This scene was shot on November 7th and 8th 1996 at Indian Dunes just North of Valencia, California. It is a 600-acre ranch that used to rent be rented out to film and television productions.
Greens coordinator Danny Ondrejko grew an entire field of elephant grass just for production of The Lost World. Production designer Rick Carter said it was only a week before they shot the scene that the grass sprouted its last 12 inches to make it high enough.
It was planned to get the effect of the raptors plowing through the grass towards the humans done practically as much as possible. There were raptor plow rigs created; these were puppet raptors mounted on a kind of bobsled with scythes. The idea was they would be pulled through the field via winch to create the effect that the raptors were moving through the field.
In the end, production wasn’t happy with the results and opted to shoot plates for a visual effect. They shot the untouched field, then a matching shot of the field with path of the raptors mowed into it, so they could essentially wipe one frame over the other.
To create the effect of the raptors pulling the humans down to the ground, the stuntmen wore harness attached by a cable and were yanked back into the grass. Stan Winston’s team had special springy flexible raptor tails that that they would release and whip around to make it seem like it had made a kill.
While the full size animatronics were brought in, they only appear in one shot of the scene, although storyboards and behind the scenes photos show that more footage of them was filmed.
Sources:
– “The Making of Jurassic Park” by Jody Duncan
– “Jurassic Park: the Ultimate Visual History” by James Mottram.
As a bonus, the Stan Winston studio crew talk about working on The Lost World on this reunion video: https://youtu.be/XqRjCDVOJQI?si=RcYNGQMv5bhM9gv9
by CrichtonFan1992