Writing over at Skywalker Sound, Clayton Sandell takes us from the present day into the Jurassic era as he takes a look (and tilts an ear) towards Jurassic World: Rebirth from director Gareth Edwards, a film that was every bit as audibly innovative as it was visually ingenious.
The strong creative partnership between Skywalker Sound and the epic dinosaur franchise has flourished over seven films, beginning with director Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original, Jurassic Park. The film won Academy Awards for Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Shawn Murphy, and Ron Judkins) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns). ILM also took home an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
“I was just tickled pink to be to be asked to be part of such a huge franchise and couldn’t wait to get started and meet Gareth,” says supervising sound editor Bjørn Ole Schroeder. “It was also a huge challenge because at the same time, both Tim and I knew that we had an incredibly compressed schedule.”
The team got to work fast, focusing first on designing distinct sounds for the bevy of new prehistoric beasts that come with every Jurassic film.
“You have all the dinosaurs that came before in six other films, so each of them can’t really sound like any of those,” Nielsen says. “We were just trying to find the identity for each of the main dinosaurs. And what happens on a project like this is that toy producers need access to those sounds long before the filmmakers do. So the first conversations were really about approving sounds for the toys, which had to be made a year in advance.”