielberg has contacted you about
Jurassic Park, you should do that instead." Before Verhoeven and Tippett had left the project, producer/director Thomas G. Smith became involved in the film, but became the director after they had left. Reflecting on his tenure, Smith said, "Jeanne Rosenberg was still writing the script, but it was in trouble. Disney wanted a cute story of dinosaurs talking, and I didn't like the idea. I thought it should be more like
Jean Annaud's
The Bear. I wanted to have actual lemurs in it. They actually existed at the time of dinosaurs [...] We actually located a guy who trains them." Zondag had previously animated for
Sullivan Bluth Studios in Ireland, and was hired as a storyboard artist on
Pocahontas (1995). Storyboard artist
Floyd Norman described Scribner's version as being "more than just a struggle for survival. He wanted this dinosaur movie to have elements of fun and humor ... Our director wanted to explore the fun elements of dinosaurs, such as their size, shape, and texture. George also knew that since dinosaurs come in all sizes—what wacky relationships might I come up with? What funny situations might plague a critter of such massive size?" Scribner left the project to work at
Walt Disney Imagineering, and Eric Leighton was hired as co-director. Ultimately, the filmmakers decided to take the unprecedented route of combining live-action scenery with computer-generated character animation. Initially, the characters were intended to be nonverbal characters, with the characters communicating in voice-over similar to
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993). Michael Eisner was screened a voice-over animation test (now known as the "Noah version") and felt it was strange the characters were communicating without lip or mouth movement. Pam Marsden, the film's producer, agreed, "We felt we needed to have them talk. Part of it is, we don't have any people in the movie, so somebody has to act." To accommodate this change, Aladar was given lips in contrast to actual
Iguanodons which had
beaks. The story dealt with Noah, who had the ability to see visions of the future, foreseeing the coming of an asteroid and struggling to guide a herd of other dinosaurs to safety. Further into production, Noah, Cain and Adam were renamed Aladar, Kron and Zini, and certain aspects of the story were altered further into what was later seen in the final product.
Animation On April 17, 1996, the Walt Disney Company announced they had acquired the visual effects studio, Dream Quest Images. The studio was merged with the Feature Animation department's Computer Graphics Unit in order to form
The Secret Lab.
Vision Crew Unlimited provided the live-action visual effects. At the time, the Secret Lab's initial studio was reconstructed from a former
Lockheed Martin (former
Lockheed) building in
Burbank, California. Most of the computers were used from
Silicon Graphics and additional machines were installed to create a
render farm in order to provide workstations for artists, software engineers, and technical directors. The production team eventually re-located to the Feature Animation's Northside building in January 1997, and animation officially began eight months later, although some preliminary work had already begun. To ensure realistic CG animation, 3D workbooks were created using
Softimage 3D software. 48 animators worked on the film, using 300 computer processors to animate the film. Having aspired to be a paleontologist, David Krentz supervised the character design and visual development teams. Disney was sued by the surviving crew member and the deceased's family, and the company was later fined $5,000 for violating worker safety laws. ==Music==