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That was the "working title" of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a project Steven Spielberg was developing after The Sugarland Express, but delayed in order for him to go "shark-hunting." Jaws' subsequent success allowed him to have final say on CE3K, even while production got bogged down and the budget started heading skyward.
"Watch the Skies" might have been a more appropriate title, as few movies, short of Westerns, have had so much sky fill the frame, filled with stars, airplane lights and the occasional unidentified "source" to admire and wonder at. One could almost hear David Lynch's portrayal of John Ford barking at the young Spielberg "When the horizon's at the bottom, it's interesting!" when he's lining up the shots. Very few films allowed that much sky, far less have it filled with stars.
It's only natural in Spielberg's early "what-the-hell-is-going-on?" portions of the film that he have a scene at an air traffic control tower, where there are people whose job it is to literally "watch the skies" and juggle the flight patterns of dozens of aircraft criss-crossing each others' flight-paths. Even in so controlled an environment--guys in suits sitting around watching screens--he manages to ramp up the tension with overlapping dialogue (a lot of it is technical jargon and mere speculation, anyway) and a minimal amount of camera movement. The tight quarters even allows him a neat trick--a movement of depth along the monitoring men that maintains focus on the individuals talking by merely including them in the frame. It's subtle and commands the viewers' attention with a minimum of ostentatious "director's moves."
Spielberg was always good. But, he got better--and subtler--the more movies he made.
The Set-Up: It's "early days" in the movie. An elite team of scientific investigators, lead by Claude Lacombe (director François Truffaut) is investigating strange anomalies—the first we see is his group arriving in the Sonoran Desert, where they discover what appears to be Flight 19, which went missing, without any trace, over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945. A local villager states that "the sun came out last night and sang to me."
The Set-Up: It's "early days" in the movie. An elite team of scientific investigators, lead by Claude Lacombe (director François Truffaut) is investigating strange anomalies—the first we see is his group arriving in the Sonoran Desert, where they discover what appears to be Flight 19, which went missing, without any trace, over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945. A local villager states that "the sun came out last night and sang to me."
Cut to Air Traffic Control at Indianapolis Center...
Action!
Note: radio transmissions in this scene are in italics.
HARRY: Air East 31, I have...
HARRY: ...a primary target now
in...
HARRY: ...your 10:00 position......five miles, over.
AIR EAST PILOT: Affirmative, 31.
HARRY: The traffic is proceeding....
HARRY:
No altitude readout.
AIR EAST PILOT: Roger, Center. It doesn't appear
he'll be a problem.
He's going to descend
about 1500 feet below me.
HARRY: Traffic about 2-0 miles heading your direction.
HARRY: An Air East Jet descending to make 3-1-0. Over.
CONTROLLER #2: Do you have test operations
in restricted area 2508?
AIR EAST PILOT: ...in the traffic pattern.
Pictures by Vilmos Zsigmond and Steven Spielberg
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4kHD on Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Here's something interesting: today's scene
followed by a deleted scene of the flight's being met by Lacombe's team after they land.
* The source for this was from the Howard Hawks-produced version of The Thing (From Another World) from 1951. These are the final words of that film: "And now before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning: Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies."
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