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Garyman comments on a recent DINOSAUR lecture

Here's the latest sighting on the DINOSAUR front. A movie that thus far is exhibiting the greatest Dinosaur images ever seen on film, video or human history... But is there a story? What about the script? That's the question that is really driving me at the moment now... And hopefully the house the mouse built is working on that as we speak... This is the cast list as I know it so far.... Max Casella , Ossie Davis , Julianna Margulies , Hayden Panettiere , Joan Plowright , Della Reese , Peter Siragusa , D.B. Sweeny , Alfre Woodard and Samuel E. Wright. Here's Garyman

Last week I saw a sneak showing of bits from Disney's Dinosaur.

It was a lecture with the producer, visual effects supervisor, and one of the character animators.

Well, disappointingly they only showed the first seven-eight minute sequence. But what a sequence. Absolutely jaw dropping.

It starts out with an egg in a nest with the mother taking care of it. The nest is in a herd of herbivores all grazing and wandering around. You know that feeling when you first saw the dino in Jurassic? Yeah, same "holy shit, look at that" feeling. I can't really identify the dinosaurs, but they didn't look like ones I had seen before. Similar, but not quite. The camera tracks a young dinosaur as it runs through the herd that is watering in a swamp type area. The young dino runs thorugh the swamp under the legs of the larger dinos. Then it chases a bug into the woods where there is a huge tyranosaur type dino(the filmmakers called it a carnosaur)

The carnosaur blasts out of the trees and tears into the herd. In the process the nest is destroyed except for one egg. Which is pucked up by a small velociraptor/chicken-type dino. It takes this egg into the forest where it fights with another of it's kind and the egg is dropped into the water. Where it drifts past several different types of dinos. It is then picked up by a pterodactyl and carried over the ocean to an island where the dino is attacked by birds and the egg is dropped.

That's all we got.

Now, the story that they told us, was that it deals with the dinos before and after the comet hits that supposedly wipes out the dinos. Now I remember hearing the story and how it follows a young dino that is raised by lemurs. But the filmmakers didn't say anything about that. Actually I asked about the furred creatures and the producer said that they were not allowed to talk about it.

The rest of the presentation was basically, "how did they do that"? During this segment they showed a few more shots but nothing major. They talked and showed one of the voice talents but for the life of me I can't rememeber the name. An old refined british lady.

What makes this film so spectacular is the use of live action backgrounds. The dinos blended almost perfectly with the environments. There were people on either side of me, asking "was that all computer graphics?"

Garyman

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