Jurassic Park, 1993, Property of Universal Studios

Back when I was six and seven years old I was a dinosaur nut. Pretty common, but I was pretty nerdy about it. I got a weekly magazine, watched every movie possible with dinosaurs and had a generous amount of dinosaur toys. The toys were great, but overwhelmingly the films showed monsters. Still, I had my imagination and my toys came alive. Seven is the perfect dinosaur age.

Luckily I turned seven in 1993.

There’s a few films in my life that have made me feel as though I walked out of the cinema as a different person — slightly or significantly. Film has the power to open your mind, change your perspective or, as happened in 1993, make you wonder how did they do that?!

Jurassic Park. Spielberg had brought dinosaurs to life, with some embellishments. I was told they were puppets. Really advanced puppets. Amazing, I thought. I went home and played Jurassic Park… for the next three years.

Around ten I discovered a show called Movie Magic. It started 5 minutes before my school bus arrived at my home, so I’d dash up the street to watch it. Ever since Jurassic Park had come into my life I’d wondered with every film how did they do that?!

This question was, for a long time, limited to special effects, visual effects and stunts.
I’d obsessively watch DVD features when the platform arrived and read anywhere on the Internet more about how things were done. I loved the history of it all — Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippet, Dennis Muren, Stan Winston — and all the shoulders they stood on, and all those who stood on theirs.

Because of this I devoured action, sci-fi and creature features. Computer Generated Imagery was great — although rarely on-par with ILM’s work on Jurassic Park — but animatronics were the best. The puppets.

During university I broadened my tastes. I’d never been closed-minded about dramas, I just hadn’t felt they were particularly interesting in terms of how they were made.

I was making little films with friends and focusing on editing and compositing. It wasn’t something I thought of often, but the seed of my desire to make films stemmed from Jurassic Park. Nothing else had ever made me ask the question that would lead me towards my own creations. The problems with my early films stemmed from this inspiration, however. I had a very George Lucasian approach to writing: ‘dialogue gets me from one plot point to another’.

It was when I saw There Will Be Blood I sat back and thought how did they do that?! The script. How did they do that? How do you write like that? Why was I entranced by this film?

My cinematic diet had changed, and so too had my interests. I didn’t want to make Transformers, I wanted to learn how to direct beyond script coverage. I wanted to connect with actors and create something with them. I wanted the cinematographers to communicate with their tools, not just get cool shots. I wanted to tap into something more.

Despite the plethora of films I’ve seen since 1993, I know my life altered in trajectory in that cinema. In having to know how films were made I realised that I too wanted to make them.

Joshua Lundberg is a Writer and Director at Barking Mouse®, and co-Founder along with Producer Georgia Woodward. Together they create films, web series as well as commercial and corporate content for clients.