Thursday, February 4, 2010

Jurassic Squawk

Hundreds of years ago, Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth!

Dinosaurs are always described as roaming. It's a good word, but probably not accurate for critters evolved for running, jumping, plodding, flying, leaping and disemboweling on the go.

It smacks of meandering. Maybe wandering absent-mindedly.

In the cretaceous, Dinosaurs Pootled About!

It doesn't quite create the image of dynamism that paleontologists are convinced dinosaurs were capable of. You wouldn't be quite as terrified of T. rex if all it had been capable of was roaming after you. You could just amble your way to freedom.

Then, 65 million years ago, they called it a day and took up extinction.

Or did they?

In the spirit of recreating set pieces on a budget, I thought I'd show my version of the flocking scene in Jurassic park, complete with eerie, terrible lizard sound effects.

Rather than going to the trouble of splicing dino DNA from amber-trapped mozzies into frog cells (and lucking out with a Triceratops rather than a bloody big frog), I have gone for realism and recruited the actual descendants of the dinosaurs for the shot.

Behold!




Right, I'm off to remake Avatar with some smurfs now.

14 comments:

  1. That was truly terrifying, Jules! It was like being Jeff Goldblum (in itself a terrifying thing).

    You look so dashing in your snorkel! I feel much less anxious now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pootled! Pootley pootley!

    That's the sound my car's been making lately. I think it wishes it were a cartoon.

    Did you film that on a dolly? How did you move so fast while in a squat? You must have formidable thighs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I find birds a bit annoying. Not enough to do anything about it, just a bit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. damn, sugar! all i could think of was: dinner! :D xoxoox

    ReplyDelete
  5. God that was eerie...and that big one looked like it was going to get you there for a minute. How did you fake those dinosaur scales on their legs, they looked real from here.
    I think you've found your calling Jules... not everyone can walk around a duck infested pond without getting poop on their shoes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A brilliant bit of cinematography... You're right, a T Rex pootling around the duck pond doesn't sound right.

    AV

    ReplyDelete
  7. Vic - Glad you approve. I was getting tired of holding my breath. Tired and blue.

    Steamy - Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to introduce pootling into the vernacular on your side of the atlantic. And my thighs ARE formidable.

    Alex - You're doing your bit by ordering the family bucket at KFC.

    Savvy - They have got tasty expressions on their faces, haven't they?

    Tempo - They spent absolutely hours in make up. And talk about divas. They wanted their corn chilled to exactly 12 degrees centigrade.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Av - oops, missed you in the crossover there.

    Do you think James Cameron will be phoning me for advice? It's about time if you ask me.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Whoa, is that where the name 'Romans' came from??? Or maybe the word roaming? Because that's what soldiers without horses did? You've opened an etymological can of worms here, the likes of which the blogosphere has never seen.

    ReplyDelete
  10. In a rather odd and unrelated note, this post just popped up in my reader. Dirty damn blogger.com!

    I watched the video wearing my 3D glasses, which made it 3 times as terrifying.

    ReplyDelete
  11. All you need is Racquel W and then you're away with 1 squillion years BC. I'll do it as long as I get to wear my thermals.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Eric - Would that were true, but I believe the blogosphere has now covered every subject known to humanity, and a few others besides. Most of them about semantics.

    SkylersDad - I was thinking of making a "real 3D experience" and poking the viewer in the eye everytime something was supposed to come out of the screen. Might be a tad labour intensive though.

    Mdme DeF - Does a fur bikini count as thermals?

    ReplyDelete
  13. You're right, I hadn't thought about it before but "roaming" is a crap word for what dinosaurs must have been getting up to. Director of a film called When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth: "We need more roaming and less scampering and rampaging!"; T-Rex "But what's my motivation?"

    ReplyDelete
  14. Take a good hard look at a turkey up close. The species that time forgot, or what?

    ReplyDelete

I'm going to risk taking comment moderation off for a bit, so if you're a web-bot, a robot, a bot-fly or a bottom-dwelling sediment-feeder, then please refrain from commenting.

Otherwise, have a go. S'fun.