Sound in Jurassic Park

By Audrey 

Jurassic Park, with it’s music and sound design, is an iconic part of sound design in film due to its use of sound and story throughout. The film captures sound effects and elements that bring the piece together as a whole. This includes the use of offscreen sound, sonic patterns, and music. These all played an important role in helping to show the cinematic techniques of the film.

To start off, the offscreen sound effects were the most commonly used element of sound in this movie. This is useful to add detail without showing everything, as this would increase the run time and add unnecessary content. At the beginning of the film, when a cork flies off a bottle, it lands offscreen and the sound of it can be heard. It would be unnecessary to show the cork falling, because it does not have any important correlation to the main story. There is some slight voiceover dialogue, to show the reactions of the other characters within. Offscreen sound also added more detail to this without extending the runtime of the film or creating any unnecessary discomfort to any audience member with the offscreen sound of a poor cow being killed, and eaten by dinosaurs. This helped to create an atmosphere to the park without having to show everything, as this could be visualized.

Sonic patterns were used throughout this film, creating a major impact of suspense. Every time a dinosaur was nearby in the film, you could tell due to the audio utilized. The characters would be hiding and music would begin to play, then followed by the stomp of a dinosaur’s foot. Another pattern related to this included the strong use of recurrence with the Jurassic Park theme song. In the beginning of the film, it was played with an exciting dramatic theme, and in the end, it was played in a more saddening, slow, lullaby to express the sadness of the original park owner.

Music is another common theme in this. There’s non-diegetic music, and diegetic, but mostly non-diegetic. The music in the film is used to build suspense and action. As stated in the previous paragraph, it was mostly used before a dinosaur appeared to show the action grower more tense. To conclude this, Jurassic Park’s use of sound, including offscreen sound, sonic patterns, and music, quite added to the atmosphere and world of the movie.

                                         Examples of suspense and sonic patterns: