Jurassic Park, Dinosaur sounds in

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Released in 1993 in the United States, the film Jurassic Park garnered critical acclaim[1] and three Academy Awards ("The 66th Academy Awards - 1994"). The now franchise[2] was based on the eponymous best-selling novel by author Michael Crichton ("BEST SELLERS: December 30, 1990").

Cultural depictions of extinct animals, particularly dinosaurs, have been intimately linked to their public perception and the limits of paleontology at the time of their depiction[3]. Paleontologist Jack Horner[4] was thus brought onto Jurassic Park as a technical adviser by director Steven Spielberg (Volz 2016). Although Horner provided much of the scientific advisement for the film and its sequels, the sounds the dinosaurs made in the original Jurassic Park were compiled by sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Buchanan 2015).

Gary Roger Rydstrom (born 29 June 1959) began his career at Skywalker Sound in 1983. He worked as a sound technician in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and a sound designer on the comedy Spaceballs. His credits include numerous other films such as Backdraft, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Shrek, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, and Finding Nemo. Rydstrom has been nominated for 17 Academy Awards and won 7[5]. However, in his own words, "[Jurassic Park] scared me when I first saw [the offer] because there's so many different dinosaurs, and it was Steven Spielberg, and people would see it. It freaked me out" (Sullivan 2013). Additionally, it is unknown how dinosaur vocalizations sounded, as soft tissues typically utilized by vertebrates for the purpose of vocalization rarely fossilize (Geggel 2014). Chair of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Mark Norell, has said, "I think we can safely say that they made noises, but we can't say what they sounded like" (Geggel 2014).

Faced with this problem, Rydstrom has stated that (Sullivan 2013),

The first thing you do [in this situation] is you record sound, so we started collecting all sorts of weird animal sounds and regular, I record my dog, I recorded horses, we went to zoos. I tried to get every interesting animal recording we could find, not even caring right away what they would be for.

Sounds by Species

Brachiosaurus

Brachiosaurus (literally "arm lizard") was a herbivorous sauropod which lived during the Late Jurassic (around 155 - 140 million years ago). Its fossils have been found in Tanzania, the United States, Portugal, and Algeria. The dinosaur is estimated to have been around 30 meters in length ("The Dino Directory - Brachiosaurus").

The first time brachiosaurs are seen in Jurassic Park, a sort of deep bellow is heard. According to Rydstrom, this bellow is actually a mix of elephant, cow, and donkey noises, with the later singing being a slowed-down donkey "yodel" (Sullivan 2013). Rydstrom called the the singing "one of [his] favorite sounds in the movie because it's beautiful, but like all good sound design, it's made from a non-beautiful source, which is donkeys" (Buchanan 2015).

Dilophosaurus

Dilophosaurus (literally "two-ridged lizard") was a carnivorous theropod which lived during the Early Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago. Its remains have been found in the United States, and it weighed roughly 300 - 450 kilograms and was six meters in length ("The Dino Directory - Dilophosaurus").

The first trill that the Dilophosaurus makes which it cocks its head at Dennis Nedry was a hooting sound derived from that of a swan. Rydstrom said of that (Buchanan 2015):

Part of the fun of doing these kinds of jobs is that I had no idea what a swan sounded like before!

He further clarified that when it fans out its canopy, the raspy sounds originated from a hawk, but there's also sounds derived from recordings of rattlesnakes (Buchanan 2015):

Whenever I give lectures to people about getting sounds for movies, one of the key things I tell them is that when you’re recording dangerous animals like lions and alligators and rattlesnakes, then you have your assistant do it! On Jurassic Park, I had an assistant, the lovely Chris Boyd — who's still alive — and if we needed a rattlesnake, I’d say, 'Chris, please record the rattlesnake.' And I’d record the dogs and the kittens!

Gallimimus

Gallimimus (literally "chicken mimic") was an omnivorous theropod which lived during the Late Cretaceous (74 - 70 million years ago). Its fossils have been found in Mongolia, and it likely weighed around 200 kilograms and was six meters in length ("The Dino Directory - Gallimimus").

The Gallimimus sounds, particularly, the squealing they make when passing by the characters in the above scene, was produced by a female horse in heat. The sound was also reused as the squeal one Gallimimus makes when it is being eaten by the Tyrannosaurus (Buchanan 2015).

Triceratops

Triceratops (literally "three-horned face") was an herbivorous ornithischian dinosaur weighing around 5,500 kilograms. The dinosaur was nine meters in length and lived during the Late Cretaceous period (67 - 65 million years ago) ("The Dino Directory - Triceratops").

Noises of cows were utilized for the healthy Triceratops portrayed in the film because Rydstrom worked at Skywalker Ranch, and cattle were easily accessible there. However, the sick Triceratops breathing was derived by using a long cardboard tube with a spring in it, which created a reverberation device (making the sounds seem stretched out and deeper). The sound heard when Sam Neill puts his ear up against the Triceratops chest cavity is a combination of cow and Rydstrom himself breathing into a tube (Buchanan 2015).

Tyrannosaurus rex

Tyrannosaurus rex (literally "tyrant lizard king") was a carnivorous theropod which likely weighed upwards of 7,000 kilograms and was about 12 meters in length ("The Dino Directory - Tyrannosaurus").

The trademark roar of the T. rex was created by slowing down a cry of a baby elephant, according to Rydstrom, but other noises were created by Rydstrom's Jack Russell terrier, Buster[6] (Buchanan 2015).

The elephant noise was considered excellent, but the baby elephant could not be coaxed into reproducing the sound. According to Rydstrom, "the handlers were saying 'We've never heard it do that before, that's a weird sound'." Therefore, the same tape was used for every T. rex roar (Sullivan 2013).

Another deep growling noise (heard when the two children are hiding in the car at night in the rain) made by the Tyrannosaurus was recorded from a koala bear at the San Francisco Zoo (Sullivan 2013). For comparison:

Sounds from a tiger were also utilized (Sullivan 2013).

Velociraptor

Velociraptor (literally "quick plunderer") was a carnivorous theropod which lived during the Late Cretaceous (84 - 80 million years ago). Its fossils have been found in Mongolia and, unlike several previously mentioned dinosaurs, it was relatively small, being about 1.8 meters long and weighing around 7 - 15 kilograms[7] ("The Dino Directory - Velociraptor").

Rydstrom used several different animals in creating the above scene's soundscape. The "hooting" sound was from an African crane and the barking when the raptors communicate with one another originated from a tortoise (Sullivan 2013). Later, Rydstrom admitted that the tortoise noises had a more specific origin (Buchanan 2015):

It's somewhat embarassing, it's a tortoise having sex. It's a mating tortoise! I recorded that at Marine World[8] ... the people there said, 'Would you like to record these two tortoises that are mating?' It sounded like a joke, because tortoises mating can take a long time. You've got to have plenty of time to sit around and watch and record them.

It is unknown which species of tortoise was used, by Rydstrom told SF Gate in 2015 that "the bark that [the Velociraptor] makes. When it comes in the kitchen and it barks. "Arp! Arp!" That's the sound of a tortoise mating ... Like all things, I didn’t know what kinds of sounds tortoises made, but [Marine World] promised the sound would be interesting. We had to wait a long time. The male tortoise would go up, and then fall off, and then go back again. My memory is it was hours. It was probably minutes. But then the mating happened, and it barked" (Hartlaub 2015).

The following is a video of a similar sound produced by a mating Aldabra giant tortoise, Aldabrachelys gigantea[9]:

The guttural sounds were actually made by one of Rydstrom's friends, Dietrich Smith. According to Rydstrom, the conversation went along the lines of (Sullivan 2013):

You make any weird sounds. And he did that [guttural sound], and I used it in the movie.

More specifically (Buchanan 2015):

[Dietrich] was visiting me and I turned on the mic and said, 'Can you make any weird sounds?' And he did this phlegmy, guttural growl. In the kitchen attack scene, there’s a close-up of the raptor slowly opening its mouth when it's about to attack Lex as she's hiding in a cabinet, and that sound is mostly my friend Dietrich doing this weird guttural growl. At the time, it felt like cheating when I would use myself or any other human to make a dinosaur sound — I felt like I was cheating the sound-design gods!

Other sounds included a breathing horse, which was used when the raptor showed up in the door window in the kitchen, and a hissing goose, whose raspy hiss was used for when the raptor ambushes the game warden Muldoon (to which he famously responds "Clever girl"). Rydstrom described that experience as follows (Buchanan 2015):

All you have to do is get close to one [goose] and stick a mic near its break and you'll get that hiss, and that's the hiss that Muldoon hears before he dies.

Finally, at least one raptor scream was derived from a male dolphin in heat (Buchanan 2015).

The newly-hatched Velociraptor has a slightly different origin (Buchanan 2015):

[The baby Velociraptor has] just been born, so at first it’s really squeaky and cute, and we recorded a lot of baby animals: baby owls, baby foxes, and things like that ... That's exactly right; as soon as [Sam Neill] asks, 'What kind of dinosaur is this?' you start hearing these raspier baby owl sounds. I already knew what the adult raptor would sound like, that it would have this screechy, raspy sound, so I tried to find a baby animal that has that rasp in it.

For comparison, here is a video which includes the sounds of juvenile barn owls:

External Links

Notes

  1. Citing generally favorable reviews, see Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.
  2. As of 21 August 2016, four Jurassic Park films have been released, with two further films planned. See here.
  3. There are many examples to testify to this fact, with some of the most notable being the lack of feathered dinosaurs in such films as The Land Before Time (1988) and Jurassic World (2015). Dinosaurs in these and other films are often portrayed as green or brown, whereas fossilized melanosomes have pointed to other colors such as black, grey, red-brown, and yellow as possibilities in some species (Sloan 2010).
  4. Horner was a partial inspiration for Crichton's character Dr. Alan Grant (Kutner 2014).
  5. Best Sound on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992), Best Sound Effects Editing on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992), Best Sound on Jurassic Park (1994), Best Sound Effects Editing on Jurassic Park (1994), Best Sound on Titanic (1998), Best Sound Effects Editing on Saving Private Ryan (1999), Best Sound on Saving Private Ryan (1999).
  6. Buster was also used by Rydstrom during his work on Terminator 2, with Buster eating puppy chow becoming the crunch when the T-1000 spikes a man's eye socket (Buchanan 2015).
  7. About as much as an average two-year-old child, according to this.
  8. Marine World moved to Vallejo, California in 1986 to become Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, so it is not absolutely certain if this is the "Marine World" to which Rydstrom is referring.
  9. For more information, see this page at the Encyclopedia of Life (also note that this tortoise is sometimes referred to by the scientific name Dipsochelys dussumieri).

References

  • "BEST SELLERS: December 30, 1990." The New York Times n.d.: n. pag. The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 29 Dec. 1990. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Buchanan, Kyle. "You'll Never Guess How the Dinosaur Sounds in Jurassic Park Were Made." Vulture. New York Media LLC, 9 June 2015. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Geggel, Laura. "'Jurassic World' Guesses On Dinosaur Sounds, Experts Say." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 29 Dec. 2014. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Hartlaub, Peter. "How Marine World Tortoise Sex Made It into 'Jurassic Park'" The Big Event - SF Gate. Hearst Communications, Inc., 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Kutner, Max. "The Scientist Behind 'Jurassic World', Jack Horner, Breaks Down the Movie's Thrilling Trailer." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, 2 Dec. 2014. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Sloan, Chris. "Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time by Feather Study." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 27 Jan. 2010. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Sullivan, Becky. "Jurassic Bark: How Sound Design Changed Our Imaginations." NPR. NPR, 13 Apr. 2013. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The 66th Academy Awards - 1994." Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Brachiosaurus." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Dilophosaurus." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Gallimimus." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Triceratops." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Tyrannosaurus." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • "The Dino Directory - Velociraptor." Natural History Museum. The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, n.d. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.
  • Volz, Matt. "'Jurassic Park' Paleontologist Retiring from Museum He Built." The Big Story - AP News. Associated Press, 31 May 2016. Web. 21 Aug. 2016.