25 years on, Walking With Dinosaurs stomps back onto our screens.
Revolutionary for its time, television has evolved considerably since the show debuted back in 1999. We sat down with directors Owen Gower, Stephen Cooter, and Tom Hewitson, to discuss how they brought this iconic series back to life.
Can you tell us a bit about your episodes?
Stephen: We each made two episodes on a specific dinosaur. My first episode is on the Spinosaurus — a predatory dinosaur that looks a bit like a T-Rex, but with a crocodile’s head and a huge sail on its back. The episode is a story of Spinosaurus raising its young, looking after them to the point where they can fend for themselves. My second episode is about an armoured dinosaur called Gastonia trying to make it to adulthood, while being stalked by Utahraptors — a lot like the raptors in Jurassic Park.
Tom: My first episode is about a baby Triceratops, living near to a T-Rex and trying to find protection. My second episode is about a teenage Albertosaurus, an earlier cousin of the T-Rex. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story about an Albertosaurus trying to find their place, in a pack of T-Rex like hunters.
Owen: Both my episodes are focused on herbivores. One is about Pachyrhinosaurus, a close relative of Triceratops. The story follows an epic 400-mile migration of an enormous herd across what is now Northern Alberta in Canada, all told through the eyes of a very small animal. My other episode is about Lusotitan, which was a huge sauropod. This episode is a very different take on the animal as its essentially about this gigantic old dinosaur on his last quest to find love.
How did you approach modernising the show?
Stephen: The orignial Walking with Dinosaurs was very much presented like a nature documentary, like Planet Earth for instance. With the reboot, I think we wanted to bring to the production more of a sense of dramatic storytelling, and the singular narrative arc of each dinosaur across the episode. Another big difference for the viewer is that this series has the paleontological dig in it.
Tom: The episodes are structured around one paleontologist, and one main dig site. We see what is coming out of the ground, and hear what they’re finding out about our characters. In the episodes we bounce back and forth between the paleontologist’s dig, and that informs the unfolding storyline VFX. I think that gives the show more scientific credibility whilst still allowing us to have that dramatic story arc.
Are the puppets from the first series making a comeback?
Stephen: We didn't create any puppets or animatronics this time. We decided to invest the money in the VFX dinosaur models themselves, so that the textures could withstand close-up shots that otherwise you might need a real-life model for.
We did film interaction stuff in camera, like dinosaurs kicking dust towards the camera — we had someone put on a blue suit and shot that live action, replacing them with the CG model in post. On the Spinosaurus episode, because it's an animal that can swim, we made a life sized floating head that we pushed through the water to create all the water ripple effects. So we did still keep some practical effects.
How did you develop the stories for your episodes?
Tom: We were constantly adapting to what they were finding on the dig sites. So, in the Albertosaurus episode, they actually found a very rare Pterosaur bone on location, and so the process was trying to work those into our storylines and keep the dramatic thread of the dinosaurs running as they made discoveries in the ground.
Stephen: : In the first episode, the little baby triceratops was found on its own which gave us the sense of an orphan story. In my episode about the Gastonia, they were found in a group of basically teenagers. So, the question was why were they ganging together? We took that discovery and combined it with advice from the experts, to create the storyline.
Did this create any challenges while filming?
Tom: We'd sometimes make discoveries on location that we hadn't anticipated. We'd mapped things out in advance knowing some of the discoveries they might have already made, but we occasionally did get a curveball where they'd find something unexpected. So, we had to have a degree of flexibility with the storytelling and approach to allow us to make the most out of the real research coming out of the ground, whilst not missing delivery deadlines for things like VFX. One of the good things about shooting “plates” — essentially a real life backdrop for the visual effects — was they allowed us to have the flexibility to adjust those VFX scenes and make sure the storyline was still true to the science.
What was your production process like?
Stephen: It began with writing a script and producing a storyboard for each scene we wanted in the show. When we went out on location we had the storyboards already cut into sequences, so that we knew that if we shot the boards, we’d have the sequence.
That doesn't mean that we didn’t have the flexibility to approach things differently once we were on the ground if we saw something better. But in the process of transitioning from something that’s two dimensional to something that’s three dimensional, things can become quite complicated when you can't see them, so the storyboards were an invaluable guide to have in your back pocket.
Owen: Yeah, you can have an image in your head as a director, and so can the team on location, but then you’ve got a whole VFX team that also has to be seeing the same thing when they’re looking at the shots. It’s about trying to get to a point where everyone is on the same page about exactly what’s going on in each shot or sequence. It’s not a straightforward process. There’s a lot of back and forth because you’re relying on a number of different creative people to all end up at the same point at the end.
Tom: And you don’t want to be too prescriptive, because you want the happy accidents that you’d normally get in filming. If you’ve got control over everything, it could be quite clinical. You want the animators to throw in little surprises, like a T-Rex stumbling. Something to make it feel more real, that you wouldn’t necessarily think to write in a brief. When your collaborators bring that to the table, it just makes it feel that much more real to the viewer.
Stephen: I hadn’t appreciated until we were in the edit, that directing the animators is sort of like directing an actor. There are definitely opportunities where you’re approaching it like you would with an actor — “the dinosaur is sad here” or, “the dinosaur is feeling lonely.” You can tell them “this is the scene” and “this is the action”, but it’s the performance they bring to it that really makes the scene come alive. I also think the music is a big part of how we brought these creatures to life. We all worked very closely with Ty Unwin, the composer. With him we talked through the drama of each scene and how we could build tension and release through music.
For sound design we engaged a company called Wounded Buffalo who did all the dinosaur sounds. They’re as scientifically accurate as they can be, but there's still creative choices that had to be made. All of this ties into making the dinosaurs feel real.
What were your location shoots like?
Owen: On location we had to shoot plates. We measured out the size of the dinosaurs and had these big flagpole things to represent their size. So, we were filming an empty space for the VFX team to insert a dinosaur into, but were referencing storyboards and detailed shot plans as well as rehearsing over and over to make sure we could match the movement of the animal.
Tom: And that “plates” process is only one part of it. In that same shoot you're shooting the “reference pass” where you're walking around with the big flagpoles, you’re shooting the “blue screen pass” where you're giving yourself foreground for dinosaurs to stand behind, you're also shooting the “dingle pass” where the dinosaurs might, for example, rub up on a bit of plant as they walk through. You're shooting balls and charts to give the VFX house all the color and lighting information they need. So, it’s a long process just to get one shot, one background for the dinosaurs. You could record ten times on the same shot basically.
One of the biggest challenges I found was actually finding the locations, just because of the size of these creatures, and the fact that grass didn't really exist in the Cretaceous period in the way we know it today. Finding a combination of somewhere that's big enough for large dinosaurs to interact and isn't covered in grass is very, very difficult in the modern world.
Owen: For Lusotitan, which were about 25m long and something like 50m tall, to shoot it on a long lens we'd have to walk 2.5km back just to get it in the frame. We would regularly set up a shot and think that we had it, and then get the size reference out and suddenly realize it's nowhere near close because they're absolutely enormous creatures.
How did working on this differ from other projects?
Tom: Normally, the actual filming is the end of one process and then you go into the edit with all your ingredients. The big difference with this project was that the filming was only the beginning of the directing process. All the iterations of VFX came whilst we were in the edit. All the feedback on pacing, performance and all that was something we worked through right until the very last frame was rendered.
What did it feel like to work on something with such a strong legacy?
Owen: Making something like this, you feel a huge sense of responsibility. Walking with Dinosaurs has such an enormous legacy and means so much to so many people.
It was something I came to appreciate more and more as we were making it. One moment that really sticks with me is when we were filming one of the digs in Canada. Seeing a shot of a bone being dusted, one of the palaeontologists said said “oh, it looks just like Jurassic Park!” I asked the team if it was what had inspired them to become palaeontologists and, to a person, they all said no. It was Walking with Dinosaurs.
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