9 /10 1 Votes
Initial release 1985 | 4.5/5 Geek Ireland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar When Dinosaurs Roamed, Sea Monsters: A Prehist, Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia, Jurassic Park, The Dinosaur Project | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Prehistoric beast 1984 hd
Prehistoric Beast is a ten-minute-long experimental animated film conceived, supervised and directed by Phil Tippett in 1984. This sequence is considered as being the first film produced by the Tippett Studio, founded by Tippett himself in 1984. Made with the go motion animation technique, scenes from Prehistoric Beast were included in the 1985 full-length documentary Dinosaur!, first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985.
Contents
- Prehistoric beast 1984 hd
- Content
- Prelude of a full length documentary
- Digital re release
- Legacy
- References
Content
This short film depicts the chase and predation of a Monoclonius (or "Centrosaurus" which it also was named as) by a Tyrannosaurus. A Tyrannosaurus is busy eating a dead Edmontosaurus that night and finishes. The next morning, a herd of Monoclonius is seen grazing. One member wanders into the forest to find more food. It finds a field of flowers and begins grazing. It wanders in further and starts to be hunted by the same Tyrannosaurus. The Tyrannosaurus steps on a twig, which makes the Monoclonius wary. The Monoclonius lets out a trumpet to signal the herd, then, possibly curious, keeps walking deeper into the forest. It soon stumbles upon the remains of the Edmontosaurus killed by the Tyrannosaurus. While the Monoclonius ponders over the carcass, the Tyrannosaurus sneaks up from behind. The Tyrannosaurus attacks and bites hard on the Monoclonius' back. The Monoclonius breaks free and stabs the Tyrannosaurus in its shin, enraging it. The Tyrannosaurus manages to corner the Monoclonius near some trees. The herbivore lets out one last cry before it is presumably killed. The Monoclonius herd start to call out for their missing member, not knowing that it has been killed. The Tyrannosaurus is next seen trying to find a place to sleep and digest its meal.
Prelude of a full-length documentary
Prehistoric Beast was only released in specialized animation festivals, but it convinced Robert Guenette and Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order to transform it in a full-length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realize new sequences with other dinosaur species, and the Prehistoric Beast material was added to the new one, resulting on Dinosaur! in 1985. Tippett had already participated in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), animating the tauntauns seen in the movie, and his experimental work on Prehistoric Beast and Dinosaur! served to the animated dinosaurs sequences he made some years later for Jurassic Park (1993).
Digital re-release
On April 6, 2011, the Tippett Studio had published on its YouTube official channel a digital restoration of the short.
Legacy
As for the subsequent documentary Dinosaur!, Phil Tippett, while making Prehistoric Beast, received assistance from ILM stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs).
In the 1933 movie King Kong, a Stegosaurus attacks the movie characters and after having killed it by gun fire one of the characters identifies it as being "a prehistoric beast". This line, taken from the original 1933 King Kong film, inspired Phil Tippett when giving a title to his 1984 animated short film. An excerpt from this King Kong scene is shown in the final 1985 documentary Dinosaur!, as a reference to Prehistoric Beast, the short sequence by which it was preceded.