Artistic or Visual Design-Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is an excellent movie that used great set design, colors, costumes, and lighting. The movie was shot on the island of Kauai, which was perfect for the film’s story about having a theme park on a private island. Filming the movie on an actual island made all of the outdoor effects more realistic since they were actually the real outdoors. The movie was put on hold when a hurricane hit the island and later filming resumed. All of the scenes in which it was raining were actually filmed in the pouring rain. The famous kitchen scene, in which dinosaurs attack workers, was filmed with large animations of dinosaur replicas. Most of the Dinosaurs were generated by computer software but in the kitchen scene they were actually molded replicas.
The setting of the film definitely made this film more attractive. Most of the scenes were filmed outside in the wilderness with mother nature’s help. The weather contributed greatly to the film because many scenes needed to be done on rainy days. In the summer, the island of Kauai has plenty of rain and sunshine. Other than the first 30-45 minutes of the movie, scenes take place in the rainy forest, which made everything look so much more exciting and adventurous. The lighting was great, for the outside scenes the sun contributed greatly as “natural light”. It seems to me that from watching the film, a lot of the lighting used in the dark was soft, front lighting.
Lighting can make or break a scene in a movie, example: For a romantic dinner scene, low-key lighting allows the subjects and a few key props to be seen. But if the director used high-key lighting there would be mostly light areas with less contrast and the scene would not look as romantic. Steven Spielberg has mastered lighting concepts and his movies are created beautifully. I think that with Jurassic Park, Spielberg wanted everything to look as real as possible because he was using computer images to recreate dinosaurs. If Spielberg had chosen the wrong location for the film, or used the wrong lighting, the movie may have seemed too fake and would not have been as easy to view.
The art director had to choose appropriate costumes for the actors. The Jurassic Park employees all wore believable uniforms with neutral colors, all guests that came to the island wore warm, bright colors. The difference in contrast between the costumes makes the effect of good vs. bad. Innocent people came to the island to see this large, wonderful theme park and lives were lost as the dinosaurs escaped. The park employees were aware of the dangers and still allowed the park to open. The art director’s use of make-up was excellent, the wounds all looked so real and had details that seemed as if they really were present.
This movie was full of visual and artistic design, Steven Spielberg has evolved and matured into one of the world’s best movie directors. He makes movies that have great plots and makes them better with artistic design.