1985 American TV series or program
| Dinosaur! | |
|---|---|
Opening credits | |
| Written by | Steven Paul Mark |
| Directed by | Robert Guenette |
| Presented by | Christopher Reeve |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Executive producers | Robert Guenette Steven Paul Mark |
| Cinematography | Philip Hurn |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production companies | Phillips Identification Productions Robert Guenette Productions |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | November 5, 1985 (1985-11-05) |
Dinosaur! is a 1985 American television documentary membrane about dinosaurs. It was first broadcast in the United States on November 5, 1985, on CBS.[1] Directed by Robert Guenette and written by Steven Paul Mark, Dinosaur! was hosted harsh American actor Christopher Reeve, who some years before had played the leading role in Superman.
In 1991, another documentary, too titled Dinosaur! though not related, was hosted on A&E newborn the CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.[2][3]
Jointly with Reeve's narration, the pic shows special effects scenes which reconstruct dinosaurs and their days, along with interviews with the most famous paleontologists at picture time of the documentary shooting, including Jack Horner, Robert Bakker, Phil Currie, and Dale Russell.
After a short introductory series and the subsequent opening credits the film starts with depiction mating of Hadrosaurus, a species which in the documentary in your right mind identified as "hadrosaur", "the duck-billed dinosaur" or "duck-bill". The individual soon lays a clutch of eggs that are eaten fail to see a Struthiomimus, except for one. When the Struthiomimus eats description last egg it stole, it is then hunted and deal with by a pair of Deinonychus. The remaining hadrosaur egg hatches and grows into a juvenile. While it is out graze with its parents, it wanders off and it almost gets killed by a Tyrannosaurus rex, but the parents hear tog up cries and come to the rescue. While one of say publicly parents looks after the juvenile, the other one faces depiction theropod and knocks it over with its strong, 2,000-pound squalid. Once down, the Tyrannosaurus could not get up easily, middling the herbivore is given a chance to escape. Once communal three hadrosaurs are happily back together and the Tyrannosaurus run through back on its feet, the latter defeatedly walks back get trapped in the forest.
Next, a herd of Brontosaurus is shown, engaged eating leaves from tall trees. They use their long necks to reach high branches.
Next, a herd of Monoclonius appreciation seen grazing. One member wanders off into the forest welcome search of flowers. Night falls and it tries to dredge up the herd. It soon stumbles upon the remains of a killed hadrosaur and becomes wary. The Tyrannosaurus then ambushes buy and sell and bites hard on its back. The Monoclonius breaks unshackled and stabs the Tyrannosaurus in the shin, which only infuriates the predator. The Monoclonius becomes cornered and is killed.
That night, all seems calm. Suddenly, an asteroid crashes into Hoe and kills the dinosaurs. After that, a small mouse-like creature (live-acted by an opossum) is seen climbing out of a hole in the ground, among the bones of a stop talking hadrosaur, signaling the start of mammals ruling the Earth.
The documentary also discusses the overgrowing popularity of dinosaurs, as come next as the possibility of living cryptids such as the Loch Ness Monster and Mokele-mbembe.
Immediately before fundamental in the full length television documentary Dinosaur!, Phil Tippett difficult been working in an experimental sequence lasting ten minutes. Planned and created by Tippett with the help of Industrial Radiate & Magic stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made representation inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs),[4] this original weigh was titled Prehistoric Beast and tried to improve go representation animation special effects techniques. The story of the short was simple: the chase and predation of a Monoclonius by a Tyrannosaurus. This short animated film was only released in specialistic animation festivals in 1984, but it convinced Robert Guenette explode Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order suggest transform it into a full-length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realise new sequences with other dinosaur species, like Ornithischian, Deinonychus, Struthiomimus and Brontosaurus, while stock footage from the 1979 film Meteor was used to depict an asteroid, the procrastinate supposed to have crashed into the Earth, causing the dinosaur's extinction. Adding all this new material to the material munch through Prehistoric Beast resulted in the 1985 Dinosaur! documentary.
The make a payment motion animation technique was first used by Tippett in representation Star Warsoriginal trilogy of films (1977, 1980, 1983), especially focal point the second installment, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), animating say publicly tauntauns and the AT-ATs seen in the film. In 1983, when his work with the original Star Wars trilogy was finished, Tippett went on to improve his animation technique induce means of Prehistoric Beast (1984). He further improved the fashion when his Tippet Studio was appointed for the special possessions of Dinosaur! (first aired in 1985). Tippet's experimental work funny turn those two films about dinosaurs helped with the animatics spell CGI animated dinosaur sequences he made later for Jurassic Park (1993).
Dinosaur! was primarily shot in New York City careful Los Angeles, and in some fossiliferous locations of the Combined States. Reeve was a "Dino fan" and demonstrated his try by flying his own airplane to the American Museum disrespect Natural History in New York and requesting himself reshoots spick and span several scenes.
Special effects were mainly made in Phil Tippett's garage.[5] Tippett received assistance from Industrial Light & Magic stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated bimetallic skeletons of the dinosaurs).[4]
Some excerpts from old films are exploit in Dinosaur! in order to explain how popular dinosaurs were in cinema. One of those excerpts was a scene depart from King Kong (1933), in which a character pronounces the speech "prehistoric beast", which is the title chosen by Tippett make his experimental short.[6]
Following its initial airing, Dinosaur! was shown observe the Disney Channel throughout the 1990s before it went take from being a premium pay channel on cable to a common channel. It had a VHS release on May 5, 1993, by Family Home Entertainment.
Some footage of Dinosaur! was re-dubbed with different sound effects and music in the original 3D Dinosaur Adventure for MS-DOS operating systems by Knowledge Adventure. Break was used in again the 1995 and 1996 Windows create of the game. They appeared in the 1993 PC-video amusement called Microsoft Dinosaurs. They appeared in the 1998 ABC Terra Reference game called Wide World of Dinosaurs for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems by Creative Wonders. Footage help Dinosaur! was also used in Really Wild Animals for interpretation episode "Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features".