Dinotasia aka Dinosaur Revolution ?

[scallenger]

Well, I was bored today so I did something odd, lol. I watched the first episode of Dinosaur Revolution and noted every time the lab area/talking heads/repeat footage/commercial bookends appeared and subtracted those times from the length of the episode. Basically, in episode 1 at least, there was approx. 10 minutes and 46 seconds of this footage spread out. The episode (at least in the form I have been watching it) is 42 minutes and 28 seconds.

That means for episode 1 that there was approx. 31 minutes and 42 seconds of footage dedicated solely to the amount of screen time there is of the actual premise of the show: the dinosaurs in their environment.

Now, I could do this for the remaining 3 episodes (and I might just for curiosity), but why not at least just guess and predict that the other episodes are about the same length and feature about the same of each material. So, lets then just say that 30 minutes of each episode is the "core" of what could possibly be featured in the film version, Dinotasia. If this is true, then that means out of the possible 120, less than 94 minutes (according to the site I linked earlier in this thread from the UK) of that will be in the film. This of course doesn't account for any added introductions or end credits the film will have.

So, what the hell am I trying to say? LOL. In the end more than approx. 26 minutes of what we have seen from Dinosaur Revolution will be cut from the Dinotasia version. So, basically, the length of one episode without the talking head and etc. bits. I'm curious as to what got cut. It would make sense that it would be basically half of the stories from episodes 1 and 3 since they are a collection of smaller tales. I wouldn't want to see any more cut out of episodes 2 and 4, but perhaps they have done that too.

What do you all think? Are you nervous about any of your favorite bits being left out of this superior take on the show? Or are you confident that all cuts were made for the best reasons? Also, since it is clear there will be parts left out, would you like to see them as a deleted scene instead on the bonus features of the eventual Blu Ray, shown without narration and possibly just an introduction? Or maybe they will offer and extended cut?

Sorry, I'm just thinking of all the thoughts that big fans of this show would with something like this happening. It's exciting and fun!

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

They could cut the less interesting episodes..I know the Mosasaur scene was a heavy favorite for cutting.

I haven't yet seen episodes 3 and 4 though so I'm not sure just what coudl be cut from those.

I would guess it's safe to say to the Tyrannosaurs and the Allosaurus segments will be kept..I've heard they the best of the bunch.

[scallenger]

Well, while I am not sure if the trailer is anything to go by, but there actually is a shot that is from the beginning of the mosasaur sequence. It's the shot of the pterosaurs flying over the water. You can see it at about the 1:05 mark in the trailer. Granted, that still doesn't mean that sequence will be present in this version, but it could be. I think it would be wise to cut it, like you and others have suggested. There are other sequences that are far more engaging that get the same messages it was trying to convey in better ways.

[Tylosaurus]

Well, I was bored today so I did something odd, lol. I watched the first episode of Dinosaur Revolution and noted every time the lab area/talking heads/repeat footage/commercial bookends appeared and subtracted those times from the length of the episode. Basically, in episode 1 at least, there was approx. 10 minutes and 46 seconds of this footage spread out. The episode (at least in the form I have been watching it) is 42 minutes and 28 seconds.

That means for episode 1 that there was approx. 31 minutes and 42 seconds of footage dedicated solely to the amount of screen time there is of the actual premise of the show: the dinosaurs in their environment.

Now, I could do this for the remaining 3 episodes (and I might just for curiosity), but why not at least just guess and predict that the other episodes are about the same length and feature about the same of each material. So, lets then just say that 30 minutes of each episode is the "core" of what could possibly be featured in the film version, Dinotasia. If this is true, then that means out of the possible 120, less than 94 minutes (according to the site I linked earlier in this thread from the UK) of that will be in the film. This of course doesn't account for any added introductions or end credits the film will have.

So, what the hell am I trying to say? LOL. In the end more than approx. 26 minutes of what we have seen from Dinosaur Revolution will be cut from the Dinotasia version. So, basically, the length of one episode without the talking head and etc. bits. I'm curious as to what got cut. It would make sense that it would be basically half of the stories from episodes 1 and 3 since they are a collection of smaller tales. I wouldn't want to see any more cut out of episodes 2 and 4, but perhaps they have done that too.

What do you all think? Are you nervous about any of your favorite bits being left out of this superior take on the show? Or are you confident that all cuts were made for the best reasons? Also, since it is clear there will be parts left out, would you like to see them as a deleted scene instead on the bonus features of the eventual Blu Ray, shown without narration and possibly just an introduction? Or maybe they will offer and extended cut?

Sorry, I'm just thinking of all the thoughts that big fans of this show would with something like this happening. It's exciting and fun!

Yeah you got some strong points here, to which I all agree on, only I thought that Dinotasia would not only have the scientists parts cut out but also having re-rendered dinosaurs making it a more worthy to watch new product, also render bugs removed and such.

All in all I loved all of it, only the Mosasaurus part 17 meters is big for a Mosasaurus if you'd ask me, the Tylosaurus Proriger was not longer than 14 a 15 meters max and it was the largest of all Mosasaurs, so that part may be excluded for the rest yeah I agree about the T-Rex Family & Allosaurus parts they were very nice, I just hope that they will be the main scene I dunno as the rest goes, that all seemed okay to me.

[Jeremy K9]

Can we expect to see this show on Bluray anytime soon? I really expected to see that before a theater release. I think it's great that it's coming to the big screen, but I'd love to be able to watch it at home, in HD. I'd also like to be able to rewind my favorite parts and re-watch them. I can't do that at the movie theater.     Not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but I just really want to own this awesome show in HD.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Can we expect to see this show on Bluray anytime soon? I really expected to see that before a theater release. I think it's great that it's coming to the big screen, but I'd love to be able to watch it at home, in HD. I'd also like to be able to rewind my favorite parts and re-watch them. I can't do that at the movie theater.     Not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but I just really want to own this awesome show in HD.

If it's like other films it will be on dvd after it's theatrical run.  It would be cool if they put the film on the same dvd with the tv series too. I'm also hoping for some deleted scenes and behind the scenes stuff..not to mention the art work !

[scallenger]

I'm pretty sure the eventual Bluray/DVD will come out after the movie is in theaters. That's why the held off from releasing the Discovery version in the first place on video. Granted, since this is apparently a limited theatrical run, I would wager it won't be released that many months later on Blu. I have a feeling we will be getting some deserving bonus features, in fact, if I remember correctly, wasn't that one of the statements made some time ago? I also think this may be the case, because Pete keeps on deleting certain things he puts up on his blog pertaining to this show, like those really cool storyboards he did for unfilmed scenes. Perhaps he had to remove them because they may be featured on the Blu? Just a guess, because I'm not sure why they would be removed otherwise when other posts stay.

[scallenger]

Not meaning to double post, but I thought I'd do a little update on my insanity.

I went through all 4 episodes now to get exact times on how much in each episode there was devoted to talking heads and how much on the dinosaur footage. My estimate after doing this to the first episode was basically right on, with each episode being close to the same amount. These times correspond to the televised version of the show, and not any DVD or BLU release from elsewhere.

SERIES "TALKING HEAD" TOTAL: 44:08
SERIES "DINO FOOTAGE" TOTAL: 02:05:49

Now, we have two different possible running times for the Dinotasia version given to us. One is 94 minutes from the British Video Association site:

http://www.bva.org.uk/node/1835799

The other, 82 minutes, from Krentz, although he claims he may be off by a few minutes:

Krentz:

...we've cut it into a nice tight 82 minutes ( I could be off on that by a few minutes)...

So which is right? Possibly the British site, although perhaps Krentz's approximation isn't including stuff like an end credits that the film will most certainly have and possibly other adjustments. It'll most likely be some number inbetween. Either way:

TOTAL FOOTAGE CUT FROM DINO REV. FOR DINOTASIA: 31:49 OR 43:49

I'm hoping it's the former, of course. I would still love to know exactly what has been cut! But this has been fun playing this number game!

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Nice work there bud !

Reminds me of when I did production estimates for the Sideshow pieces..it worked for  awhile..lol

I'm hoping for more rather than less of course...we all prefer more to less I'm sure.

[scallenger]

So, if the release date is to be believed, this comes out in like 3 weeks. I'm hoping for theater details very, very soon. I have a bad feeling this may be more UK-based. I hope I am wrong.

[scallenger]

Well, while there is still no new word from anyone, I did make a new find. On Amazon.co.uk, there is already a preorder for a Region 2 PAL DVD of Dinotasia, set to be released July 2nd. I'm wondering if the US edition will be released around the same time, and hopefully as a Bluray as well (I'm sure there will be).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dinotasia-DVD/dp/B007PF5UEE

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

I would think so as far a BR edition is concerned.  I looked at Amazon.com here and there wasn't anything for it.

Maybe it will be a U.K. only ?

[scallenger]

That will upset me VERY much if this is the case. Since there was no indication it would only be a UK thing. And since I'm not hearing any updates, color me slightly worried. I mean the UK and Australia and those other countries can already purchase the Region B Bluray of the actual Dinosaur Revolution show (which won't work on an American Bluray player). If only they are getting this, too... yeah, you'd be I'd be upset. Especially since the show came from America and premiered here. LOL.

But, I'll bite my tongue any further til we know for sure.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Is there an official site for it anywhere ?

[scallenger]

Nope. Nowhere. Not even on any of the studio sites associated with Dinotasia. If it weren't for the trailer and the other information we got from Kertz, I wouldn't even believe this is really coming out! lol. At least not in a few weeks. I'm honestly thinking this will be at least first just shown in the UK. The only official site is for Dinosaur Revolution that can still be viewed at Discovery Channel.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Hmm..you would think they would put something for it up on that page even.

[krentz]

There is a great article about Dinotasia in the London Sunday Times today.  Just google the Sunday Times and you'll find it in the Culture section.  You might not be able to see it though, you need a subscription.  But...

  Here is the text...

It was the triceratops that hooked me. First, though, I hated T rex. The picture in my book showed a tyrannosaurus in a full tooth-and-claw attacking frenzy on a hapless brontosaurus, in livid colour. The T rex's hind legs ripped across the docile vegosaur's back, and its teeth closed around the waving neck, with every muscle on both beasts marked out in sharp, almost pornographic detail. This was primary school, so I hadn't encountered that many pictures of battles to the death. It terrified and fascinated me.

After that, I was snared, riffling through books in search of vicious battles until I found a picture, and eventually made an Airfix model, of a sturdy, determined tricera­tops facing a T rex charge, sitting patiently behind its horns like Roman legionaries settling their shields against Hannibal's elephants. Dinosaurs, I thought, what's not to like?

Since we first stumbled across giant fossilised bones, the vast beasts have proved a cultural obsession to rank alongside Nazis, sharks and the Titanic. Last year's BBC epic Planet Dinosaur started just as Pixar announced it was making a 3D dinosaur movie and Spielberg kicked off work on Jurassic Park 4. This year, there's the cheesy David's Dinosaur — a child finds a dinosaur egg in his grandad's basement as the audience fall asleep — and there's Werner Herzog narrating Dino­tasia, an animated documentary out this month.

It's hard to explain the curious effect that the German director's rasping vocals have over hyper-­realistic footage of well-loved dinosaur favourites tearing each other's arms off, scrapping for survival with twisted, broken jaws and staring in mute beast incomprehension as giant rocks hurtle to earth to seal their doom. This is The Sopranos let loose in the Mesozoic era, and it's a bit like hearing Rutger Hauer intoning his final Blade Runner speech over footage of Goofy emptying an AK-47 into Mickey and Pluto.

"Death will usher in life again," Herzog rasps towards the end, as clouds race across a derelict planet. "And our life, too, is complex and fragile. We too might disappear." A little on the hardcore side, Mr Herzog?

"Most of the time, you see dinosaur movies written for eight-year-olds — with a neat moral or a happy ending." The enfant terrible of New German Cinema chuckles at my British accent. "But this film is to Walking with Dinosaurs what The Wire was to Z-Cars. Look, I have a certain voice and a certain reputation. If I'm the voice­over, then I'm speaking almost as God — and I fit much better as a villain. So my voice of God is never going to comfort you."

Herzog's recent documentary career has tended towards the grimly realistic or darkly fantastic. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a slightly hallucinogenic 3D piece about cave paintings in southern France; Grizzly Man tells the story of a bear enthusiast who gets eaten by bears; Into the Abyss profiles a convict on death row. A speculative "factual" like Dinotasia seems a logical step, but he got involved almost by accident. "My longtime collaborator Erik Nelson was working on a TV programme with this footage for the Discovery Channel," he says, somehow sounding faintly threatening even when relaying a few simple facts. "I was in his office watching footage and said, 'You know what? This should be a movie.'"

Nelson agrees demurely. "He actually said that on stage at Comic-Con, in front of a huge audience," he explains. "So I said, if I do that, will you supply the voice­over? You know, people talk a lot about all sorts of things that Werner does, but they never talk about how he mentors people like me. You know that story about him eating his shoe? Well, he did that as a bet with the director Errol Morris — 'If you ever finish your movie, I will eat my shoe' — but he did it to encourage him."

As Herzog is the kind of man who can be shot in the stomach during a filmed interview with Mark Kermode and carry on, saying, "It is not a significant bullet", I suspect I'd be motivated if he simply growled "Hurry up and finish your damned movie". But he shook on it with Nelson, and Dinotasia is the result. "We both love Fantasia," Herzog says, in possibly the least likely quote of the decade. "This is Disney meets art-house documentary meets Werner Herzog, but it's about dinosaurs — I have no idea if it's going to work for everyone, but it really works for me."

All the stories in Dinotasia are inspired by fossil evidence, something Nelson used in the pitch to Discovery that won him the contract to produce the TV version, beating the team behind Walking with Dinosaurs. Like the dinosaur subplot in Fantasia, Disney's trippy 1940s mashup of visuals and classical music, little scenes of dinosaur life tell tales taken from specific fossil finds. The death of an allosaurus gravely injured as a juvenile is based on a Jurassic fossil in the Smithsonian with the same healed jaw injuries as those on screen. A T rex with a missing arm prompted a violent on-screen T rex tear-up in the film, while the buddy story of two protoceratops comes from fossil boneyards of the Gobi Desert, which provided a detailed tableau of their Upper Cretaceous battle with a veloci­raptor. Perhaps most bizarre, the sight of a monstrous frog picking off baby dinosaurs with its foot-long tongue is based on fossil evidence of beelzebufo, a dino-eating frog preserved with the remains of a carnivorous theropod inside its stomach.

The film-makers worked with the palaeontologist Thomas Holtz on the anatomy of the creatures, which means the appearance of T rex babies covered in feathers chimes with current scientific thinking. "There are about two people on the planet who don't believe birds are dinosaurs," says Dr Mark Witton, a lecturer at the University of Ports­mouth who has consulted on various dinosaur series. "A seagull is a dinosaur, a hummingbird is a dinosaur. I think the depiction in Dinotasia is probably the closest I've seen to what we think dinosaurs really looked like — it's the best yet.

"The one thing I would point out is that, like all wildlife documentaries, they have focused on the gory stuff. In reality, most dinosaurs were herbivores, and the T rex probably slept 22 hours a day. If we did go back in a time machine, we wouldn't find much going on, and they almost certainly wouldn't chase after tiny morsels like us."

Then he drops the bombshell. "The one creature I'd hate to meet is triceratops. We think they're the good guys, but they were probably the most bad-tempered, ag­gressive dinosaurs ever. Imagine them as a giant herd of constantly rutting stags, battling each other and anything that comes near." So the T rex was mainly asleep and my triceratops was a nightmare. This is what you get if you let Werner Herzog near a dinosaur doc. Just don't let him loose on sharks.

Dinotasia is out on May 4

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Well that let us know several of the scenes...I'm guessing it will be a UK only release though ? :/

[scallenger]

What a great article! Loved hearing Herzog's comments! I had to LOL when I read him saying, "If I'm the voice­over, then I'm speaking almost as God — and I fit much better as a villain. So my voice of God is never going to comfort you." LOL

This article, as Blade-of-the-Moon suggests, does indeed confirm a few scenes. However, I think it was safe to assume all the scenes mentioned would be included in this film version, so nothing earth-shattering. Especially since they were all featured in the trailer. However we of course still don't know if any of these scenes were shortened themselves.

So, from this article, confirmed scenes are:

* Allosaurus (well, of course)
* T-Rex (yeah, continue)
* Protoceratops (heck yeah! was in the trailer)
* Beelzebufo (lovely! this part would be great in a theater for it's visuals. also in the trailer)

Looks good so far!

But yeah, Krentz, can you please explain to us if this is indeed a UK-only release or if the US release is on a different date? People (like me) are getting worried this is entirely UK-centric, including the upcoming BluRay release, since there is already a pre-order for it on the UK Amazon (for July 2nd) but nothing at all on the US Amazon. Just would love some explanation/clarification on that front!

[scallenger]

Also found this:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/ClassifiedWorks/0BB2547391A8E149802579E6004F9AED

Reveals the film is rated PG in the UK by the BBFC. Also reveals the exact runtime: 82 minutes and 40 seconds.