Jurassic Park (film) - Production

Production

Michael Crichton originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel Jurassic Park. Even before publication, Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER. Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights, but Universal eventually acquired them in May 1990 for Spielberg. Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel, which he had finished by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long" his script only had about 10 to 20 percent of the novel's content; scenes were dropped for budgetary and practical reasons. After completing Hook, Spielberg wanted to film Schindler's List. Music Corporation of America (then Universal Pictures' parent company) president Sid Sheinberg gave a green light to the film on one condition: that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg later said, "He knew that once I had directed Schindler I wouldn't be able to do Jurassic Park."

Spielberg hired Stan Winston to create the animatronic dinosaurs, Phil Tippett to create go motion dinosaurs for long shots, Michael Lantieri to supervise the on-set effects, and Dennis Muren to do the digital compositing. Paleontologist Jack Horner supervised the designs, to help fulfill Spielberg's desire to portray the dinosaurs as animals rather than monsters. This led to the entry of certain concepts about dinosaurs, such as the theory that dinosaurs had very little in common with lizards. Thus, Horner dismissed the raptors' flicking tongues in Tippett's early animatics, complaining, " have no way of doing that!" Taking Horner's advice, Spielberg insisted that Tippett take the tongues out. Winston's department created fully detailed models of the dinosaurs before molding latex skins, which were fitted over complex robotics. Tippett created stop-motion animatics of major scenes, but, despite go motion's attempts at motion blurs, Spielberg still found the end results unsatisfactory in terms of working in a live-action feature film. Animators Mark Dippe and Steve Williams went ahead in creating a computer-generated walk cycle for the T. rex skeleton and were approved to do more. When Spielberg and Tippett saw an animatic of the T. rex chasing a herd of Gallimimus, Spielberg said, "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?" Spielberg later wrote both the animatic and his dialogue between him and Tippett into the script, as a conversation between Malcolm and Grant. As George Lucas watched the demonstration alongside of them, his eyes began to tear up. "It was like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first telephone call," he said. "A major gap had been crossed, and things were never going to be the same." Although no go motion was used, Tippett and his animators were still used by the production for knowing how the dinosaurs should move correctly. Tippett acted as a consultant regarding dinosaur anatomy, and his stop motion animators were re-trained as computer animators.

Malia Scotch Marmo began a script rewrite in October 1991 over a five-month period, merging Ian Malcolm with Alan Grant. Screenwriter David Koepp came on board afterward, starting afresh from Marmo's draft, and used Spielberg's idea of a cartoon shown to the visitors to remove much of the exposition that fills Crichton's novel. Spielberg also excised a sub-plot of Procompsognathus escaping to the mainland and attacking young children, as he found it too horrific. This sub-plot would eventually be used as a prologue in the Spielberg-directed sequel, The Lost World. Hammond was changed from a ruthless businessman to a kindly old man, because Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship. He also switched the characters of Tim and Lex; in the book, Tim is aged 11 and into computers, and Lex is only seven or eight and into sports. Spielberg did this because he wanted to work with the younger Joseph Mazzello, and it also allowed him to introduce the sub-plot of Lex's adolescent crush on Grant. Koepp changed Grant's relationship with the children, making him hostile to them initially to allow for more character development. Koepp also took the opportunity to cut out a major sequence from the book, for budgetary reasons, where the T. rex chases Grant and the children down a river before being tranquilized by Muldoon. This scene was revived in part in Jurassic Park III with the Spinosaurus replacing the T. rex.

After 25 months of pre-production, filming began on August 24, 1992, on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. The three-week shoot involved various daytime exteriors. On September 11, Hurricane Iniki passed directly over Kauaʻi, which caused the crew to lose a day of shooting. Several of the storm scenes from the movie are actual footage shot during the hurricane. The scheduled shoot of the Gallimimus chase was moved to Kualoa Ranch on the island of Oahu and one of the beginning scenes had to be created by digitally animating a still shot of scenery. Additional scenes were filmed on the "forbidden island" of Niihau. The crew moved back to the mainland U.S. to shoot at Universal Studios's Stage 24 for scenes involving the raptors in the kitchen. The crew also shot on Stage 23 for the scenes involving the power supply, before going on location to Red Rock Canyon for the Montana dig scenes. The crew returned to Universal to shoot Grant's rescue of Tim, using a fifty-foot prop with hydraulic wheels for the car fall, and the Brachiosaurus encounter. The crew filmed scenes for the Park's labs and control room, which used animations for the computers lent from Silicon Graphics and Apple.

The crew moved to Warner Bros. Studios' Stage 16 to shoot the T. rex's attack on the SUVs. Shooting proved frustrating due to water soaking the foam rubber skin of the animatronic dinosaur, which caused the animatronic T. rex to shake and quiver from the extra weight when the foam absorbed the water. The ripples in the glass of water caused by the T. rex's footsteps was inspired by Spielberg listening to Earth, Wind and Fire in his car, and the vibrations the bass rhythm caused. Lantieri was unsure of how to create the shot until the night before filming, when he put a glass of water on a guitar he was playing, which achieved the concentric circles in the water Spielberg wanted. The next morning, guitar strings were put inside the car and a man on the ground plucked the strings to achieve the effect. Back at Universal, the crew filmed scenes with the Dilophosaurus on Stage 27. Finally, the shoot finished on Stage 12, with the climactic chases with the raptors in the Park's computer rooms and Visitor's Center. Spielberg brought back the T. rex for the climax, abandoning his original ending in which Grant uses a platform machine to maneuver a raptor into a fossil tyrannosaur's jaws. The film wrapped twelve days ahead of schedule on November 30, and within days, editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready, allowing Spielberg to go ahead with filming Schindler's List.

Special effects work continued on the film, with Tippett's unit adjusting to new technology with Dinosaur Input Devices: models which fed information into the computers to allow themselves to animate the characters traditionally. In addition, they acted out scenes with the raptors and Gallimimus. As well as the computer-generated dinosaurs, ILM also created elements such as water splashing and digital face replacement for Ariana Richards' stunt double. Compositing the dinosaurs onto the live action scenes took around an hour. Rendering the dinosaurs often took two to four hours per frame, and rendering the T. rex in the rain even took six hours per frame. Spielberg monitored their progress from Poland during the filming of Schindler's List. Composer John Williams began work on the score at the end of February, and it was conducted a month later by John Neufeld and Alexander Courage. The sound effects crew, supervised by George Lucas, were finished by the end of April. Jurassic Park was finally completed on May 28, 1993.

Further information: Jurassic Park (film score)