Honestly, it feels like those dinosaurs have always been with us. But if you’re looking for the exact moment the world changed, we have to look back to the early 90s. The movie Jurassic Park was made between August 1992 and May 1993. It wasn't just a simple shoot. It was a race against time, a battle with mother nature, and a massive gamble on technology that didn't even exist yet.
Most people just remember the summer of 1993 when the T-Rex first roared in theaters. But the "making" part? That started way earlier. Steven Spielberg was actually eyeing the rights to Michael Crichton’s book before it was even published in 1990. He was talking to Crichton while they were working on a screenplay for ER—yeah, the medical show. Once Universal beat out Warner Bros and Sony in a massive bidding war, the clock started ticking.
The 1992 Production Timeline
Filming officially kicked off on August 24, 1992.
The crew headed to the island of Kauai in Hawaii. It was beautiful. It was lush. It was also about to be hit by a literal disaster. For three weeks, everything went smoothly. Then, on the final day of location shooting, Hurricane Iniki decided to crash the party.
It was the most powerful hurricane to hit Hawaii in recorded history. 120 mph winds. Total blackout. The cast and crew—including Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum—had to huddle in the ballroom of their hotel. While everyone else was terrified, Richard Attenborough (who played John Hammond) reportedly slept through the whole thing. When asked how he could possibly sleep through a category 4 hurricane, he basically said, "My dear boy, I survived the London Blitz!"
Turning Disaster into Cinema
Spielberg being Spielberg, he didn’t just hide. He sent his camera crew out to film the actual storm surge. If you remember those shots of the massive waves crashing against the island’s cliffs early in the movie, that’s not a special effect. That’s real footage of Hurricane Iniki.
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After the storm cleared, the production had to pivot. They moved back to California to finish the rest of the shoot on Universal Studios’ soundstages. They wrapped filming on November 30, 1992—twelve days ahead of schedule.
When Was the Movie Jurassic Park Made? The Post-Production Grind
Even though the cameras stopped rolling in late '92, the movie was far from "made." The real magic—the stuff that makes your jaw drop even today—happened in post-production.
This lasted from December 1992 until May 1993.
This is where things get really crazy. Spielberg had a deal with Universal: he could only make his passion project, Schindler’s List, if he finished Jurassic Park first. So, he was literally in Poland filming a black-and-white Holocaust drama during the day and then spending his nights reviewing dinosaur VFX shots via satellite.
Imagine the mental whiplash.
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The CGI Revolution
Originally, the dinosaurs were going to be stop-motion. Phil Tippett, a legend in the industry, was hired to do "Go-Motion" (a smoother version of stop-motion). But a couple of "renegades" at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) had a different idea.
Steve "Spaz" Williams and Mark Dippé secretly started building a digital T-Rex skeleton. When they showed Spielberg a test of a fully rendered T-Rex walking in the sunlight, the game changed. Spielberg looked at Tippett and said, "You’re out of a job."
Tippett’s response? "Don’t you mean extinct?"
Spielberg loved the line so much he put it in the script. But Tippett wasn’t actually fired; he became a consultant to help the computer animators understand how 70-ton animals should move.
Real Practical Effects You Might Not Know
While the CGI gets all the credit, most of the movie is actually practical. Stan Winston’s team built the animatronics. The T-Rex was a 20-foot tall, 12,000-pound beast.
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- The Water Ripple: That iconic shot of the water vibrating in the cup? It wasn't a computer. A guy was under the dashboard plucking a guitar string attached to the bottom of the cup.
- The Breathing Triceratops: It took 12 people to operate. Some were in a pit beneath it, others were actually inside the body.
- The Raptor Sounds: Sound designer Gary Rydstrom didn't use lizards. He used tortoises mating. Seriously. He also used horses breathing and geese hissing.
The Official Release and Legacy
The movie finally premiered on June 9, 1993, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. It hit theaters across the United States on June 11, 1993.
It cost about $63 million to make. It made over $1 billion.
People often ask why the effects in a movie made in 1993 look better than some Marvel movies today. It's because they used CGI sparingly. There are only about 14 minutes of dinosaur footage in the entire two-hour movie. Only about 6 of those minutes are CGI. By blending the digital models with the physical animatronics, they tricked our brains into thinking it was all real.
Actionable Takeaways for Movie Buffs
If you want to experience the "making of" era yourself, you can actually visit these spots:
- Kualoa Ranch, Oahu: You can stand exactly where the Gallimimus flock ran past Dr. Grant and the kids. They even have the fallen log there for photos.
- Manawaiopuna Falls, Kauai: This is the waterfall from the helicopter arrival. It’s on private land, so you have to take a helicopter tour to see it, but it looks exactly like it did in 1992.
- Red Rock Canyon, California: This stood in for the Montana dig site where we first meet Grant and Sattler.
The movie was made at a turning point in history. It was the bridge between the old-school Hollywood of puppets and the new-school world of computers. It’s a miracle it got finished at all, considering the hurricanes and the dual-production schedule Spielberg was juggling.
Next time you watch it, remember that the terror on the actors' faces during the storm scenes might just be a little bit of real leftover adrenaline from Hurricane Iniki.
Actionable Insight: To see the sheer difference between the 1993 techniques and modern ones, watch the "Behind the Scenes" features on the 4K Blu-ray. Specifically, look for the "Dinosaur Input Device" segment to see how they bridged the gap between puppets and pixels.