Dinosaurs
Paper details:
Watch the following clip – which shows brief scenes from a variety of dinosaur films over the past century. What are common elements that you observe in
these films? Have these tropes changed over time? Pay attention to the following:
The environments that the dinosaurs are portrayed as living in.
The interactions between different dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals)
The interactions between dinosaurs and people – are these realistic?
The reconstructions of the dinosaurs – look at the posture, skin, shape and size of the animals.
Note that the films range from the 1920’s to the present. There were a wide variety of technologies used to make the films from Claymation and puppets to
modern computer-aided graphics. Please do not judge the films in terms of the quality of the production – almost all of these films were pushing the
boundaries of what was technologically possible when they were filmed.
Here is the clip: