Rick Carter's Jurassic Park: An Audio Drama - Part IV

The Final Score

After all was said and done, all the lines were recorded, all the episodes were edited, all the sound effects and ambiances mixed, the final piece to the puzzle was only just about to begin: the score. Scoring any project takes time. Working with the director or producers is a great first start in getting an idea for the sound and themes you'd like to use and explore as well as watching the 'final' film. Generally speaking, most composers don't read the scripts. Although their job is to give voice to the emotion of the film, they are the final piece that can help bridge the emotional intention with the performances and cinematography. If they compose music too much to the script, it can feel disconnected from the film. Similarly, if they compose music solely for what's seen in the film, there is a chance they will miss subject or the directors intent. In the case of this project we intended to produce the script in a 1:1 fashion, creating a faithful presentation of the script as is, as if the final film would be exactly that. This meant reading the script and getting an idea for the intention, mood, tone, and story beats was crucial. This would be step one. Later, once the audio was assembled, I went back to these original notes and ideas and tested them against the 'final cut' to get an idea if those impressions were still accurate. This meant, in some cases, music would start sooner than I thought or perhaps even later or be dropped entirely.

Influences

The intention throughout was to produce a product acting as if THIS were the final product, that THIS was the version of JURASSIC PARK released in theatres. For this reason I avoided using any musical ideas from the original film in favor of creating something new. Since this film would have been released in 1992, I listened to composers and their styles from the time. This included composers like Hans Zimmer (whose music was used in the trailers), James Horner (who would have composed the score had James Cameron won the bid for the film), and Jerry Goldsmith (a composer that Michael Crichton had a friendship with and who scored many of his films). Each of these composers had different styles and ideas but in the 90's there were certain sounds that blended well amongst them as well as intervolic tendencies that 'feel' like 90's music. With all this in mind, I set out to score the episodes with my own personal sound as well as recognizing the tendencies and attributes prevalent at the time.

The Score

In the end, this project had roughly two and half hours of completed music developed for it! Each iteration had varying amounts of musical needs, with the final episode needing the most! Although the Sixth Iteration had a run time of about 33 minutes, including alternates and adjustments, slightly over 44 minutes of complete music was written! All in all, I am so proud of the score produced for this experience. It has been a privilege to be able to add my voice to this project and scratch an itch of scoring a JURASSIC PARK story!

The Complete Recordings & The Final Promo Album

With the music produced, I've put together a free promo album of about an hour of the music for those would like to listen to the highlights from the production! You can download it here:

Thank you for joining us on this journey! It has been an amazing experience and I'm grateful to all involved who helped make it a possibility, who helped support us all through it, and to the amazing fans who've given us such great responses!

Enjoy Jurassic Time's presentation of Rick Carter's Jurassic Park!

Introduction: