The Digital Effects of Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and its special effects are still considered some of the best ever done in film.  The key to it and what Spielberg has become famous for since he "mastered" it in Jaws, is less is more.  The movie is 127 minutes long but the actually dinosaurs make up a very small portion of that.  It is more built on what is in the forest, what is on the other side of the door, and it works pretty well. 

Back when I was first obsessed with this movie as a kid I had read an article about the dino effects in the movie and they said it was only a few minutes of dinosaurs.  That didn't seem right so I watched it with a stop watch, every time a dinosaur was on screen I timed it whether it was computer or animatronic.  I can't remember the exact figure but it was about 8 minutes 40 seconds.  Now taking into account digital/computer generated shots you are looking at about 200 seconds give or take several.  What they did was certainly a feat for its time, but when considering only 200 seconds have a digital effect in them, you can understand that the artists were allowed to take their time and make every frame as good as it could be.  It would be about 4800 frames of shots.  A team of 10, each doing 20 frames of day would get it done in under a month. 

If Jurassic Park was made now, how would those numbers look?  It would probably be triple that, for frames to do it, plus more projects, equals less time to spend on each individual effect.  As a kid this was the perfect movie, but a part of me wishes they would have done a little more.  Then again that's what happened with Lost World, and while it was decent it didn't live up to this one.