Production Notes "This is not science fiction; it's science eventuality." - Steven Spielberg "You decide you'll control nature, and from that moment on you're in deep trouble, because you can't do it. You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams would have you believe." - Michael Crichton Imagine that you are one of the first visitors to JURASSIC PARK -- a melding of scientific discovery and visual imagination. You arrive as a child would, free of preconceptions and ready for anything. Your adventure is about to begin. Entering the gates of the park, your senses are overwhelmed by the world that surrounds you; the sounds, the smells, even the feel of the earth is curiously different. Somewhere in the distance, you hear the movement of huge animals -- the ground shakes with their passing. You are a stranger in an alien world. You look into the night sky, at stars whose light was born long before humans ever existed; born when a different race of beings walked the planet -- swift, powerful animals, rulers of the earth for 160 million years. Like those ancient stars, the Jurassic has left only faint traces of itself -- in fossils, footprints, relics of blood cells encased in amber. A time capsule that has remained closed for countless millennia. Now the time capsule has been opened, and man and dinosaurs, the two rulers of the earth, will meet for the first time. All our scientific resources have been dedicated to bringing JURASSIC PARK to reality; a childhood fantasy made real, a place where wonders come to life. It was created to be the ultimate amusement. But someone forgot to tell the dinosaurs. Meeting them in their environment, we realize they are not monsters, but animals far more agile, far more intelligent and far more dangerous than we guessed. We can give birth to the dinosaurs, but nothing can prepare us for what will happen when the egg hatches. JURASSIC PARK is the place where science ends and the unpredictable begins. Directed by Steven Spielberg from the best-selling book by Michael Crichton, "Jurassic Park" stars Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, a renowned paleontologist who is asked to inspect a spectacular amusement park; Laura Dern as his colleague, Dr. Ellie Sattler; Jeff Goldblum as a brilliant but eccentric mathematician whose Chaos Theory explains the dangers inherent in the project; and Sir Richard Attenborough as John Hammond, the park's ambitious developer. Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello are Hammond's young grandchildren. Also starring are Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B.D. Wong, Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Knight. Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen produce the Amblin Entertainment Production for Universal Pictures. Lata Ryan is associate producer. Michael Crichton and David Koepp wrote the screenplay. Behind the cameras, the creative team includes cinematographer Dean Cundey, production designer Rick Carter and editor Michael Kahn. In addition to the talented cast of actors, "Jurassic Park" features stars of a different magnitude. For more than 18 months before filming began, an award- winning design team had been conceiving and creating the live action dinosaurs who would inhabit the unique park. From the huge Tyrannosaurus rex to the vicious Velociraptor, "Jurassic Park" features a level of realism and technical innovations never before captured on film. The talented design team includes the highly acclaimed Stan Winston, Live Action Dinosaurs; ILM's Dennis Muren, Full Motion Dinosaurs; Phil Tippett, Dinosaur Supervisor; Michael Lantieri, Special Dinosaur Effects and Special Visual Effects by Industrial Light & Magic. Their achievements, individually and collectively have included box office successes from "Star Wars" to "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." ABOUT THE PRODUCTION In May of 1990, Universal obtained the galleys of best-selling author Michael Crichton's upcoming book Jurassic Park, and within a matter of hours, the studio was intently negotiating to purchase the book on behalf of Steven Spielberg. "It was one of those projects that was so obviously a Spielberg film," says producer Kathleen Kennedy, who has closely collaborated with the filmmaker for 14 years. "If you look at the body of Steven's work, he very often is interested in the theme of extraordinary things happening to ordinary people." "What's interesting to me about this particular project is there is as much science as there is adventure and thrills," says Spielberg. "Jurassic Park is a cross between a zoo and a theme park. It's about the idea that man has been able to bring dinosaurs back to earth millions and millions of years later, and what happens when we come together." Author Michael Crichton, who spent two years writing the book, witnessed a flurry of bids and negotiations from four major studio contenders, but was pleased to learn of Spielberg's interest in directing the film. In less than a week, Universal announced that "Jurassic Park" would be directed by the filmmaker who had so successfully blended art and science in the making of such films as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial." Crichton's remarkable background as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, novelist, screenwriter and film director had led to his distinct flair for techno-thrillers such as "The Andromeda Strain" and "The Terminal Man." The story that had been percolating about a theme park for genetically engineered dinosaurs grew out of his concern for the rise of "scientism." "I believe that science is a wonderfully powerful, but distinctly limited tool," says Crichton. Envisioning the park's billionaire developer, John Hammond, as a sort of "dark Walt Disney," Crichton's story ventured into an area of growing controversy -- biogenetics for the sake of profit. "There's a big moral question in this story," says Spielberg. "DNA cloning may be viable, but is it acceptable? Is it right for man to do this, or did dinosaurs have their shot a million years ago?" A self-professed dinosaur fan since childhood, Spielberg recalls, "The first big words I ever learned were different dinosaur species, and when my son Max was two years old, he could not only identify but pronounce 'Iguanadon.' "I think one of the things that interests kids is that they're so mysterious -- there's a quote from a Harvard psychologist who was asked why kids love dinosaurs so much. He said, 'That's easy. They're big, they're fierce...and they're dead." "But now they're back," chuckles Spielberg. Both Crichton and Spielberg view paleontology as detective work, a Sherlock-Holmes-like deductive existence. "When I first saw a dinosaur dig, it looked just like the scene of a crime," recalls Spielberg. "It had ribbons around it, with people working as if they were forensic scientists brushing for fingerprints. I'd love to spend a summer in Montana doing that." It was the summer of 1990 that Kennedy and Spielberg first began to recruit the "dream team" that would lay the creative foundation for "Jurassic Park." First on board was talented production designer Rick Carter, who did "Back to the Future Part II" and "III." His first association with Amblin began when he designed 42 episodes of "Amazing Stories." As Michael Crichton began adapting his complex book into a feature-length screenplay, Carter started work with a group of illustrators and storyboard artists who could help translate Crichton's words into cinematic images. Carter's goal was to find a convincing blend of science, fantasy and reality that he likened to "Close Encounters of a Prehistoric Kind." One of the movie's challenges would be narrowing Crichton's 15 dinosaur species down to a more practical six. Next, there was research to be done as to how the dinosaurs would move on film. Associate producer Lata Ryan joined the company in September of 1990 with the challenge of helping to build an all- star effects team that would bring the dinosaurs to life. In the months ahead, Ryan became a choreographer whose formidable task was to serve as a source of communication and clarification for the four separate effects units. Historically, the action of large creatures had been best achieved with old fashioned stop-motion photography, but Spielberg had hopes of pushing the effects envelope and developing technologies that had not been used before. After a thorough interview process with every effects shop in town, the producers selected a cadre of effects people who were literally challenged to go where no man had gone before. Kennedy recalls, "It was a dream come true to land Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren and Michael Lantieri all on one movie." Stan Winston Studio was asked to create the live action dinosaurs; full-size animals who would be both quick and mobile. A miracle worker in both make-up and creature effects who had been acclaimed for his work on such notable films as "The Terminator," "Aliens" and "Terminator 2," Winston broke the project into three phases: research, design and construction. Dedicated to making dramatic characters who are both spectacular and majestic, Winston and his team spent a full year in the research phase. Consulting with paleontologists, museums and hundreds of texts, Winston's artists prepared detailed sketches and renderings that would later lead to fifth-scale sculptures, and finally, to such enormous creations as a 20 foot Tyrannosaurus rex. In order to tackle the scope and breadth of the project ahead, Winston designated a group of teams that included both artists and engineers. To give you an idea of each team's complex responsibilities, meet "Team rex," which consisted of 12 operators performing widely varying functions. Constructed from a frame of fiberglass and 3000 pounds of clay, the 20 foot tall T-rex was covered with a durable yet delicate latex skin and then painted by a team of artists who blended a rich palette of colors to bring his body to life. The T-rex was then mounted on a "dino-simulator," an imaginative mechanism inspired by hydraulic technology and based on a traditional six-axis flight simulator used by the military. On this motion-based foundation, both the platform and the T-rex could be actuated through a computer control board. Meanwhile, a fifth-scale version of the T-rex, resembling an elaborate erector set, had been built so that the identical motion of the scaled down armature could be generated manually by four puppeteers. Once the small T-rex (called a Waldo) had rehearsed the moves and actions required in a specific scene, a computer recorded the movement and programmed the big T-rex to repeat the action exactly. While the Waldo's puppeteers operated the animal's head, torso, tail and arms, additional puppeteers crouched nearby to simultaneously operate the T-rex's eyes, mouth, jaw and claws. The Stan Winston Studio, which employed more than 60 artists, engineers and puppeteers in the making of "Jurassic Park," also created life-sized, articulated versions of a 20 foot Tyrannosaurus rex, a 6 foot tall Velociraptor, the long-necked Brachiosaurus, a sick Triceratops, a Gallimimus, the unusual Dilophosaurus (aka "the Spitter") and a baby Raptor hatchling. With the challenge of creating "live" dinosaurs solved by Stan Winston, Spielberg turned his attentions to the necessity of miniature photography for the wide angle or full length shots. He took his thoughts to Phil Tippett, an Academy Award winning animator and effects wizard who devised the Go-Motion System (a much refined version of stop-motion) while working on the film "Dragonslayer." Tippett, who formerly worked for ILM, is based in Berkeley, California and eagerly began recruiting a team that would supply more than 50 Go-Motion shots. In addition to choreographing the movements of the dinosaurs on film, Tippett was also relied on to provide a series of "animatics," as a means of helping the filmmakers to prepare and rehearse the highly complex scenes with T-rex and the Velociraptors. Early in the process, Spielberg had also consulted with Industrial Light and Magic, the effects house founded by George Lucas which had collaborated with him on many films. ILM's effects supervisor Dennis Muren, a six-time Academy Award winner, was anxious to participate in "Jurassic Park," but since Steven hoped to use full scale dinosaurs and Go-Motion, he was unclear about ILM's role in the project. But a year later, when Spielberg was working closely with ILM as the director of "Hook," a new conversation began. As the industry leaders in the area of computer graphics for film, ILM had only recently devised ground-breaking computer generated imagery and astonishing morphing techniques in the making of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Members of the ILM computer graphics team quietly experimented with an idea for "Jurassic Park" -- they built the bones and skeleton of a dinosaur in a computer, and from that, they created a walk cycle for the T-rex. Impressed with the test results, Amblin Entertainment soon gave ILM the greenlight to take on several additional shots, including a stampede and several wide-angle scenes that illustrate a herd of dinosaurs against a sweeping vista. When Muren next returned to Amblin, he astounded the filmmakers with a computer- generated sequence of the T-rex walking in daylight. It appeared that with the advent of computer-generated images, Go-Motion might soon be extinct. Although Tippett's work was ultimately reassigned to ILM, Phil became a valuable member of the "transition team" and set up training sessions with ILM's graphic designers to teach them as much as possible about character movement throughout the production. Michael Lantieri, who headed the fourth effects unit, had a long association with Amblin projects; he had worked with Robert Zemeckis on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Back to the Future Part II" and "III," and had collaborated with Spielberg on "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Hook." His team would be responsible for a myriad of mechanical challenges including the construction of exterior cranes and large scale hydraulics that would move the enormous dinosaurs around. Lantieri's group was also responsible for a number of imaginative camera riggings that were customized to move fluidly with Stan Winston's creations. During the two years of pre-production on "Jurassic Park," there wasn't an idle moment for Spielberg, Kennedy or producer Jerry Molen, who simultaneously undertook the making of "Hook," an imaginative dramatic adventure based on the story of Peter Pan. Meanwhile, work continued on the screenplay, beginning with Michael Crichton's first draft. Later, David Koepp, the young screenwriter who had co-written the black comedy "Death Becomes Her," was brought on to the project, and he shares the screen credit with Crichton. Construction was now underway in Hollywood on two of Universal's largest sound stages, and would later expand to three others on the lot, as well as one enormous sound stage at Warner Bros. Studios. Casting was a relatively short process, capped by the signing of Sir Richard Attenborough, whose acclaimed work as a film director had distracted him from acting roles since 1979. "I think Steven is a genius," says Attenborough, who had recently completed directing "Chaplin." "And he has asked me on a number of occasions in the past to work for him. After I read the book, I thought if any man in the world can make a movie of this, it's Steven Spielberg." Starring as Dr. Alan Grant is Sam Neill, portraying a renowned paleontologist who is none too pleased to be touring Jurassic Park with two rambunctious children. Laura Dern portrays Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist who is both a colleague and love interest of Dr. Grant's. Jeff Goldblum, dressed in black from head to toe, is Ian Malcolm, the eccentric mathematician who predicts doom for the Park. When "Jurassic Park" began principal photography on the island of Kauai on August 24, 1992, it had been exactly two years and one month since the start of preproduction. The lush green resort-land near Lihue was an ideal setting for the Jurassic Park exteriors, but after three weeks of filming under the tropical sun, a real-life drama overshadowed the movie. Hurricane Iniki was fast approaching Kauai, and the crew was asked by the hotel to pack their suitcases and fill their bathtubs with water in case of future power and water shortages. Next, they were instructed to pack a day bag and meet in the ballroom of the hotel on the basement level. By 9:00 a.m. the storm was headed straight for the island. Kathy Kennedy recalls, "We started pulling all our supplies into the ballroom, and the camera crew was quickly packing their things in the trucks. But if you're going to be stranded with anyone, be stranded with a movie crew," says Kennedy. "We had generators for lights, and plenty of food and water. We were self-sustaining because we moved around on location all the time." Camped out in rows of chaise lounges on the ballroom floor, the cast and crew heard the winds pick up at about 4:00 p.m. and rumble by at almost 120 mph. "It sounded like a freight train roaring past the building," recalls the producer. When water seeped into one end of the ballroom, the crew huddled on the other side of the room. But at 7:30 p.m., Kennedy and Gary Hymes, the stunt coordinator, stepped outside into silence. "It was the eeriest thing I had ever seen," recalls Kennedy. "Here we were that morning on a beautiful tree-lined street adjacent to a golf course, and now virtually every single tree had been flattened." Although the company had scheduled one more day of filming, the sheer force of Iniki literally struck all the sets. There was no power or working phones on the island, so at dawn the next morning, Kennedy jogged two miles to the airport to explore their options. "The destruction in the airport was unbelievable," she recalls. "All the windows were blown out in the terminals, and the buildings were full of palms, trees, sand and water. Every single helicopter had been tipped on its side." Thanks to her relentless efforts among airport and military personnel in Lihue, Kennedy was able to hitch a ride to Honolulu on a Salvation Army plane and began organizing from a pay phone. Over the next 24 hours, she not only coordinated the safe return of the company, but also arranged for more than 20,000 pounds of relief supplies to be transported from Honolulu and Los Angeles into Kauai. Upon its return to Los Angeles, "Jurassic Park" resumed production at Universal Studios. Stage 24 had become the industrial-size kitchen for Jurassic Park's Visitors Center and it was being visited by two predatory Velociraptors. While Winston's team manipulated every moving part of the full size raptor from head to tail, actors Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello cowered in the corner, deep into their characters of two young children who are trapped in their worst nightmare. From there, the company packed up and moved to Red Rock Canyon State Park, at the west end of the Mojave Desert. Chosen for its similarities to a Montana dinosaur dig site, Red Rock played host to actors Laura Dern and Sam Neill, both of whom were coached by one of the country's premier paleontologists, Jack Homer. As a professor at the University of Montana and curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Homer was a valued member of the crew and the official paleontology consultant. Returning to Stage 27, the Company began a complicated sequence following a confrontation with the mighty T- rex, who had effortlessly picked up a Ford Explorer and hung it on the branches of a gigantic gnarled tree. Rigged by Michael Lantieri's team and suspended on steel cables, the car slowly slips from branch to branch until it falls to the ground with a reverberating crash. By the end of the shoot, the tropical jungle on Stage 27 had been re-dressed for three additional scenes: an early morning visit from a Brachiosaurus, a surprise attack on Muldoon (Bob Peck) and Dennis Nedry's (Wayne Knight) encounter with a spitter. Stage 28 housed the heart of Jurassic Park; a computer control room and dinosaur hatchery. Headed up by Michael Backes, computer effects designer, the Control Room was headquarters for almost a million dollars in high-end equipment, on loan from such industry leaders as silicon Graphics, SuperMac, Apple and Thinking Machines. When Nedry's sabotage results in Control Room chaos, the audience will simply watch the display screens in order to understand the problems that face the park visitors who are on the royal tour. By size and scope, the most memorable "Jurassic Park" set was perhaps the visitor's Center constructed on Stage 12, but it was closely rivaled by the T-rex Paddock, located on one of the largest sound stages at Warner Brothers Studios. Lantieri and his crew built the riggings that mobilized the 3000 lb. dinosaur, who along with his fellow actors, worked long, hard hours in the wind, rain and mud. The film's climactic finale was filmed on Stage 12, in Jurassic Park's enormous Rotunda, which, according to the script, is still under construction. As John Hammond escorts his visitors into the main lobby, the first thing they see are two gigantic dinosaur skeletons displayed in the middle of the Rotunda. Constructed by Toronto-based Research Casting International, the museum-quality pieces are full-size recreations of a T-rex, which is approximately 40 feet long, and an Alamosaurus, which measures 45 feet long. As the cast and crew lifted their glasses in a champagne toast on the final night of filming, a weary but enthusiastic Spielberg announced that "Jurassic Park," an ambitious project which had been two years in the planning and four months before the cameras, had finished on budget and 12 days ahead of schedule.