“If people knew where the sounds in Jurassic Park came from, it’d be rated R!” So says Gary Rydstrom, the Jurassic Park sound designer who’s been nominated for seventeen Academy Awards and won seven (two of them for 1993’s Jurassic Park). Vulture interviewed Rydstrom for the 3D re-release of the film. In the interview, Rydstrom explains how he created sounds from scratch for dinosaurs no human has heard before. For the full details (and video clips) you can check out the full interview here. We’re just going to focus on the naughty bits because giggity.
Regarding the memorable velociraptor scene, Rydstrom used a variety of sounds, but the “barking” noises the velociraptors use to communicate is tortoises having sex.
“I recorded that at Marine World,” Rydstrom says. “The people there said, ‘Would you like to record these two tortoises that are mating?'”
Oh sure, but when I try to record tortoise trysts at Marine World they kick me out. Now I have to settle for all of those videos of turtles doing it with inanimate objects that I email to Vince on a weekly basis.
The flock of Gallimimus the humans run alongside made an interesting sound when passing by and when being eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. That sound was a rutting mare squealing at a stallion. Another animal in heat, a dolphin, was recorded to make raptor scream sound effects.
Not all of the sound effects came from animals doing it (or trying to get it on), however. Many sounds for the T. rex were slowed-down audio clips of Rydstrom’s Jack Russell terrier, Buster. And the sound of the brachiosaurs singing may have sounded pretty in theaters, but it’s really just donkeys. We’d like to think the soundboard for that one looked like this: