Don Shay

With complete storyboards as an appendix, this chronologically tells the making-of story from deal making with Michael Crichton before the book was out to post-production. Among the most interesting things to me was how this movie was pivotal in the emergence of CG. That is, while over investment and resources were going into animatronics, puppetry, and costumes a skunkworks of CG put some output in front of Spielberg. He was so impressed with the results he tilted the direction heavily into show more CG during production.

A lot of the development story includes why scenes were filmed in what order, what was deleted from the script or finished film, and the physical effort put in by actors such as during the car falling through the branches and clumbing the wire fence. show less