Jurassic Park Without Dinosaurs: Watch Humans Stare in Amazement at a World Stripped of CGI Creations

How many times have you encoun­tered an oth­er­wise per­fect view spoiled by a new­ly erect­ed high rise, a con­struc­tion crane, or a CGI bra­chiosaurus?

Con­stant­ly, right?

Video edi­tor William Hirsch makes light work of Juras­sic Park’s pri­ma­ry attrac­tions’ first appear­ance, lit­er­al­ly eras­ing them from the scene.

Hirsch esti­mat­ed that it took him about a week to get rid of those pesky ‘saurs using noth­ing fanci­er than After Effects’s built in tools, which include the motion track­ing soft­ware Mocha.

It’s equal parts ridicu­lous and love­ly to see humans sud­den­ly thun­der­struck by the unspoiled land­scape they’ve been dri­ving through.

These days, of course, Lau­ra Dern would have to glance up from her phone, not a paper map.

Though it’s not such a stretch to imag­ine Juras­sic Park’s author’s suc­ces­sor, the late Michael Crich­ton’s lit­er­ary heir, hard at work on a dystopi­an nov­el titled Park.

At the time of its release, Juras­sic Park’s dinosaurs were a spe­cial effects game chang­er. Their num­bers were sup­ple­ment­ed by some non-com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ani­ma­tron­ic mod­els, though no doubt Spiel­berg was appre­hen­sive giv­en the way his robot­ic sharks act­ed up on the set of Jaws. The human play­ers may have had more screen time, but the dinosaurs’ 15 min­utes of footage has result­ed in a last­ing fame, extend­ing decades beyond the expect­ed 15 min­utes.

Unex­pect­ed­ly, Hirsch’s dinosaurs, or rather, lack there­of, have gen­er­at­ed the most excite­ment with regard to his project. But his atten­tion to detail is also laud­able. Above, he reveals how he tweaked the access badge dan­gling from the rear view mir­ror of the park’s all-ter­rain vehi­cle.

Are we wrong to think that John Williams’ swelling orig­i­nal score feels more organ­ic in this dinosaur-free con­text? Rivers, trees, and vast amounts of skies have been known to spur com­posers to such heights.

The poten­tial­ly lethal pre­his­toric beasts are out of the way, but that line “We’re gonna make a for­tune with this place” retains an air of omi­nous fore­shad­ow­ing, giv­en the plen­ti­ful nat­ur­al resources on dis­play. Some­times humans can do more dam­age than dinosaurs.

If that feels too intense, you can also retreat to the escapist plea­sures of the orig­i­nal, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

Game of Thrones: A Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Show’s Visu­al Effects

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.