You may have heard me wax lyrical about JURASSIC PARK a number of times, it defined my childhood but in a encapsulation of spirit way of course, not in a manner where I like to throw half-eaten goat legs at rain-drenched tour cars. We’d previously covered behind-the-scenes with the Stan Winston School in the making of the glorious T-Rex and now we’ve got another special insight, into the Dilophosaurus or the ‘Spitter’ that spat poison and then devoured Wayne Knight’s Dennis Nedry, which must have been a lovely meal.
What’s great about this story is not only the technology involved to bring this vividly to life, but also the fact that mechanical designer Rick Galinson had never done anything like it before. Rick raised his hand when they allocated various dinosaurs to take on the Spitter but, at first, he thought he was due to be an assistant. When he realised that it was fully his responsibility, there was initial panic:
“I was the only person who raised my hand so they wrote my name down and that was it. That was how quickly the decisions were made, that this is your character, you’re fully responsible for it, go ahead and build it. I kept quiet and I was scared to death, but I didn’t know how much I had bitten off here. If they knew how little I knew, they would never have given me the assignment, but it turned out well. I was a fast learner, watched the other guys build things and took cues from them and it turned out great.”
The lucky, and no doubt, talented man took it on and, a cinematic death scene was born. The defining moment was, of course, the projection of the Spitter’s venom and that mighty tongue creating complete fear. Of this, Galinson commented:
This was one of the coolest tongues I’ve ever done. It’s a two-stage tentacle mechanism and the third section was the base of it which would also rotate up and down. So, the tongue would go left and right, up and down, each section of the tongue. And then underneath are those two giant holes which led to tubing running down through the neck of the [Spitter] and that’s where we pumped the high pressure air which would spit [the venom] out of its mouth.
Check out the full video below and some stills from the making of this stunning dilophosaurus:
Spielberg in Attendance
Rick Galinson works on the Spitter
And a final word from Rick:
The Spitter was my favorite character to date. Working on JURASSIC PARK at Stan Winston Studio was the experience of a lifetime. I couldn’t have gotten a luckier break. The film was fantastic. The people we worked with were great, and this is one of those films that will last forever.
JURASSIC PARK 3D is out this summer! More news on that and JURASSIC PARK 4 by clicking this link here.
Source: StanWinstonSchool
