Production
Joe Johnston had been interested in directing the sequel to Jurassic Park and approached Spielberg, a friend of his, about the project. While Spielberg wanted to direct the first sequel, he agreed that if there was ever a third film, Johnston could direct. Johnston never had any concrete concept for the third film, other than stating the film would be "more stand-alone" and feature a lot of flying reptiles. The third film was greenlit in August 1999 and Craig Rosenberg wrote a script involving teenagers who get marooned on Isla Sorna. An earlier storyline by Spielberg featured Alan Grant living in a tree on one of the islands and studying the dinosaur population.
New writers were brought in to scribe a story involving Pteranodons escaping from Site B and causing a spate of mysterious killings on the mainland, which was to be investigated by Alan Grant and a number of other characters including Billy Brennan, a naturalist named Simone, a tough military attaché, wealthy Paul Roby, and Roby's teenage son Miles. Grant's group crash-lands on the island, while a parallel investigation is being carried out on the mainland. The aviary sequence and laboratory set piece were initially much longer and more complex, including Velociraptors stealthily entering the hatchery as the team spends the night there. Sets, costumes, and props were built for this version, before Johnston rejected the entire script five weeks before filming in order to pursue the "rescue mission" plot, which had been suggested by David Koepp. Johnston said that the script was never finished during production: "We shot pages that eventually went into the final script but we didn't have a document". During the pre-production phase, concept artists created advertising for the film using a number of working titles including Jurassic Park: Extinction and Jurassic Park: Breakout.
Production began on August 30, 2000 without a finished script, with filming in California, Oahu, and Molokai. The storyline contains minor scenes from Crichton's Jurassic Park and The Lost World novels that were not featured in the film versions, such as the Pteranodon aviary and the use of the boat. In a deviation from the previous films, the Spinosaurus is considered the primary antagonist: Johnston stated, "A lot of dinosaurs have a very similar silhouette to the T-Rex ... and we wanted the audience to instantly recognize this as something else." The silhouette of the Spinosaurus is also on the poster behind the Pteranodon, taking the place of the Tyrannosaurus which had been used in the previous films' posters. Baryonyx was originally considered to be the "big bad" before Spinosaurus was chosen. Within film dialogue, Billy interprets the animal encountered as a Baryonyx or Suchomimus, but Dr. Grant corrects his analysis based on its sail.
The special effects used for the dinosaurs were a mixture of animatronics and CGI. Due to new discoveries and theories in the field of paleontology, the portrayal of several dinosaurs differed from that of the previous films. Discoveries suggesting that Velociraptors were feathered prompted the addition of quill-like structures on the head and neck of the males in the film. "We've found evidence that Velociraptors had feathers, or feather-like structures, and we've incorporated that into the new look of the raptor", said paleontologist Jack Horner, the film's technical adviser.
The score's composer, Don Davis, was recommended by John Williams, who had composed the previous films' scores. Williams' original themes were integrated into the score as well as several new ones written by Davis. In addition, "Big Hat, No Cattle", a song by Randy Newman, was used in a restaurant scene.
Read more about this topic: Jurassic Park III
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)