I'm ready for my close up now 
Just how much has Hollywoods vision shaped how we see alien life today
Forget Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind has had a much more profound and pervasive influence on our view of UFOs and aliens from outer space. In 1977, Steven Spielberg’s alien opus stole the collective breath from cinema audiences across America. Using astonishing special effects, Spielberg explored his life-long interest in UFOs and alien contact for the first time on the big screen. To make his film as accurate as possible, the director employed UFO expert Dr J. Allen Hynek as a technical adviser so that he could integrate real UFO cases into his story. These elements included balls of light; the discovery of Flight 19; beams of light that can burn; sightings by airline pilots that go unreported for fear of ridicule; abductions; unexplained power cuts; and the psychological trauma and isolation felt by UFO witnesses. Spielberg took the title of the film from Hynek’s 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, which lists the close encounters classification system for UFO witness reports. As the publicity for the film had to explain, this puts UFO reports into six main categories, firstly those involving nocturnal lights, daylight discs, tracking by radar. There are close encounters of the first kind that involve a sighting of a UFO close to the witness. An encounter of the second kind involves the UFO interacting with the environment and/or the witness (e.g. leaving ground traces). Finally, the third type involves seeing a UFO along with aliens. Close Encounters plays knowingly with governmental/scientific/military cover-ups.
Full article in issue 14