'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' Composer Michael Giacchino & Director J.A. Bayona Take You Behind the Scenes: Exclusive
6/14/2018 by Melinda Newman
Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rexes may not seem like a natural fit with revered composers Igor Stravinsky and Bernard Herrmann, but they were for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona and composer Michael Giacchino.
As these three exclusive behind-the-scenes clips reveal, when imagining the score for the fifth entry in the Jurassic Park series -- which opens June 22 -- the pair looked to the past. They didn’t go so far back as the Jurassic period 200 million years ago; instead, they turned to the 20th century and the works of Russian classical composer Stravinsky and Herrmann, best known for scoring such films as Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Psycho and Taxi Driver.
“When we first talked, we were thinking about how we wanted this to feel and what we wanted out of it. I love Stravisnky and Herrmann and I thought, 'Let’s put those two together and see what happens,'” says Giacchino, who also scored 2015’s Jurassic World. "We’ve done a lot of different things with the Jurassic films over the years, and you’re always looking for somewhere else you can take it.”
“Watching it for the first time without the music, we thought about how suspenseful it was, the fact we have dinosaurs, we had volcanoes,” adds Bayona. “We had all the elements that we love from movies we saw when we were kids. That made us think about the Ray Harryhausen movies. This is when I told Michael: 'This needs to sound very different… we should do the kind of music that nobody does anymore.'” Harryhausen was the groundbreaking visual effects creator/designer who worked on such films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason & The Argonauts and Clash of the Titans.
Universal Pictures’ label, Black Lot Music, will release the soundtrack Friday (June 15) both digitally and physically, with the digital version including two extra tracks. Mondo Vinyl will release a vinyl version the week following the film’s release.