Extremely rare stills from the Lost World: Jurassic Park View Master slides! These frames contain exclusive production stills, rare open matte frames, rare deleted scenes, and the rarest of all: pre-visual effects stills!
Scans made by FilmMusicLife and shared on behalf of Jurassic-Library.
We all know that Kauai is "home" to Jurassic Park, being a major filming location to the first 3 movies, but I think it can be easy to forget just how much the island was utilized, and how diverse Kauai's ecosystems can be. From scraggly grand canyons, tropical flower filled gardens, eucalyptus jungles, and palm frond beaches, there's a huge variety in scenery on Kauai. The island even sneaks in pinewood forests, with a redwood grove in Koke'e State Park, (invasive) Australian pine forests at Wai'oli Beach and Kipu Kai ranch, and the tropical Cook Pine dotted across the island, including at Kahili Ranch. This rich diversity is really what brings the islands of Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna to life.
I think it's amazing the CGI in this scene from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which is nearly 30 years old, looks so much better than the Compy CGI in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, which is not even a decade old.
And it shouldn't.
By all metrics, the CGI from Fallen Kingdom is superior: more detail, more resolution, newer graphic integration techniques, more muscle detail moving under the skin. But it doesn't look better. Both are in similar lighting conditions, and environmental conditions, and roughly the same scaling in the frame, but the Fallen Kingdom CGI just looks more cartoonish. It's an absolutely fascinating case study in why in camera cinematography is still necessary. The lighting in the Fallen Kingdom shot is flatter, the color is duller, and the contrast is lower. The CGI in Fallen Kingdom looks much more primitive than it should, like something out of a 2000s dinosaur documentary. It's more detailed, but it doesn't look more real. In The Lost World, the lighting has more depth, the contrast is higher, and the colors are richer as a result.
Did y'all realize that at least 3 or 4 different versions of Isla Sorna appear in The Lost World: Jurassic Park? The version that appears on the trailer map, on Eddie Carr's GPS, and on Hammond's computer each have differences in shape and geographic layout. A 4th map, appearing on the Fleetwood trailer computers for a single frame, may also be different.
I scanned this out of the Japanese "Super Complete Collection" book. This is the map that appears in the Fleetwood trailers, making it the most accurate, high definition image of an on screen map of the Muertes Archipelago currently available. You can see everything, right down to the rivers! This is an absolute game changer in the mapping of the Five Deaths.
Fun fact: this map was collaged together from Defense Mapping Agency Aerospace Center (DMAAC) maps of New Zealand. You can see Fiordland, South Island was included in a significant part of northern Isla Sorna.
Here's something interesting that a long time friend of mine noticed: the rod puppet used for the Muldoon attack is significantly smaller than the "man in suit" animatronics that were made for the first movie. This makes sense considering the "man in suit" animatronics would have had to actually fit people inside of them, while the non-people powered animatronics had the freedom to be the *actual size* of the Raptors.
This size difference is also noticeable in the radio controlled animatronics, too. For example, this female Raptor animatronic from TLW is sized like the rod puppet from the first movie. When you compare the size of the animatronic with the guy standing in front of it, the size is visibly smaller than most people think of with the Raptors, because it's in a more neutral position and not reared up. This size is consistent with the ILM Raptors from the first two movies.
Considering contemporary size charts from the time, including those from sources known to have been referenced by production (like David Norman's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs) the Raptors are only slightly bigger than Deinonychus.