Firelight is a 1964 science fiction adventure film written and directed by Steven Spielberg at the age of 17. Made on a budget of $500, the film was, in a manner of speaking, Spielberg's first commercial success, as it was shown at a local cinema and generated a profit of $1. "I counted the receipts that night", Spielberg has recalled, "And we charged a dollar a ticket. Five hundred people came to the movie and I think somebody probably paid two dollars, because we made one dollar profit that night, and that was it." Although Firelight is Spielberg's first film made, it is not seen as his... directorial debut. The film widely seen as his feature-length directorial debut is The Sugarland Express . Two reels of Firelight are now lost. Spielberg returned to its subject matter for his third major film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Firelight follows a group of scientists – particularly Tony Karcher and UFO believer Howard Richards - as they investigate a series of colored lights in the sky and the subsequent disappearance of people, animals and objects from the fictional American town of Freeport, Arizona.
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