Interesting Isla Sorna Geography

So, I'm pouring over some TLW production photos, screencaps, and promotional imagery (because what the Hell else does a man do at 1 a.m. in the morning?) 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):














Redwoods Unit (exclusively dense jungle):






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:






But the more I examined the more I found it: craggy volcanic cliffs overshadowing dense jungle.

It's there on the VHS cover:


On the promotional images:


And and even the KP Skips pop-ups!






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?

What about this one?

Henrique_Z_Tomassi wrote:

What about this one?

Highly speculative map from Bernard Kyer. The map itself is also production used, not screenused, and matches almost none of the maps shown on screen.

Actually that map is from Joel Meine originally. Brachio was the one that suggested that they didn't go to the town in TLW, but an outpost which can't be proven without some back breaking continuity retcons from higher up. He did try to revise all the film canon locations based off of this assessment though. Problem being is the film locations are nebulous it involves a lot of guesswork and detective work to match things up. Brachio's revisions and such did push for a more significant contribution tied in with that, which I'll explain in a moment.

Joel Meine originally tried to hybrid Trespasser and novel canon in on the original Sorna map then, that's sort of where I came in at the time to do a revision that kept it strictly film-canon oriented due to the discrepancies and overall lack of cohesion between the novel version of Sorna and Trespasser version of Sorna.

So now the thing I was going to mention in closing here: The one really big thing Brachio did determine with the map is that between the prop map doesn't really match up with the maps in the film. The topography is vastly different so that's what spawned the need to make a new topographical map based off that. It just got over zealous because the idea was if the map changed then everything else could have changed. So the issue with that is that the new map was unable to clue us in on the exact locations of the buildings on Sorna while the prop map very much pointed out like the location of the Worker's Village. I know that's where T-Rex_Master and ACR came in trying to reconcile the mountain layouts with what we saw in the films. The issue is that it was 95% speculation from analyzing the films to find cohesion for placement of the locations.

Revised Map:

http://www.jurassic-pedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sorna.png

Documentation Post:

http://jurassic-pedia.com/jpls-isla-sorna-map-sf-notes-and-annotations/

Here's a list of all of the maps that are either "official" or appear in the film...

Hammond's computer map (False color)


InGen encampment AV map (possible variant of the false color map on Hammond's computer)


Alt colorized variant of the trailer map (from the TLW Scrapbook) This is the one that Pedia based our map on.


Satellite view from Eddie Carr's GPS (released by Todd Marks, who worked on the computer sims for the movie)


Topographic map also from Eddie Carr's GPS. This is part of the load screen and wasn't shown in the movie, but a view of it can be spotted running in the background on the computers in the RV trailers:


Full Las Cinco Muertes sat view, which matches the GPS map above. This was released a part of a teaser Universal released for an upcoming limited edition boxed set.