What was close encounters of the third kind about

Cary Guffey, who plays little Barry Guiler, had never acted before, so Spielberg set up ways to coax a performance out of the 3-year-old. To get a shot of Guffey reacting to the aliens first approaching the Guiler house, Spielberg slowly unwrapped a present for the young actor just off camera, making him smile. To get the boy to react to the aliens offscreen, Spielberg had Guffey walk up to his mark where—unbeknownst to the little actor—two crewmembers were dressed as a gorilla and a clown standing behind cardboard blinds.

When Guffey entered the kitchen, Spielberg dropped the first blind revealing the clown to scare him, and then dropped the other blind to reveal the gorilla, which scared him even more. Spielberg originally toyed with the idea of using computer generated images to create the aliens and their ships, even going so far as to have animator Colin Cantwell create a CGI test of three UFOs floating over a stadium.

The single-shot test, which took three weeks to complete and was one of the first computer generated images ever created for a film, proved to be unfeasible for the whole movie—so the idea was dropped.

Spielberg wanted the aliens to be non-human beings that glided instead of walked, and he had a weird idea to pull it off: An orangutan dressed in a specially-made suit. For a screen test, the production team outfitted an orangutan in grey spandex and strapped it into roller skates.

This movie is as good as it was the year it came out. The story is still original and the acting is as good as any today. Sure the special effects are not as good as today, but they are fine. You can see it again or for the first time and have a delightful, suspenseful time. So curl up with your blankets and popcorn, this is a fun uplifiting movie for all! FAQ What is 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' about? Is 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' based on a book? What does the title mean?

Details Edit. Release date December 14, United States. United States United Kingdom. Official Facebook. English French Spanish Hindi. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 2 hours 18 minutes. Related news. Nov 11 Rollingstone. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content. Top Gap. See more gaps Learn more about contributing. Edit page. Hollywood Icons, Then and Now. See the gallery. Watch the video. Until the very end, the creatures themselves are kept off-screen and their presence is only represented sporadically via mysterious lights and fleeting glimpses of their spacecraft.

In fact, the film is more of a drama with conspiracy thriller overtones that looks at how those of us on Earth might react to the possibility that there really is something out there by following two parallel narratives that eventually come together in the final act. In one, a coalition of scientists led by Claude Lacombe revered French filmmaker Francois Truffaut dart around the world, investigating odd phenomena such as the appearance in the Sonora desert of a squadron of planes missing since and working on a way of communicating with potential visitors based upon musical intonations.

While Lacombe and the other scientists prepare for their arrival, the U. The first is Roy Neary Richard Dreyfuss , an ordinary family man and electrical lineman who is sent out to investigate massive power outages in the area and who has a very close encounter along the way.

It gets to the point where his less-than-sympathetic wife Teri Garr grabs the kids and runs, while her neighbors cluck at the sight of his apparent lunacy. The other is Jillian Guiler Melinda Dillon , a single mother whose 3-year-old son Barry Cary Guffey has a couple of encounters with the aliens that culminate with his abduction into the skies.

Even though it was only his third feature film, Spielberg directs the material with the assurance of a veteran director at the peak of his powers. The film moves like a shot yet it never feels overly rushed for a moment. It covers a wide variety of tones and emotions—ranging from silly humor and wounding drama to genuine wonder and outright terror—without ever ringing a false note.

The film is also loaded with any number of wonderful individual moments that are a pleasure to see once again on the big screen. The discovery of the aforementioned planes and a similarly long-vanished cargo ship in the Gobi Desert.