T. rexes bite into bigger role in 'Dinotopia'
By Bridget Byrne
Associated Press
BURBANK, Calif. — The sound technicians like the T. rexes the best.
"They are noisy, they gnaw, they growl, they eat things, they crash through buildings and scare people. We have a great time with them," says Robert Webber, who's supervising post-production audio for ABC's new "Dinotopia" series, a spinoff from the network's successful May miniseries.
So much for the peaceful paradise originally created by National Geographic illustrator and author James Gurney, where people and dinosaurs mingle and converse compatibly.
In the 13-part series, which debuts with back-to-back episodes (7 tonight), giant Tyrannosauruses with huge teeth devour humans regularly — off-camera, of course, because this is a family show.
The "Dinotopia" miniseries, in which the insatiable T. rexes had only bite-sized parts, scored its highest rating among 2- to 11-year-olds, so producer Howard Ellis doesn't want to upset the younger viewers.
But he also believes kids recognize what's storytelling and what's real and won't be disturbed by the increased presence of the meat-eating dinosaurs.
"We quickly realized that T. rexes need to eat people," explains Ellis. "The most memorable scene from the first 'Jurassic Park' movie was when the (lawyer) got eaten on the toilet. That's what everyone talks about. So in a very nonviolent way, our T. rexes eat people, our T. rexes destroy things, but there is no blood and it's not gratuitous violence."
Ellis has stopped by the Echo Sound Studio in Burbank, where Webber and three other technicians are perfecting the audio mix for the fantasy-adventure series.
The weekly show retained the main characters from the miniseries, but features a new cast including Shiloh Strong, who plays one of the show's young heroes, David Scott.
After stopping by Echo Sound and watching a nearly completed episode, which combines live action and computer-generated imagery, he says: "It was so hard to tell what it was like when you were making it, because half of it isn't there."
The only T. rexes he saw on the set were cutouts placed as eye-level cues when he had to pretend to come face-to-face with the beasts. The prehistoric figures would be added later by computer.
During the seven-month shoot in Hungary, Strong often spent five hours a day tossed around in front of a blank blue screen, depicting Scott on duty as a pilot flying a prehistoric winged creature.
"It was basically like a mechanical bull formed to the look and scale of a dinosaur on six hydraulic pumps, hooked up to a computer," Strong explained. "It would dip and swerve and flap ... with me laying on my stomach, and holding on to this uncomfortable beast."
Two huge back-lot locations in Budapest contained the sets for Waterfall City and parts of the Dinotopia island. Seaside and seascape footage was also shot in Malta and at various other locations from England to South Africa.
