"I kept it all in perspective," he sums up, "by always remembering that this is a story about people, humanity, and human issues. And I always told the story through their perspective."

Robert Zemeckis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Contact is a very large-scale movie; it's about an idea that is incredibly huge, but it's all held together by a story that's as simple as you can get. It's a story about two people, and it's a story about two people which is simple -- because their ideology keeps them apart and they're actually two people who love each other and that becomes the chemistry that allows this idea that is as big as the unviverse to explode on the screen.

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With scenes taking place in locales as disparate as Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Hokkaido, and outer space, Contact's locations span the globe and beyond. Production design drawings and computer renderings depict ideas for sets and locations (this page) as well as many of the colorful characters who emerge at the New Mexico VLA (Very Large Array) site during the film (next page). Click on any image to see a full-size version of the sketches below.

sketch

Launched in 1972 and 1973, Pioneers 10 and 11 both carry aboard them the six-by-nine inch gold plaque shown above. Pioneer 11 is no longer transmitting, but Pioneer 10 -- our first spacecraft to leave the solar system, now 6.6 billion miles away -- performed a successful maneuver and transmission as recently as January.

If some day the derelict Pioneer 10, its transmitter long since drained of energy, is picked up by an alien civilization, the plaque on its side represents both who we are and where we are in the galaxy.

This message, sent on November 16, 1974 from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, consisted of 1,679 bits of information, which is divisible by two prime numbers -- 73 and 23 -- which suggest laying out the message in those dimensions, revealing this image.

The picture shows our chemical makeup, our population, our height, our planetary system, and the telescope transmitting the message.

The message was aimed at the M13 globular cluster; it will reach its destination in about 25,000 years.

Humans have actually been sending messages to the stars since the discovery of radio almost 100 years ago and the first television broadcasts earlier this century. This means that among the first interstellar notices of our existence were the original episodes of I Love Lucy, first broadcast around 40 years ago. By now Lucy and Desi have travelled 40 light years into our surrounding neighborhood, an area inhabited by roughly 100 stars. If anyone out there is paying attention, they could also pick up: news of the Viet Nam War and the first man on the Moon; Watergate and Soul Train; Dynasty, the Iran/Contra hearings, and Cheers; America's Funniest Home Videos and The Simpsons; and, of course, Seinfeld. Certainly almost none of this has been broadcast commercial-free; as Carl Sagan asked in Cosmos, "what must they think of us?"
For more on Luci, Desi, and the search for extraterrestrial signals, read our interview with Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.

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