Nerd in me is counting down the days until Jurassic World. We watched the original over the weekend and got onto IMDB and found some great trivia. Highlights from IMDB
The sound of the T-Rex killing Gennaro and a Gallimimus was Gary Rydstrom's Jack Russell terrier Buster, shaking a rope toy in his mouth recorded and slowed down because he thought a T-Rex would sound just like that. Buster also provided the sound for the T-1000 eye-spiking a prison guard in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
The T-rex occasionally malfunctioned, due to the rain. Producer Kathleen Kennedy recalls, "The T. rex went into the heebie-jeebies sometimes. Scared the crap out of us. We'd be, like, eating lunch, and all of a sudden a T-rex would come alive. At first we didn't know what was happening, and then we realized it was the rain. You'd hear people start screaming."
The most difficult effect to pull off was the vibrating rings of water. Steven Spielbergwanted the T-Rex to announce its presence somehow before the audience saw it, and got the idea from watching the mirror in his car vibrate because of the sound effects. WhenMichael Lantieri tried to replicate that with water, it was harder than any of the dinosaur effects; nobody knew how to do it but told Spielberg they could. The night before the shoot, Lantieri put a glass of water on a guitar and when he plucked the strings, that did it. So for the scene, they fed guitar strings under the dashboard to get the effect
When Lex nearly fell through the ceiling, the stunt girl looked up at the camera and Ariana Richards' face had to be superimposed, something not possible before the advent of CGI; its considered one of the film's most thrilling visuals.
A baby triceratops was built for a scene where one of the kids rides it. Special effects technicians worked on this effect for a year but the scene was cut at the last minute asSteven Spielberg thought it would ruin the pacing of the film.