Jurassic Park hidden details most viewers miss

Jurassic Park hidden details: 15 minutes of dinosaurs

For all its spectacle, the 127-minute film shows dinosaurs for roughly 15 minutes. About nine minutes are Stan Winston's animatronics and only around six minutes are computer graphics from Industrial Light & Magic.

That balance is why the film has aged so well. Most close-ups are physical puppets lit on set, and the CGI is saved for wide, fast shots like the Gallimimus stampede.

The roar is a zoo of other animals

Sound designer Gary Rydstrom built the T. rex from a mix of sources. Its roar combines a lion, a tiger snarl, a baby elephant's scream and alligator and crocodile sounds.

Listen for the layers on a rewatch: the roar changes depending on the T. rex's mood, mixing the elephant scream with the lion and crocodile recordings in different amounts.

• Grunts: a male koala
• Breath: air from a whale's blowhole
• Footsteps: redwood trees crashing to the ground

The ripples in the water glass

The famous shot of water shaking in a cup came from Spielberg listening to Earth, Wind & Fire in his car and feeling the bass. Effects supervisor Michael Lantieri first tried a glass of water on his guitar. The final version ran guitar strings through the car, with a crew member on the floor plucking them to make the rings appear.

The raptors are the wrong size

Real Velociraptors were much smaller than the ones in the film. Crichton based his on Deinonychus, which he considered a close relative. By luck, the larger Utahraptor was discovered shortly before the film came out.

Phil Tippett, an amateur paleontologist, was hired early to plan the dinosaurs' movement using go-motion animation. When CGI tests impressed Spielberg, Tippett's team stayed on to direct how the digital animals moved, and he shared the visual effects Oscar.

A real hurricane and other production facts

Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai on September 11, 1992, the last scheduled day of shooting on the island. Spielberg filmed storm footage that ended up in the movie as the storm on Isla Nublar. The hurricane also disrupted a planned on-screen death for Ray Arnold, played by Samuel L. Jackson.

The animated Mr. DNA was named by screenwriter David Koepp after Spielberg jokingly called the character that, and was inspired by the educational film Hemo the Magnificent. The helicopter arrival was filmed at Manawaiopuna Falls on Kauai, now often called Jurassic Falls. Koepp also said water was hard for early CGI, one reason a T. rex river raft sequence from the book was dropped.

Most of the Hawaiian shoot took place on Kauai from August 24, 1992. One location in Olokele Canyon needed a fence over 200 feet long for the paddock scenes. The film's three Oscars went to the visual effects team of Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri, and to the sound teams led by Gary Rydstrom, whose work on the roar earned him two of the awards.

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