Firelight

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 Duel (1971), although "L.A. 2017", his long-form episode of The Name of the Game, precedes it. Two reels of Firelight are now lost. Spielberg returned to its subject matter for his third major film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).