To really bring dinosaurs back to life, you would either need the world’s greatest geneticists devoting all of their time, with unlimited resources at their disposal to finding a way to create them in a lab, or you would need a time machine. Since neither of those things will happen anytime soon, we’ll just have to be grateful that talented special effects and computer wizards can offer us the next best thing: giant dinosaur fights on the big screen.

In this video from Lucasfilm‘s Industrial Light and Magic, we get to see the behind-the-scenes process of the visual effects that helped bring the dinosaurs back to theaters in last year’s mega hit Jurassic World.

Even as you watch all the layering that goes into a scene to give it a full, realistic look–it’s hard to really process how many moving parts are involved, especially the big moving dinosaurs. Those guys even manage to look impressive in their gray, computer forms.

We also get to see how many of those computer-generated dinos actually start out as real people in motion capture suits. The amount of years that must go into perfecting your velociraptor walk is incredible.

Some of these things you won’t notice when you re-watch the film, but you’ll definitely remember those kids are actually riding on the backs of real people, and you’ll probably remember that ball isn’t really spinning, it’s just on wheels.

That’s the trade off with these reels, you lose a little of the magic, but you get an appreciation for the skill needed to pull it off well.

What effect from the movie did you find most impressive? Tell us below.

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Image: ILM/YouTube