Contact (1997)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis · Cinematography by Don Burgess
PG150 min65 frames
DramaScience FictionMystery
Take a journey to the heart of the universe.
Stills, screencaps & shots from Contact
16 of 65 frames — the full set is searchable by lighting, lens, shot size, color and mood with a free account.
Contact — official trailer
What is Contact about?
A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse co-star. It features the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Mir space station, and the Space Coast surrounding Cape Canaveral.
Second paragraph from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where can you watch Contact?
US availability for Contact (1997). Data by JustWatch, listings on TMDB. Availability changes — check the provider for current listings.
Who stars in Contact?
Who made Contact?
What does the cinematography of Contact look like?
Sampled across 65 frames, the coverage of Contact leans on medium shots (49% of the sample) and wide compositions (20%). Cinematographer Don Burgess keeps 58% of it in soft, naturalistic light. Night and dusk account for 42% of the frames. Anamorphic glass shapes the frame. Focus stays shallow in 62% of the frames, isolating subjects from their surroundings. The production design places the film in the 1990s.
What is the color palette of Contact?
The dominant colors across the sampled frames of Contact (1997) are #2f2c2e, #0e0d0f, #f5f5f5, #35354c, #d5d3cf, #525251 — measured from the per-frame color data FrameThrower extracts for every film.
#2f2c2e#0e0d0f#f5f5f5#35354c#d5d3cf#525251
See the full Contact colour palette — every hex with its share, plus warmth, saturation and luminance.
Contact ranks in
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 65 frames of Contact (1997), and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.
Techniques in this film
More films by Robert Zemeckis
More Drama films
Cast, trailer and streaming data from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.