Interesting Isla Sorna Geography

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Dinos4Ever
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Interesting Isla Sorna Geography

Post by Dinos4Ever »

So, I'm pouring over some TLW production photos, screencaps, and promotional imagery and something very striking about the way Spielberg and Kaminsky filmed the Kauai unit keeps popping out to me.

Unlike how Spielberg filmed the first Jurassic Park on Kauai, with a mixture of dense jungle locations and locations with mountainous background, TLW used Kauai to portray exclusively large mountainous volcanic cliffs among the backgrounds, with the Redwoods unit being used to almost exclusively film the dense jungle parts. There are no mountains shown in the Redwoods, and they're there. Trust me, they're there. Mind you, this is all discounting any studio usage, and refers only to on location shoots.

Kauai Unit (exclusively volcanic cliffs in background):
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Redwoods Unit (exclusively dense jungle):
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This got me to thinking about how Isla Sorna is described in the novel: an eroded volcanic crater, with large volcanic cliffs bordering dense jungle. "From his vantage point, he was able to see to the far side of the island. a rim of hard black cliff miles away. Between here and the cliffs they saw nothing but gently undulating jungle." - Michael Crichton's "The Lost World"

Which got me thinking: are the visuals of TLW the movie more inspired by the novel than we realize? The silhouette and image of novel Isla Sorna was utilized sparsely among some promotional material:
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But the more I examined the more I found it: craggy volcanic cliffs overshadowing dense jungle.

It's there on the VHS cover:
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On the promotional images:
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And and even the KP Skips pop-ups!
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What do you guys think? Am I reading too much into the scenery here? Or do you guys think that it's more intentional than we realize?
SOMETHING HAS SURVIVED
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TyrannosaurTJ
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Re: Interesting Isla Sorna Geography

Post by TyrannosaurTJ »

The topography of the islands makes my head hurt truly. Thank you for the migraine now. :P
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Troodon_formosus
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Re: Interesting Isla Sorna Geography

Post by Troodon_formosus »

What I find interesting is that in (I think) the GPS shots, you can see the island topography and it shows a kind of mixture of what we see in other maps: the island does have a few different mountain ridges, but the tallest one is in the middle, and it encircles the origins of the central river channel. It appears like an extinct volcanic caldera, with the southern face eroded away and the river flowing out of it after the huge cone funnels rainwater from a wide area into the middle. The crater is wide enough that it would indeed have something analogous to Novel Sorna inside.
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