Seeing is believing with new film technology! The not so modern technique of superimposition is put to a new use in the movie Dinosaur. This allows the aduiance to feel that what he sees is, in fact, reality.
In the movie Dinosaur, the technique of superimposition is used throughout the movie in order to convince the audience that what they are seeing was reality when dinosaurs walked the earth. Taken from the story line from the movie The Land Before Time, Dinosaur goes one step further by combining computer-generated, digital dinosaurs superimposed onto video taken of natural terrain. By placing the lifelike dinosaurs on actual terrain, Disney and Dream Quest were able to keep the younger and older viewers entertained by bringing everyone 245 million years back in time with realistic graphics coupled with a captivating story.
While Dream Quest was able to superimpose digital creations onto natural terrain, they also used this technique by superimposing actual meteorite footage onto the natural terrain. The result of this was a breath taking scene in the first thirty minutes of the movie where the dinosaurs and meteors are both superimposed on actual terrain, allowing the audience to see the direct affect that the meteor had on the dinosaurs. By superimposing film of meteorites on the film of actual terrain, the audience is further persuaded that what they are seeing was reality many years ago.
Even though the use of this technique made the film more realistic, without having the natural terrain adjust to the creatures on it, the film would lose any realistic quality that it might have. When Aladar (the protagonist in the story), for example, walked along a sandy beach after the meteor impact, it wouldn't have been realistic for him not to make impressions in the sand. However, by creating dinosaur footprints in the sand and then superimposing the digital Aladar to match these footprints, Dream Quest and Disney were further able to make the movie more realistic. While the technique of superimposing one picture on another allows the film maker to distort the reality that the audience is seeing. However, by not making logical adjustments in the images that are being superimposed, the audience is able to see through the fallacy and the image becomes less believable.
In the movie Dinosaur, Disney and Dream Quest used the technique of superimposition throughout the movie in order to convince the audience that what they are seeing was reality when dinosaurs walked the earth. By combining this technique with digitally altering the superimposed images, the filmmaker is able to both convince old and young audience members that what they are seeing is, in fact, reality.
