Where to watch Contact (1997)

Trivia & production notes

• Carl Sagan conceived Contact in 1979 and co-wrote a treatment with Ann Druyan by November 1980, envisioning a story that would authentically depict what first contact with alien life might resemble.
• Producer Peter Guber suggested that the protagonist have an estranged teenage son to explore her inability to connect with her own child despite her obsession with contacting extraterrestrials, but Sagan and Druyan rejected this idea.
• Robert Zemeckis initially refused to direct Contact because he disliked the script's ending featuring angelic aliens performing a light show, but later accepted the role after George Miller was fired from the project.
• Matthew McConaughey left the lead role in The Jackal to play Palmer Joss in Contact after Zemeckis cast him in the role.
• Filming at the Very Large Array in New Mexico required negotiating with the National Science Foundation to control the radio telescope dishes' movements for dramatic camera angles.
• Over 25 CNN news reporters appeared in Contact, with their actual programs Larry King Live and Crossfire incorporated into the film, and Ann Druyan made a cameo appearance debating on Crossfire.
• Jodie Foster found shooting with blue screen technology challenging, describing being rotated on a Lazy Susan against all-blue walls while a computerized camera arm moved around her.
• The opening three-minute sequence showing a camera pull from Earth through the solar system and beyond was inspired by the 1977 documentary Powers of Ten and was the longest continuous computer-generated sequence in a live-action film at the time.
• Digital effects were used to alter news footage of Bill Clinton to make him appear to be discussing alien contact, coinciding with a real speech Clinton gave about a Martian meteorite that ended up being used in the film.
• Eight visual effects companies collaborated on Contact, with Weta Digital specifically designing the wormhole sequence and Pixar's RenderMan software used for CGI rendering.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Contact (1997 American film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.