Fake?
How many of the 'whales' seen in this movie are "animatronic" whales?
shareNone. "Willy" was an actual captive whale named Keiko and the footage of all the other whales was real too. Only the scene at the end of Willy jumping over Jesse was animated, and I'm sure only bits and pieces of the escape scene were real. Still, almost everything you see was the real deal.
shareThey did use animatronics.
Most close-up shots involving limited movement by Willy, such as when Willy is in the trailer and the sequences involving Willy swimming in the open water, make use of an animatronic stand-in. Walt Conti, who supervised the effects for the orcas, estimated that half of the shots of the orca used animatronic stand-ins. Conti stated that the smaller movements of a real Orca actually made things difficult in some ways for him and his crew; they had to concentrate on smaller nuances in order to make the character seem alive. ---Designing Movie Creatures and Characters: Behind the Scenes With the Movie Masters.
And all the scenes with Jesse riding Willy used an animatronic. share