bbc1

The record-breaking BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs is repeated on BBC1 from August 7th, 2000.

This is a reprint of an article Gareth Huw Davies wrote in Radio Times in October 1999, before the first showing.

Tim Haines is finding it hard to be humbled by the end of 
the millenium. He has just completed the flagship BBC1 
series Walking with Dinosaurs. "Here we are talking about 
just 1000 years of human history. Dinos lived for over 155 
million years."
  Indeed, a visiting alien, with the power to review the 
whole history of life on earth, would quickly arrive at 
this plain truth. The natural state of our planet is being 
ruled by dinosaurs. Mammals, of which we have the dubious 
distinction of being the highest example, are just filling 
in during a cold spell.
  For 170 million years dinosaurs were supreme, until the 
final calamity that wiped them out. No other type of 
creature has been so in charge for so long. If we are to 
be around for an equal length of time, man at the end of 
his era will have completed a further 168,000
millennia.
  So perhaps Tim Haines can let the central "Why did you 
make it" question aimed at people in charge of huge, 
ambitious series funded with licence-payer's money answer 
itself. Because, like Mt Everest, they are there, the 
biggest (known) winners in the history of the galaxy.
  For those not to be persuaded by mega-statistics, he has 
the more spritual answer. "It is something to do with the 
very primitive essence of real monsters like we love in 
tales. But these were real, which gives them an extra 
kick. This is not a made-up world. The world they stomped 
all over is the same one we stomp all over."
  But hold on. Is TV really up to it? We came to dinos 
very late - we didnt even discover them until the last 
century. And throughout this century our attempts to 
depict them on screens big and small have been, mainly, a 
joke.
  One screen event changed all that. If I say the kitchen 
scene in Jurassic Park, you will you know what I mean. You 
didn't need to know anything about film when you saw the 
rampaging velociraptor chasing humans among the shining 
hobs, sinks and saucepans to realise that a major 
threshold in making monsters believable had been crossed.
  The key to turning the base metal of TV producers' dino 
concepts into the pure gold of Jurassic Park-standard 
images is the same Soft Image softwear - ("pronounced the 
French way - Soft Imaage - because it is French 
Canadian") which Steven Spielberg used, now available to 
any animator with #6000 to spare.
  But we are still talking, essentially, cartoons. In the 
movies directors can put in "Gee, that monster's awesom" 
reaction shots from actors to reinforce the impact of 
their images. No such luxury in what, in effect, was going 
to be a natural history of dinos. No Attenborough on 
screen - that would be anachronistic. No fast moving, seat 
of your pants script to take your eyes of the joins.
  "In Jurassic Park the job of that dino was to walk over 
and eat a lawyer, whereas our dino has no job at all other 
than to be itself," said Haines. So any creaky animation 
would be cruelly exposed. It would be like fielding an 
unfit striker in the Cup Final. Could it be done?
  With the series safely commissioned for prime time BBC 
1, Haines had to decide how much computer graphics 
animation he dared put in. "You can still make something 
very indifferent, even with the same animation tools. At 
first I thought I could make six or seven minutes of 
animation of dinos in every 30 minute programme; for the 
rest we would be looking at plants and insects."
  In the event he has two and a half hours[italics] of 
computer graphics, of about 40 dinos, in the six shows. 
"The process of making dinos got better and better. I 
could choose as much as I could possibly want. We have 
come closer to these animals, set against 
authentic-looking backgrounds, than I ever dreamed 
possible."
  And the solution came not in Hollywood but on the corner 
Margaret St, just a few hundred yards off Oxford St in 
Central London. "I went round various animation houses 
trying to find people who shared my idea, and I was very 
fortunate to bump into Mike Milne who works at Framestore 
in Soho," said Haines. "Here was a man who had done the 
title sequences from Bond films, and many commercials, who 
was looking for a new challenge.
  "As a test he animated some very simple triceratops, 
without any detail on them. He gave them a walk cycle like 
a rhino, compositing them onto some acacias in the morning  
mist on the African plains. Immediately I saw he thinking 
my way.
  "He had a vision of animals in their environment, 
concentrating on the aspects that people will notice, like 
getting the mist layer right in front of the dinos."
  At the heart of the project was Mike Milne's team of 
computer-dextrous young men. For a writer like me whose 
aptitude on the computer is at the level of taking a quiet 
stroll in the country, going among them it is like walking 
around on the Olympic track among athletes who have just 
run the 100 metres.
  But before they could start work, the chosen dinos had 
to have a 3D existence. Model makers who worked in Oscar 
winning and Bafta award nominated teams on Babe, the 
English Patient and Alien were assigned to the task.
  They worked with a panel of academic experts, who made 
regular visits to Framestore and were consulted throughout 
the process. Applying all the latest fossil evidence and 
new thinking on dinosaurs, and a lot of good intuition, 
they created scale model or, more precisely, maquettes, 
which were then laser-scanned into the computer as the 
original reference for the animators.
   Some dinos came in an extra edition, as a large scale 
animatronic head operated like an electronic puppet, to be 
used on location for close up work and dramatic 
interactive scenes.
   The scanned images were actually too good[italics] to 
use. They were so complex that the animator would not have 
enough computer-processing power to move them about the 
screen. They had to be massively simplified, down to a 
wire mesh shape that still retained all the essential 
features of the dinos shape. (The detailed scuptural 
detail was reapplied at the end of the animation process, 
to make the final image more convincing.)
  The animators were able to see inside the simplified 
computer model. Selecting "skeleton view" they isolated 
the appropriate bones used in a particular movement in key 
squares or frames, which they could then lift and move on 
screen like a puppeteer, to make the dino walk, or raise 
its head. They tweaked and moved the dinos around until 
the action called for in a particular sequence looked 
natural and smooth.
  One of the hardest tasks was giving the dinos' skin a 
colour and texture. A few examples of dino skin have been 
preserved showing the scale structure - but not the 
colour. The illustrator had to make inspired guesses about 
how they would have looked in their particular 
environment.
  "The hard bit is making sure that every bit of pattern 
we paint arrives at the right place on the computer 
model," said Mike Milne "That, for example, the back of 
the leg scales match the side of the leg scales."
  Although the dinos have no life, the backgrounds 
certainly do. Tim Haines spent months combing the world 
for the correct species of ancient tree and habitat to 
film. "We found some beautiful lost worlds, wonderful 
places, in Chile, New Zealand and New Caledonia in the 
Pacific."
  The animators had to choreograph their dinos so they 
appeared to be part of that landscape, and lit by the same 
sun that illuminated it, disguising the obvious fact that 
the two images were merged later. To make the effect more 
realistic, Haines made judicious use of animatronics, 
taking the model heads on location and filming them 
against the lost world backgrounds.
  "The main reason for using both graphics and 
animatronics is to keep viewers from getting too used to 
what they are watching. We could have computer graphics 
all the time, but you get this irritating three yards 
barrier - we can't bring them closer than that. But if you 
suddenly see this big close up of teeth ripping flesh you 
kind of believe it. So it keeps you guessing.
  "The reality of the background adds to the reality of 
our animals. If we make up a background then our animals 
look made up. When the redwood twitches because our dino 
bumped into it, even though it's an animatronic model of a 
dino, you believe it."
  The experts were certainly convinced. One academic who 
advised on the big marine creatures - the way they moved 
does not exist any more and can only be guessed at - came 
in to see the finished result. "He had tears in his eyes," 
recalled Milne. He said `I have taught this for years and 
could only imagine it. Now I can see it.' This is the 
reaction I want."
  Milne believes viewers will be convinced too. "One of 
the directors of our parent company who is in the travel 
business looked at a test sequence and said `I'm going to 
get inundated with requests from people asking for holiday 
where they can see these.' If they ring up next day asking 
where they can go to see T rex. then you know you have 
won."
  "I would say that we are on a par with any of the 
Hollywood companies in terms of how we produce the look of 
the dinos. We do as good a job, and that does put us ahead 
of the field in Europe.
  "I don't think anyone has anything to teach us; the only 
difference between us and Hollywood is they use more 
people. The company that did Jurassic Park probably had 
hundreds working on it. We had 15."
  So what does this series tell us about dinos? Rather 
than take us through the dino dynasty, epoch by epoch, 
Haines prefers to pinpoint dinos as if they were being 
filmed by a camera team today. "I want people to believe 
thay are watching one moment in the time of the dinosaurs. 
The script will explain that it is a very early dino or 
whatever.
 "We followed all the rule the paleontologists gave us, 
then directed the action like it was a real natural 
history programme. We had to be utterly convinced it 
was[italics] all real, even though we were making educated 
guesses. It's that conviction that what you see is real 
that drags you into accepting it. If you watch it and let 
yourself believe in the animals, I hope you really will 
get the feeling of what it might have been like then."
   But the series still has to anchor itself to some key 
events, such as the dinos' arrival, and their departure.  
Dinos started around 230 million years ago, after 
vertebrates (creatures with backbones) had been on land 
for 100 million years. "What they came from is the biggest 
question in paleontology. There are lots of little 
reptiles that don't qualify as dinos, but are like them,  
littered around the early Triasic. Finding the missing 
link between primitive artheosoraus, the group they come 
from, and dinos is the hard part.
  "Then suddenly up pops a creature that we all recognise 
as a dino, with this very special hip which allows it to 
run faster. They were extremely agile little two-legged 
carnivores, with paper-thin bones, which allowed them to 
get up off four legs and stand upright. From about 215 
million years ago, dinos were dominant. They were 
lightweight, fast, agile. Everything else walking around 
was really slow and cumbersome."
  They came to an end about 65 million years ago. "A 
combination of factors probably did for the dinos; there 
was an asteroid - we know one fell. There were volcanoes, 
blotting out the light; there were mammals eating their 
eggs. But it is probably scientifically correct to say it 
was not one thing that killed them."
  And did dinos die out, anyway? "If you were a zoologist 
at that time looking at dinos' life changing in front of 
you, you would have been looking at all their descendants, 
like the various birds, and saying `Well, those feathery 
ones are doing all right.'
  |I want people to receive Walking with Dinos for what we 
hope it is - a best guess of what it was really like in 
the age of the dinos."