Colin Trevorrow wanted something different to open the final film in his Jurassic World trilogy. The series had explored dinosaurs in a theme park, dinosaurs escaping a theme park, but always the series remained in the present day.
Why not show the dinosaurs in their own time?
It was a bold idea, but dinosaurs’ own time was 100 million years ago. How on earth was he going to film 100 million years in the past?
Great Scott! The answer was obvious.
“I was stumped initially,” admitted Colin.
“But the I found myself watching Back to the Future one afternoon and I was so taken with the scenes set in the past – the old-style cars, the music, the casual racism. There was no way this could have been done in a studio, it had to have been filmed actually in the past.”
The director fixed up a meeting with Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis.
“Bob was great. He explained that he’d wanted to make Back to the Future back in the 70s, but he’d have had to have created the 1950s sections using set-dressing and costumes.
“He couldn’t really be bothered to do that, so instead he set some studio boffins to work, and by 1985, they’d been able create technology that could film in the past. So, all he needed to do was send Michael J Fox and a few other actors back to 1955 and he was able to film them using technology.”
The technology became more powerful in the ensuing years and was used by James Cameron for Titanic, the live-action Flintstones movies and the outdoor scenes in Downton Abbey.
“No one had filmed as far back as 100 million years before but the old technology worked as well now as it had in 1985, I just entered 100000000 BC into the machine and my camera was filming actual dinosaurs in their original habitat.
“I got some great shots of them fighting, running around, playing scrabble, and just doing authentic dinosaur stuff.”
Colin was so pleased with the footage, he decided to use it to create a five-minute prologue. A spectacular opening to what he hoped would be the biggest Jurassic film yet.
Next week: How Interstellar repurposed old Star Wars technology to film a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
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