books and an innovative companion website. Additionally, Walking with Dinosaurs inspired the creation of exhibitions, the live theatrical show Walking with Dinosaurs − The Arena Spectacular, video games, and a 2013 film adaptation. Along with Jurassic Park, Walking with Dinosaurs is often cited as among the most influential media depictions of dinosaurs. Premise Envisioned as the first "Natural History of Dinosaurs" and a series that would provide viewers with "a window into a lost world", Walking with Dinosaurs explores life in the Mesozoic era, particularly dinosaurs, in the format of a traditional nature documentary. Production Background and concept Walking with Dinosaurs was the brainchild of Tim Haines, who came with the idea in 1996 while he was working as a science television producer at the BBC. Then-head of BBC Science Jana Bennett had at the time started a policy of encouraging producers to pitch possible future landmark series, with the goal of increasing the science output of the BBC and raising the bar of science programming. Bennett had mainly asked for suggestions for series on geology, medicine and natural history. The idea for Walking with Dinosaurs was devised in the aftermath of the release of the film Jurassic Park in 1993, which had set a new benchmark for dinosaur entertainment. Initially, Haines idea revolved around a history of palaeontology with some reconstructions but this was deemed to not be ambitious enough, shortly thereafter he devised the idea of a dinosaur series made with the look and feel of a natural history programme. Haines suggested that the same techniques employed in the production of Jurassic Park could be used to create a series of nature documentary programmes. According to Haines, the aim of Walking with Dinosaurs was to "create an immersive experience that was both spectacular and informative". Haines investigated the costs that would be involved in the project. He first initially approached Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the company responsible for creating the visual effects in Jurassic Park, which projected a cost of $10,000 per second of dinosaur footage, far too expensive for a television series. Though Jurassic Park had only nine minutes of dinosaur footage, the series envisioned by Haines would require three hours. As a result, Haines initially changed his idea to the programme mainly consisting of footage of plants, insects and landscapes with dinosaurs appearing only occasionally. The concept for the series changed back to frequent CGI