Raiders of The Lost Media - Firelight (The Lost Steven Spielberg Film)

Disclaimer: I could be wrong on some details. So take this post with a grain of salt.






Hey everyone and welcome to the first Raiders of The Lost Media of 2018. And this time I have returned to lost movies. But not just any lost movie but a lost Steven Spielberg film. So let's get started.

Part One - What is Firelight?

Firelight is a 1964 science-fiction film directed to Steven Spielberg when he was just 17 years old. This film was released by Spielberg independently. While it is lost most of the ideas Spielberg came up with in this movie would later be used for his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Part Two - The Plot


The story follows a group of scientist particularly Tony Karcher and UFO believer Howard Richards as they investigate strange occurrences. Such as a series of colored lights in the sky and the weird disappearances of people, animals, and objects from their town of Freeport, Arizona.



Part Three - Audience Screening


The film was made with a budget of just $500, and was only publicly screened at his local Arizona theater (once known as the Phoenix Little Theater) on March 24, 1964 to an audience of 500. The film sold 500 tickets at 1 dollar a price. Firelight would have broke even if it weren't for one audience member paying double, bringing the total profit to a single dollar.



Part Four - Lost Reels


While job hunting in Los Angeles, Spielberg brought two of his master reels of the film to a producer in order to showcase his filmmaking abilities. However just one week later the production company went bankrupt and shut down. Spielberg's reels were never returned. To this day the reels have never been found and the film only remains viewable in uncompleted states.



Part Five - Videos


Some of the surviving footage has been made available online with one YouTuber putting together some of the film's remaining footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrElxcfDlFw


Also during his 1999 interview with Inside The Actors Studio, Steven Spielberg briefly talked about the movie. http://www.dailymotion.com/e3d0719d-52bf-4ae8-bce5-fc00b83491fb




So that's going to do it for this edition of Raiders of The Lost Media. I'll do another one of these in March what with Avengers: Infinity War coming out this year. So look out for that.



State of The Project (Dec 18th - Jan 15th)


Dec 18th - What You Probably Didn't Know About A Christmas Story


Dec 21st - Bad Santa Review


Dec 25th - Underrated Films - Arthur Christmas


Dec 28th - Thank You and Have a Happy New Year


Jan 1st - There's Going To Be Some Changes & New Segments


Jan 4th - Raiders of The Lost Media - Firelight (The Lost Steven Spielberg Film)


Jan 15th - Is It True? - Calvin and Hobbes Started Fight Club



NOTE: IF ANYTHING CHANGES I WILL TELL YOU.