Jacinta Taylor

Contact Plot
Ellie Arrowy was influenced as a child, by her late father, to explore. This includes other planets. At the start of the film she works on the SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. There she listens for radio waves in hope of finding one from another intelligent life. Government scientist, David Drumlin, takes away the funding for the program to keep running. And so Ellie starts her own SETI program with the funding of billionaire, S. R. Hadden, in New Mexico, at the Very Large Array. After a couple of years and nothing is to be found, Drumlin tries to close that program too. Then Ellie finds a signal repeating prime numbers from the star Vega. The government tries to take control over the program, but then the team at VLA are sent back a video of Adolf Hitlers address to the Berlin Olympics from Vega, originating from Earth. They also find out the signal isnt just numbers, its actually a bunch of what look like instructions. Hadden discovers that the blue prints are in 3D format, and shows a machine built for one human to occupy. Governments all over the world want a person from their country to be the one to represent the human race. So a comity is formed to choose who. During an interview it is called to attention that Ellie doesnt believe in any sort of God, where Drumlin supposedly does. This means that Drumlin gets chosen to go on the mission. Almost ready to go on the machine, Drumlin, and most of the machine, are blow up by a religious fanatic not wanting the project to gather evidence against his religion. Conveniently, Japan had created the exact same machine in Hokkaido , which Ellie gets to go on. In the pod, which was outfitted with a chair not from the original design, Ellie, with a number of recording devices, goes through a number of wormholes leading her to Vega. There she finds herself on a beach with her dead father walking towards her. She soon realizes that its actually an alien who has downloaded her memories so it can use whatever form shes most comfortable with to speak with her. She tries to ask questions, but the alien deflects them and tells her its only humanities first step. She then passes out and wakes up in the pod, with people telling her the machine malfunctioned. She goes to trial to say that she talked with the alien and was gone for about 18 hours, but was told, with no evidence to prove otherwise, that shes either hallucinated or made it up with the help of newly dead Hadden. What the government didnt tell her was that even though all the recording devices only recorded static, they recorded static for about 18 hours. Ellie then continues her SETI program, which at that point had ongoing funding, at VLA.