The roar of Jurassic World’s Indominus rex presented a unique challenge for the film’s sound designers: they needed something different from the T. rex of the earlier films, but still terrifying.
Jurassic World’s dinosaur roars include sounds from whales, walruses, and foxes
Phil Edwards was a senior producer for the Vox video team.
That’s the obstacle presented in this video about Skywalker Sound’s work on the record-breaking movie. The solution included a fennec fox.
The video reveals the secrets behind Jurassic World’s imaginary sounds, like the roar of the dinosaurs and the Foley design of everything from the computer-generated gyrospheres to the sound of running raptors. The best tricks include:
- Indominus rex's giant roar is part T. rex, but sound designers felt "the freedom to go outside of the Rex world." The sounds they used for the Indominus include those of large animals like the walrus, whale, beluga whale, and lion, as well as big pigs (yes, pigs). There are also a few "squealier" animals mixed in, including dolphins, monkeys, and even a fennec fox.
They captured the sounds by recording them and mixing them together. The sounds of each species vary by animal, so for each species they recorded, the team had to search for the perfect individual creature.
What it looks like to record a lion that will become a dinosaur.
- The Mosasaur, the giant underwater dinosaur, had walrus and beluga whale in its roar.
- The gyrosphere sounds were made using different types of glass, including everything from a potter’s wheel to spinning a glass ball.
- But the best job of all? To create the running sound for the film’s raptors, the team recorded an actual person running around on wood chips. A Foley effects editor had microphones attached to his feet while he mimicked a raptor.
Running like a raptor sounds better than it looks.
So remember this when you rewatch Jurassic World: Indominus rex is part fox, and Chris Pratt is taming the footsteps of a guy running around on wood chips.
