Re: BBC THEROPOD PROGRAMME

[Mike Taylor <mike@tecc.co.uk>]

> Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 10:40:04 +0000
> From: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
> 
> Last night BBC2 screened a documentary on big dinosaurs - - I can't 
> remember the title.

It was called _Extreme Dinosaurs_ ...  Which tells you quite a bit
about the tone it took :-)  I enjoyed it, but wasn't it awfully
slow-moving?  Fifty minutes for twenty minutes' material -- they made
it up to time by saying everything twice and some things three times.
Oh, and speaking in that slow-and-portentous style that we've come to
know and love from the WWD commentary.

Oh well, shouldn't grumble :-)

> Unfortunately all the animation was just recycled from WWD: for
> _Argentinosaurus_ they used the WWD _Diplodocus_ (but sans dermal
> spines), for _Giganotosaurus_ they used the awful WWD _Allosaurus_
> (but sans red eye horns).

Hah.  I _thought_ the Argentinosaurus didn't look very titanosaurid!
I appreciate that it's not cheap or easy to make new computer models,
but you think they'd have got rip of the enormously long swishing
tail, wouldn't you?  The model looked more like Seismosaurus ...

At least re-using the Allosaurus model for Giganotosaurus is in the
right general area.

Actually, I thought the best model in the whole thing was the
full-size phyiscal one they're building to put in the town square of,
er, can't remember the name of the place, but near where they found
Argentinosaurus.  The sense of scale from seeing humans with it was
really awesome.  It was noticable how _totally_ different the physical
model looked from the WWD-like computer one, presumably because the
physical one bears a passing resemblance to the real thing.

> As TV people are want to do, they added audible thumps for every
> footstep of the two dinosaurs.  Sigh.

And did you notice that in their animation of Brachiosaurus walking,
they had it so that with every step, it momentarily lifted both feet
on the same side together!  Ooops.

> Overall it was good fun. There was a LOT of cliche - discoveries and
> landscape scenes were heavily Hollywoodized - but I suppose the
> material was fairly novel.

Yup.  I wouldn't have wanted to miss it.

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