In ‘Jurassic World,’ Old-School Effects Make a Comeback

Puppetry and animatronics rekindle filmmakers’ interest in ‘practical effects’; ‘the performance is better when you act before something real’

When the stop-motion specialist Phil Tippett was working on 1993’s “Jurassic Park,” he saw a dinosaur created entirely through computer-generated imagery, technology that was in its infancy at the time.

Asked how he felt, he recalls saying: “I feel extinct.” The quip was so memorable that a variation of it wound up in the movie.

Mr. Tippett...