Jurassic Park (1993)

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On a remote island theme park where dinosaurs have been brought back from extinction, a group of scientists gather to experience the island and sign off on Jurassic Park, John Hammond’s secret genetic engineering masterpiece. Will it all go to plan, or will the prehistoric creatures break free?

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by: David Koepp and Michael Crichton
Production Designer: Rick Carter
Produced by: Kathleen Kennedy, Gerald R. Molen
Cinematographer: Dean Cundey
Music Composed by: John Williams

Runtime: 127 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Certification: PG-13 / PG / M

Starring

Development & Production

Steven Spielberg first learned about Michael Crichton’s novel in October 1989, when they were discussing another piece of work. Crichton had long toyed with the idea of man re-creating dinosaurs, and Spielberg was fascinated by his novel. Before the book was published, a number of directors and studios attempted to bid for the rights. Tim Burton, Richard Donner and Joe Dante all were interested, but in May 1990, Steven Spielberg alongside Universal Pictures acquired the rights, with Crichton’s non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross.

With the rights secured, Steven Spielberg had wanted to direct Schlinder’s List before beginning production on Jurassic Park. However, a deal was made with Universal’s president at the time, who greenlit Schlinder’s List providing Spielberg made Jurassic Park first.

It is well known that Michael Crichton was heavily involved with early drafts of the script, and Spielberg brought him on to adapt his own novel for a further $500,000. Crichton stated that due to his novel’s length, the script he wrote only ended up with about 10-20% of the novel’s content and that due to budgetary reasons, some scenes were dropped (notably the river raft scene). The novel was also very descriptive with it’s gore, but this too was toned down in the script.

In October 1991, Malia Scotch Marmo – who had collaborated with Steven Spielberg previously on Hook – began a rewrite of Crichton’s draft which merged the characters of Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ian Malcolm, among other changes.

It was after Malia’s rewrite was turned over to Spielberg that he decided he wanted another rewrite. David Koepp was brought on and started a fresh script, avoiding Malia’s rewrites. It is known that David Koepp fleshed out the characters more, defining who Ian Malcolm was, as well as making them all more colorful. John Hammond’s character is drastically different in the film than he is in the novel, dropping the ruthless business for a wealthy old man who just wanted to inspire people. The characters of Tim and Lex were also switched around, as Spielberg had wanted to work with young child actor Joseph Mazzello. This also allowed him to explore an older Lex’s adolescent crush on Dr Grant.

There were many drafts of the Jurassic Park script, with some still being uncovered. The changes are drastic, but director Steven Spielberg had a clear vision for this novel’s screen adaptation and landed on a fantastic script by David Koepp.

Filming began on August 24, 1992 on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. The production stayed on Kauai for three weeks, filming daytime exteriors for Isla Nublar’s jungles.

The infamous Hurricane Iniki passed directly over Kauai on September 11 and caused the crew to lose a day of shooting, as well as destroying some of the sets. There was a silver lining however, as the crew were able to brave the weather and film some of the storm – which made it to the final cut of the movie. Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Dr Ray Arnold, was supposed to have a much longer scene which included him being chased and eventually killed by escaped Velociraptors, but unfortunately that set had been destroyed by Hurricane Iniki.

After the hurricane the producers moved the filming to the Kualoa Ranch on Oahu, Hawaii, and filmed a number of scenes there including the Gallimimus stampede.

In mid-September, the production returned to California and a number of scenes were filmed on stages at the Universal studios lot. The Brachiosaurus encounter, the tour vehicle in the tree, the kitchen scene and a handful of others were filmed on stages. The production used Red Rock Canyon for the Montana dig site scenes.

The main T-Rex attack scene was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios’ Stage 16. Due to the constant rain, Stan Winston’s animatronic T-Rex struggled, shaking and quivering from the extra weight when the foam absorbed the water. In behind the scenes footage, you can see Stan Winston’s crew drying off the T-Rex with shammys. In the script, Jeff Goldblum’s character of Ian Malcolm does not light the flare and instead runs from the scene, however Jeff Goldblum thought his character needed the heroic action.

The Dilophosaurus vs Nedry scene was filmed on Stage 27, and the shoot wrapped on Stage 12 while filming the climatic chases with the Velociraptors in the Park’s control room/Visitor’s Center. In the original ending on the script, Dr Alan Grant uses a platform machine to pick-up a pursuing Velociraptor and move it into the fossil T-Rex’s jaws. However, Spielberg thought the audience needed to see the real T-Rex for one last time, so opted for the ending we see in the film, where she enters the Visitor’s Center and saves the characters from the Velociraptors.

The filming of Jurassic Park wrapped early on November 30 with twelve days to spare.

Within days of the film wrapping, editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready for Spielberg to see, which allowed him to leave for Poland to film Schlinder’s List.

The visual effects were obviously a huge part of the post-production for the film, and Spielberg was able to monitor the process from Poland, having regular teleconferences with the ILM crew.

It is well known that Jurassic Park and ILM shaped the visual effects industry with their work on this film. The dinosaurs were originally set to be animated as stop-motion by Phil Tippett, and he had put together a couple of tests to showcase his work. The Raptors in the kitchen and the Tyrannosaurus attacking the car were shown to Steven Spielberg and the crew, but unfortunately the results were deemed unsatisfactory for a live-action feature film.

Dennis Muren, who was overseeing ILM’s digital compositing of the film, suggested that the full body dinosaur shots could be executed with visual effects and Spielberg asked him to prove it. A computer-generated walk cycle for the T-Rex skeleton was created and after being shown, ILM were approved to do more. An animatic was put together, showing the T-Rex chase a herd of Gallimimus. When shown to Spielberg and Tippett, Spielberg expressed “You’re out of a job,” to which Tippett repied, “Don’t you mean extinct?”. This line famously made it into the movie as a conversation between Dr Ian Malcolm and Dr Alan Grant.

During the post-production, Phil Tippett adapted to the new circumstances and his stop-motion puppetts were used as Dinosaur Input Devices which fed the animations to the computers.

Jurassic Park not only pioneered visual effects, but also was the first film to use digital sound. He funded the creation of DTS and George Lucas supervised the sound effects crew, who created everything form the animal sounds, to the rain and gunshots.

The post-production on Jurassic Park was finally completed on May 28, 1993.

Universal Pictures’ marketing campaign for Jurassic Park cost $65 million and had multiple contracts with companies for related merchandise and products. Famously, a number of video games were made by Sega and Ocean Software, as well as Kenner’s toyline.

The film premiered on June 9, 1993 in Washington D.C., and the full release would follow on June 11, opening across the United States.

Dinosaurs

Behind The Scenes

The Making of ‘Jurassic Park’ (1995) treats film fans to a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film. Narrated by James Earl Jones, it includes footage of the filming process, as well as interviews with director Steven Spielberg, and other members of the cast and crew, who give their insights into what it was like working together on this project and the efforts it took to bring the film to completion.

Other documentaries have followed, including Beyond Jurassic Park (2001) and Return to Jurassic Park (2011).

Soundtrack

The score for Jurassic Park was composed and conducted by John Williams. Williams began writing at the end of February 1993 and it was conducted a month later. The composition process was done in Skywalker Ranch concurrently with the sound editing process, leading Williams to get inspiration from Gary Rydstrom’s work with dinosaur noises. Williams described it as, “a rugged, noisy effort—a massive job of symphonic cartooning”. He also said that, while trying to, “match the rhythmic gyrations of the dinosaurs”, he ended up creating, “these kind of funny ballets”. As with another Spielberg film he scored, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Williams felt he needed to write, “pieces that would convey a sense of ‘awe’ and fascination”, given that the movie dealt with the, “overwhelming happiness and excitement”, that would emerge from seeing live dinosaurs. In turn, more suspenseful scenes, such as the Tyrannosaurus rex attack, earned frightening themes. For the first time, Spielberg was unable to attend the recording sessions for one of his own movies, as he was in Poland filming Schindler’s List. Instead, Williams gave Spielberg demo tapes with piano versions of the main themes prior to his travel, and the director would listen to them daily on the way to the sets.

The score uses a large orchestra that often includes a variety of percussion, two harps, baritone horns, and choir. Some passages also call for unusual woodwinds, such as shakuhachi and E♭ piccolo oboe. Furthermore, Williams included synthesizers in much of the score. Some cues, such as “Dennis Steals the Embryos”, feature them prominently, but many of the synth passages are mixed much more quietly, often doubling the woodwinds or helping flesh out the lower harmonies. Several prominent celeste solos (such as in “Remembering Petticoat Lane”) are also performed on synthesizers.

Tracklist (Original Release)

Visual Effects

Jurassic Park represents a milestone in modern visual effects and ushered an era of films whose scripts were once thought to be impossible to film. To create living, breathing, photorealistic dinosaurs the likes of which had never been seen before, the visual effects team developed a substantial amount of new technology. From Viewpaint, a 3D texturing tool that allowed artists to paint directly on 3D models and see their results in context, to camera motion tracking, to the Dinosaur Input Device (D.I.D.) which was created in collaboration with Phil Tippett, Randal Dutra, Tom St. Amand, and the team at Tippett Studios and used to bridge the gap between traditional stop motion animation and CG animation there were numerous breakthroughs on the film.

No one had put living, breathing synthetic animals in a live-action movie before; creature animation had always been mechanical and animatronic. Before Jurassic Park, animators had never even tried to reproduce real animals digitally for a feature film. But ILM showed producer Kathleen Kennedy a test created by CG artists Steve “Spaz” Williams and Mark Dippé with digital dinosaurs, and they looked so natural and moved so freely that there was no turning back.

Although ILM created fewer than 60 shots of the fully CG dinosaurs they remain a huge part of what makes the film so memorable. The film won the 1993 Academy Award® Winner for Best Visual Effects and as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects.

Toys and Merchandise

For the 1993 film, Kenner produced a line of action figures and dinosaurs, marketed with the slogan, “If it’s not ‘Jurassic Park’, it’s extinct”. Paleontologist Jack Horner, who offered his advice for the film’s dinosaurs, was also hired as a scientific advisor for the dinosaur toys. Kenner had two years to develop the toys, which sold successfully. Dakin also produced stuffed dinosaurs based on the film.

You can find Jurassic Park items at Entertainment Earth – but for original Kenner items check eBay!

Where To Watch

Jurassic Park is available to stream through Amazon Prime. You can get 20% off by using code JURASSICOUTPOST at Zavvi US and Zavvi UK. Or check out some options below: