10 Most Incredible Practical Effects In Sci-Fi Movie History

Jurassic Park was one of the first films to prove CGI was the way of the future for Hollywood. Despite this, this sci-fi masterpiece only used such effects when absolutely necessary. Throughout the entire movie, there is only 50 shots containing computer imagery. The average blockbuster nowadays has over a thousand shots swamped with CGI. Spielberg contacted every special effects team he could find since he knew his vision for the film would need a variety of prosthetics, puppetry, robots, and crew members in costume.

Special effects wizard, Stan Winston, spent over a year consulting palaeontologists to make the animatronics look as authentic as possible. For the Tyrannosaurus rex, the crew built a 20ft tall robot, which is the largest robot ever constructed. Even when the machine malfunctioned from the rain, Spielberg refused to swap it out and only used CGI for the minimum shots possible.

Bizarrely, Spielberg said the hardest practical effect in the film was the scene where the T-Rex's footsteps make the water in the plastic cup ripple. This shot was attained by playing a guitar string directly below the cup.