Eighty-million years after they were burned to a crisp by the largest volcanic eruption in the history of planet Earth, dinosaurs are returning to Hells Canyon, the Zumwalt Prairie, and the Wallowa Mountains of Northeast Oregon.
    They will be back in March when they play the starring role in a ‘dino-drama’ produced for television by the Discovery Channel.

   The four-hour feature production is scheduled to air in one-hour segments beginning next fall.   The last of the four  segments, entitled “Prehistoric North America,” will be set in Wallowa County where animated dinosaurs will be seen grazing in the long meadows near Flora and swooping down from the rim rocks overlooking Imnaha, the Snake River, and the Seven Devils mountains of Idaho.   The series is expected to draw up to 300 million viewers from around the globe, according to director Pierre de Lespinois, who spent the weekend surveying possible film locations with producer John Copeland.

   The two filmmakers were guided in their search for the ideal places to shoot their film by Doris Woempner of Joseph, who is a representative for the Oregon Film and Video Office. They were also aided by Vicki Rosgen, executive director of the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce, and her assistant Amy Johnson.
    “We’re committed to this area,” de Lespinois said after the two day tour. Along the way they stopped to look at Alder Slope, Hurricane Creek, the Wallowa Lake moraines, Zumwalt prairie, Dug Bar in the bottom of Hells Canyon, Imnaha, Hat Point, Sled Springs, Joseph Creek Canyon, Flora, and Buckhorn Springs.

   “It’s amazing, the land here,” de Lespinois marveled. “It is really beautiful. It has a lot of dramatic visuals. There are a lot of directions you can point your camera. It’s amazing. I’m anxious to see it in another 60 days.”
   The wide open spaces, rugged canyons, and mountain vistas, largely uncluttered by signs of signs of human habitation, “give us the ability to do big scenes.” said Copeland.
   The two filmmakers, who have traveled all over the world in search of ideal locations, said that what sets Wallowa County apart from many other areas is the vast geologic diversity in a relatively small area —  spectacular canyons, prairies, plateaus, mountains, lakes, and other geologic features are generally within a few hours drive of one another.

   “It’s nice to find all these diverse locations in one area,” said de Lespinois, noting that this helps to keep production costs down. “The logistics on a film like this are so technical that you don’t want to spend hours and hours and hours traveling from one place to the next.”  The first three segments of the dinosaur series were filmed in California, Costa Rica, Florida, Alabama, Patagonia, Argentina, and Tasmania. One of them,  “When Dinosaurs Roamed America,” was nominated for an Emmy.
   Copeland declined to put a figure on the cost of “Prehistoric North America” because television networks “get a little twitchy” when production costs are revealed to the press. However, was able to disclose that the dinosaur film will cost well into “seven figures.”

   “I want to do everything I can to stretch my dollars and put that value on the screen,” said Copeland, who discovered Northeast Oregon through a contact in the Oregon Film and Video Office in Salem. He said that that through all of his company’s research Wallowa County emerged as “ithe closest thing we could find to 80 million years ago.”
   Even though the film is a dramatization, the production is intensely focused on historical accuracy. The animated characters will be created by teams of computer experts based upon the input of 15 paleontologists assigned to the project. In the process of creating these characters certain myths about dinosaurs will be dispelled. For example, viewers will learn that not all dinosaurs were covered with lizard skin, that some were covered with fur while others were covered with feathers.

   The film will feature a day in the life of a juvenile daspletosaurus nicknamed, “Little Daz,” an ancestor of  the more famous tyrannosaurus, or “T-Rex” portrayed in the movie “Godzilla.” Other characters will include dinosaurs with equally challenging names — the duck-billed maiasaurus, einiosaurus, troodon, orodromeous, and quetzalcoatlus. 
   Once the computer models of the characters have been created they will be digitally superimposed over footage collected on location with elaborate camera systems including one mounted on a portable crane and another that travels along a 2,000 foot long cable at speeds of up to 45 miles per hour.

  “Prehistoric North America” will end with a volcanic eruption known as the Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics, an event which scientists believe flattened much of what is now Alberta, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakotas and Nebraska. Some of the last scenes will include images of fleeing herds of dinosaurs incinerated by the heat, then covered with 300 feet of volcanic ash.   The tag line of the film is eight million years later when the environment is regenerated and populated with the next generation of dinosaurs, including “T-Rex.”

© 2003 Wallowa County Chieftan  Reprinted by permission. Photos link to their source, including the Dino Directory at the British Natural History Museum in London.