​Two T-Rexes! A robotic T-Rex! Time travel! Mad scientists! This movie has it all.

 

Production notes:

Ah, yes. Dinosaur Attack 3. The first time I really aimed high and tried to make something truly spectacular. Dinosaur Attack is one of my personal favorite series, and wrapping it up with a strong finish was always important to me. Dinosaur Attack 3 had been on my mind since 2011, back when the first Dinosaur Attack came out. In those days, I had a Dinosaur Attack 2, 3, and even a 4 hypothetically planned. However, as production finally began for Dinosaur Attack 3 some time in 2014, it became clear that this would be the final episode for the time being. Making a sequel would mean that I would have to top my efforts in Dinosaur Attack 3, a feat that I did not feel I was ready to undertake.

 

Dinosaur Attack 3 took over a year to complete, because of the demanding effort required (rounding up a cast of three or more teenagers with social and academic lives is harder than you might think), and because of a bad case of “director’s block”. There was even one scene that I re-shot entirely because I wasn’t satisfied with it (the scene where the T-Rex and Roboraptor face off for the first time). I originally hoped to have the third installment of Dinosaur Attack released in 2013, so that all the episodes would’ve come out in consecutive years. However, 2013 marked the beginning of an unproductive age in my movie making, where I would focus more on re-editing old works rather than producing new ones. Dinosaur Attack 3’s release was pushed all the way to 2015, and enjoyed a successful summer release, success which may have been influenced by the debut of Jurassic World at around the same time.

 

Dinosaur Attack 3 was a highly ambitious project that would require every filmmaking trick I had picked up over the years. The special effects would have to be better, the story would need to flow well, and the characters would need to be more fleshed out. Admittedly, part of the reason Dinosaur Attack 3 was so delayed was because I was having trouble coming up with an interesting plot. I asked myself what the next step would be after introducing the dinosaur in the first film, and then killing it off with its mechanical twin in the second film. The first thing I realized was that I would somehow need to resurrect the dinosaur.

 

An early idea was for Dr. Wannabe to invent a time machine and go back in time to try and prevent the dinosaur attacks from ever happening, but that was eventually scrapped (although time travel would eventually play a role in the finished product). I settled on having the T-Rex resurrected through some good old fashioned mad science, but the question remained: Who would be the character to carry out this mad scheme? And that was the birth of the character my friend Ian plays in the movie, Professor Bob Bobbington, a mad scientist who was responsible for the original creation of the T-Rex and now hopes to test his new healing ray on the dead creature.

 

I chose Ian for the role because I thought his goofy personality and acting skills were perfect for the role. The name “Bob Bobbington” was jokingly created by my friend Shotaro (who plays Dr. Wannabe in the film), and because I didn’t have any better ideas, we stuck with that. Another element that I knew I wanted in the film right from the start was for the Roboraptor to return, and indeed, the mechanical monster had quite the presence in the movie. I wanted Dinosaur Attack 3 to be an epic rematch between the Rex and Roboraptor, and that it was. The T-Rex got its ultimate revenge against its enemy, completely demolishing it by the third act. Take that science!

 

The film also introduces a new rival for the T-Rex: A second T-Rex. That was another element I had planned from the beginning. I wanted some sweet dinosaur fighting action, which I practiced for with my other films, T-Rex vs Carnotaurus and T-Rex vs Carnotaurus 2. Before I started writing the script of this movie, I had hoped that Puppetoys Inc. (the company that produced the T-Rex puppet) would put out some more puppet products for me to use in the movie, like perhaps a different species of dinosaur. Sadly my hope was met with disappointment, as the company had apparently gone defunct, and it looked like it was going to stay that way.

 

So there were the three core ideas that made up the foundation of the film’s plot: A mad scientist, the return of the Roboraptor, and a rival T-Rex. Those, plus the idea of time travel. The use of a penguin stuffy as the time machine is truly a testament to why we’re called No Budget Films. Nevertheless, Dinosaur Attack 3 was a huge leap forward in my filmmaking. It was big, successful, and a work of art that I could be proud of. That’s not to say it didn’t have its drawbacks though—some said it was too long and boring, and the original edit was chock full of copyrighted material, including sound effects and visual effects. The new edit attempts to address these problems, with two minutes shaved off of the runtime, and all third party assets replaced with royalty free alternatives.