“How They Designed The T-Rex Roar in ‘Jurassic Park’”

Oh, how I love this movie. Still, to this day. Laura Dern and her whole outfit. Sam Niell and his dad bang, HELL YES. The graphics still look cool, the dialogue is still sharp and funny. Cheers to this movie forever.

So I was deeee-lighted to read this satisfying article by Meg Shields at Film School Rejects (!) describing how the sound was accomplished. I’ve read over and over that sound and sound effects take up a huge portion of any movie budget. Shoot, even podcasts have to keep it together on the sound front. We are spoiled and yet grateful.

As Rydstrom recalled to NPR in 2013: “We started recording all kinds of weird animal sounds … I tried to get every interesting animal recording we could find, not even caring right away what they would be for … Then you try to sift through [the recordings] in the studio and see what’s interesting.”

And in a 2015 interview with Vulture, he explained, “One of the fun things in sound design is to take a sound and slow it down It becomes much bigger.” 

To accomplish the theater-shaking T. rex roar, Rydstrom was looking to create something that sounded otherworldly and massive but still believable and organic. And, most importantly: he was trying to establish an ancient, elemental enemy.

Ancient, elemental enemy OH MY!!!! 🦖🦖🦖