JURASSIC LEGACY (Working on JURASSIC WORLD FALLEN KINGDOM) Part 4

Months before JURASSIC WORLD FALLEN KINGDOM premiered, teaser trailers were released for the movie, both on TV then YOUTUBE and social media, and straight away the most wonderful thing happened, my work was featured in one of these main trailers.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES had a fantastic marketing idea, create a fictional group called the DINOSAUR PROTECTION GROUP (The DPG) and release a trailer in the form of an urgent appeal to save the Dinosaurs left on the island after the events depicted in JURASSIC WORLD. The trailer featured clips from the first movie and specially created footage of Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) working with children and explaining all about Dinosaurs – and there, in the background was my Xylosuchus, and even more impressively, my red Velociraptor was in the hands of co-stars Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith, who were menacing children with it.

The scenes were short, but there they were, proving my work was to be in the movie, and more importantly for me, if for some reason they didn’t appear in the actual movie – the trailer itself featured my work, which was amazing enough.

So I was understandably thrilled, I posted on FACEBOOK and TWITTER about it, the trailer was now in the public domain so I could let people know that my work was featured. And two things happened! Firstly my old website buckled under the pressure, as fans of the franchise visited my website, the old site quickly began to fail, unable to show images and incrementally deleting itself. Here I have to mention my wonderful wife, who dropped everything and helped build a new site for me, amazingly- in a matter of hours, and of course local schools immediately wanted Dinosaur workshops.

This continued until the release of the movie in the summer of 2018, my wonderful friend who had suggested my work to Universal, even got tickets for the UK premier in Leicester Square, so we drove down to London on a sunny Sunday morning, met up and attended the UK premier, meeting crew and actors.

My dinosaurs are actually in the movie, a crest here, a tail there! but they are not seen properly and are just background. The incredible animatronic dinosaurs take all the limelight and having seen them up close this is only right, as they were and are superb creations. Still, my work being only background doesn’t matter to me one bit, my work has featured, however briefly in the most popular dinosaur franchise of all time, and yes I’m thrilled. As I write this (Feb 2020) the DPG (Dinosaur Protection Group) website is still active and my dinosaurs still feature in the background on several pictures including the Homepages main banner, so yes, I’m still happy.

Again as I write this. I know ‘Jurassic World 3’ in is in pre-production but, unfortunately for me, my contact has moved on, so I doubt very much that my cardboard creatures will be needed. Still I look forward to this movie as I have all the others, and will still smile, in the darkness of the movie theatre, when the Jurassic Park theme fills the air, and I think of my little old cardboard creations that are now permanently part the Jurassic Park/World
Franchise.