The Making of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park

"This is not science fiction; it's science eventuality." - Steven Spielberg. "You decide you'll control nature, and from that moment on you're in deep trouble, because you can't do it.You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air.Your powers are much less than your dreams would have you believe." - Michael Crichton. As production began on Jurassic Park, the following story appeared over the wires of the Associated Press: San Francisco (ap)�A team of California scientists has cloned a fragment of genetic material from an extinct stingless bee that has been preserved in amber more than 25 million years. The researchers, who extracted some of the insect's DNA and determined its exact molecular sequence, are attempting the new procedure on other amber-trapped ancient animals such as lizards, weevils and a biting midge that may have eaten dinosaur blood. If the midge consumed dinosaur blood, the researchers said they may be able to unlock the secrets of the mysterious extinct reptiles and their evolution. The report on the first stage of the scientists' work is being published in the current issue of the British journal Medical Science Research by Raul J. Cano, a molecular biologist at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif, and entomologist George O. Poinar Jr. of the University of California's College of Natural Resources in Berkeley. While the research seems to echo Jurassic Park, the novel about scientists who bring dinosaurs back to life by cloning their DNA, Poinar said the real purpose of the experiment is to prove that it is possible to extract viable DNA from extinct animals and to seek firm new lines of evidence for an "evolutionary clock" that shows the pace of evolution over geologic time. In the report published this week, the researchers describe how they were able to extract bits of muscle tissue from the wings of four of the bees whose bodies were preserved virtually intact in the resinous sap of an extinct tree. The sap became amber as it solidified over hundreds of years. Poinar has collected insects and the fur of animals found in a mine in the Dominican Republic, where the trees lived 25 million to 40 million years ago.

Poinar's son Hendrik, a Cal Poly graduate student, and David W. Roubik, a Smithsonian Institution bee expert from Panama, are also part of the team. The bee used in the experiment was a member of the species Propledia dominicana, an extinct ancestor of tropical stingless bees that bite rather than sting and that are widespread throughout the world today. The sequencing of the ancient DNA shows that about 7 percent of the bee's original genetic material has changed in contemporary bees� a valuable clue to the rate at which evolution of the bees has progressed, Cano and Poinar said. Jurassic Park Imagine that you are one of the first visitors to Jurassic Park�a melding of scientific discovery and visual imagination. You arrive as a child would, free of preconceptions and ready for anything. Your adventure is about to begin. Entering the gates of the park, your senses are overwhelmed by the world that surrounds you; the sounds, the smells, even the feel of the earth is curiously different. Somewhere in the distance, you hear the movement of huge animals�the ground shakes with their passing. You are a stranger in an alien world. You look into the night sky, at stars whose light was born long before humans ever existed; born when a different race of beings walked the planet�powerful animals, rulers of the earth for 160 million years. Like those ancient stars, the Jurassic has left only faint traces of itself�in fossils, footprints, relics of blood cells encased in amber. A time capsule that has remained closed for countless millennia. Now the time capsule has been opened, and man and dinosaurs, the two rulers of the earth, will meet for the first time. All scientific resources had been dedicated to bringing Jurassic Park to reality; a childhood fantasy made real, a place where wonders come to life. It was created to be the ultimate amusement. But someone forgot to tell the dinosaurs. Meeting them in their environment, we realize they are not monsters, but animals far more agile, far more intelligent and far more dangerous than we guessed. We can give birth to the dinosaurs, but nothing can prepare us for what will happen when the egg hatches. Jurassic Park is the place where science ends and the unpredictable begins.

Directed by Steven Spielberg from the best-selling book by Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, a renowned paleontologist who is asked to inspect a spectacular amusement park; Laura Dern as his colleague, Dr. Ellie Sattler; Jeff Goldblum as a brilliant but eccentric mathematician whose Chaos Theory explains the dangers inherent in the project; and Sir Richard Attenborough as John Hammond, the park's ambitious developer. Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello are Hammond's young grandchildren. Also starring are Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B.D. Wong, Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Knight. Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen produced the Amblin Entertainment Production for Universal Pictures. Lata Ryan was associate producer. Michael Crichton and David Koepp wrote the screenplay. Behind the cameras, the creative team included cinematographer Dean Cundey, production designer Rick Carter and editor Michael Kahn. In addition to the talented cast of actors Jurassic Park features stars of a different magnitude. For more than 18 months before filming began, an award-winning design team had been conceiving and creating the live action dinosaurs who would inhabit the unique park. From the huge Tyrannosaurus rex to the vicious Velociraptor, Jurassic Park features a level of realism and technical innovations that had never before captured on film. The talented design team included the highly acclaimed Stan Winston, Live Action Dinosaurs; ILM's Dennis Muren, Full Motion Dinosaurs; Phil Tippett, Dinosaur Supervisor; Michael Lantieri, Special Dinosaur Effects and Special Visual Effects by Industrial Light & Magic. Their achievements, individually and collectively have included box office successes, from Star Wars to Terminator 2. Special advance poster Production In May of 1990, Universal obtained the galleys of best-selling author Michael Crichton's upcoming book Jurassic Park, and within a matter of hours, the studio was intently negotiating to purchase the book on behalf of Steven Spielberg. "It was one of those projects that was so obviously a Spielberg film," said producer Kathleen Kennedy, who had closely collaborated with the filmmaker for 14 years. "If you look at the body of Steven's work, he very often is interested in the theme of extraordinary things happening to ordinary people." "

What's interesting to me about this particular project is there is as much science as there is adventure and thrills," said Spielberg to the Washington Post. Jurassic Park is a cross between a zoo and a theme park. It's about the idea that man has been able to bring dinosaurs back to earth millions and millions of years later, and what happens when we come together. Author Michael Crichton, who spent two years writing the book, witnessed a flurry of bids and negotiations from four major studio contenders, but was pleased to learn of Spielberg's interest in directing the film. In less than a week, Universal announced that Jurassic Park would be directed by the filmmaker who had so successfully blended art and science in the making of such films as Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind and E.T.. Assistant art director Marty Kline Crichton's remarkable background as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, novelist, screenwriter and film director had led to his distinct flair for techno-thrillers such as "The Andromeda Strain" and "The Terminal Man." The story that had been percolating about a theme park for genetically engineered dinosaurs grew out of his concern for the rise of "scientism." "I believe that science is a wonderfully powerful, but distinctly limited tool," said Crichton. Envisioning the park's billionaire-developer, John Hammond, as a sort of "dark Walt Disney," Crichton's story ventured into an area of growing controversy�biogenetics for the sake of profit. "There's a big moral question in this story," said Spielberg. "DNA cloning may be viable but is it acceptable? Is it right for man to do this, or did dinosaurs have their shot a million years ago?" A self-professed dinosaur fan since childhood, Spielberg recalled, "The first big words I ever learned were different dinosaur species, and when my son Max was two vears old, he could not only identify but pronounce 'Iguanadon.' I think one of the things that interests kids is that they're so mysterious----there's a quote from a Harvard psychologist who was asked why kids love dinosaurs so much. He said, 'That's easy. They're big, they're f fierce and they're dead." "But now they're back," said Spielberg.

Both Crichton and Spielberg viewed paleontology as detective work, a Sherlock-Holmes-like deductive existence. "When I first saw a dinosaur dig, it looked just like the scene of a crime," recalled Spielberg. "It had ribbons around it, with people working as if they were forensic scientists brushing for fingerprints. I'd love to spend a summer in Montana doing that." Concept drawings for the tour vehicle It was the summer of 1990 that Kennedy and Spielberg first began to recruit the "dream team" that would lay the creative foundation for Jurassic Park. First on board was talented production designer Rick Carter, who did "Back to the Future Part II" and "III." His first association with Amblin began when he designed 42 episodes of "Amazing Stories." As Michael Crichton began adapting his complex book into a feature-length screenplay, Carter started work with a group of illustrators and storyboard artists who could help translate Crichton's words into cinematic images. Carter's goal was to find a convincing blend of science, fantasy and Reality that he likened to "Close Encounters of a Prehistoric Kind." One of the movie's challenges would be narrowing Crichton's 15 dinosaur species down to a more practical six. Next, there was research to be done as to how the dinosaurs would move on film. Associate producer Lata Ryan joined the company in September of 1990 with the challenge of helping to build an all-star effects team that would bring the dinosaurs to life. In the months ahead, Ryan became a choreographer whose formidable task was to serve as a source of communication and clarification for the four separate effects units. Historically, the action of larqe creatures had been best achieved with old fashioned stop-motion photography, but Spielberg had hopes of pushing the effects envelope and developing technologies that had not been used before. After a thorough interview process with every effects shop in town, the producers selected a top group of effects people who were literally challenged to go where no man had gone before. Spielberg on the set Kennedy recalled, "It was a dream come true to land Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren artd Michael Lantieri all on one movie." Stan Winston Studio was asked to create the live action dinosaurs; full-size animals who would be both quick and mobile.