John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is a 2020 documentary film directed by Matthew Killip and starring John Shepherd. Who Is John Shepherd? Between working at his day job as a film editor for the likes of artist Jeremy Deller, Killip had made a short film called Master of Reality about another American teenager outsider, Ronny Long, whose obsessions included wrestling and horror movies. By then, with the help of his grandmother Irene’s life savings, Shepherd had constructed a spacious two-story laboratory next to his grandparents’ house. Michigan Man Tried Contacting Aliens from Grandma's Living Room for 30 Years The self-taught electronics engineer was inspired by … The more I thought about what he did, the more it seemed like an elaborate 30-year art performance.”. His company offers website designing, building, and hosting services as well as R&D. “It was round about the time that a … “An artist of sound and light and electricity. Also Read: Brittany Kaiser – Facts about the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. That changed when he met his partner, John Litrenta, in 1993. “John is a wonderful subject but there is something mysterious and guarded about him that may stem from his troubled early life. Shepherd claims to have spotted a UFO once when he was young. [4], John Was Trying to Contact Aliens premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. In a moment of poignant self-reflection in the film, Shepherd compares his life’s journey to a trek along “a lonely mountain road”. That would be a pretty good description.”, John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is on Netflix, Available for everyone, funded by readers. And a maverick. J ohn Shepherd beamed music into space from his grandparents’ cottage in Northern Michigan for 26 years. John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is Netflix’s most gripping documentary that premieres on August 20. The lack of response from aliens led to Shepherd halting the broadcasts in 1998. He guides Killip through the jumbled space with a flashlight, pointing out his beloved machinery – satellite communication equipment, high-powered microwave tubes, a high-voltage transmitter accelerator. “Things were rough in the early years,” he tells Killip, “My grandma felt sorry for me and took me with her.” At 12, Shepherd realised he was gay, which, he says in his inimitably understated way, proved “rather difficult” in rural Michigan in the early 1960s. I tried to balance that narrative with his extraordinary obsession, which lies somewhere between the realms of science and outsider art. What Happened to Uncle Johnny from the “Elvis Duran Show”? Because of the lack of funding, his equipment was dismantled and Project S.T.R.A.T was moved to another location where it slowly wound down. “Maybe they had been watching The Outer Limits, too, and they were wondering what was going on. Netflix has released a 16-minute documentary called John Was Trying To Contact Aliens, telling the story of John Shepherd, a UFO hunter from Michigan.. Shepherd spent nearly 30 years trying to contact aliens by broadcasting music millions of miles into space, favouring “non-commercial music” such as jazz, reggae, Afropop, Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, Steve Reich and Tangerine Dream. John Shepherd dreamed of contacting aliens through music he beamed into space. In the 1970s, Shepherd’s obsession intermittently drew local reporters to his door. He grew up as a fan of science fiction shows like 'The Outer Zone' and 'Twilight Zone'. “I guess so,” he says, quietly. John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is a 2020 documentary film directed by Matthew Killip and starring John Shepherd. In 1972, from the living room of his grandparent’s house, he began chasing his dream by broadcasting a series of electronic tone pulses “towards the stars”. [1][2][3] The documentary tells the story of John Shepherd, who tried to contact aliens by broadcasting music into space for over 30 years with his state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment. John Shepherd Wiki: Wife, Age, Education, Net Worth by Saagar Posted on Mathew Killip’s John Was Trying To Contact Aliens premiered in Sundance 2019 and the show garnered rave reviews from the critics in the film festival. John Shepherd grew up in rural Michigan with his grandparents, having been abandoned at a young age. And, on the clip from the Rivers show, when she mentions his lack of success, he replies: “Like an artist can continue to paint even if he doesn’t sell his paintings, I can continue to build equipment and work on ideas.” Does he think, in retrospect, he was a conceptual artist as much as a scientist? Courtesy of Netflix/2020. Definitely a maverick. According to his LinkedIn, he earned his high school diploma from the American School in Illinois. The special is a biography of John Shepherd, a Michigan man who built a device that transmitted earth music to the stars with the hopes of communicating with alien life. Brittany Kaiser – Facts about the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower, Lynette Nusbacher Wiki – An Influential Transformation, Emma Turner Wiki: Facts about Andrew Schulz’s Fiancee, Elizabeth Kartchner Wiki: Facts about Collin Kartchner’s Wife, Sheli Muniz Wiki: Facts about the NBC 6 Morning News Anchor, Alaina Anderson Wiki: Facts about Derrick Rose’s Wife, Mary Beth Roe Wiki: Facts about the QVC Host, Bob Brockman Wiki: Facts about the Texas Billionaire Indicted for Tax Evasion. In 1989, he was even granted his 15 minutes of nationwide fame with an appearance on The Joan Rivers Show. “It certainly made me independent in a way and encouraged me to expand my horizons.”, [I was] an artist of sound and light and electricity. “Often, people passing by at night in their cars would see a bank of lights blinking in the living room and they’d pull over to stop and stare,” he says. John Shepherd was born on September 9, 1951 and is a native of Michigan. By Shepherd’s own admission, his search for extra-terrestrial life made him very lonely in his personal life. On YouTube, you can see him, squeezed between two other ufologists, an intense young man with long hair and a beard, explaining his mission to his somewhat sceptical host, who points out that, after 16 years, the ETs have still not returned his calls. The documentary tells the story of John Shepherd, who tried to contact aliens by broadcasting music into space for over 30 years with his state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment. It was my grandmother, though, who shared my interest in, how shall I put it, more exotic subjects. He began designing and building the device in 1972, when he was 21, in his grandparents’ old home. This John Shepherd wiki introduces this man who will probably go down in pop culture history. “I wanted to tell his story economically and sparely, while keeping some of the mystery intact,” says Killip. “These are just the remnants,” he says, “the leftover pieces of thought.”, “I miss it,” he tells me, “I really do, but I saved it all. Although John’s search for little green people didn’t work out, it made him famous. The lab had the means to monitor any possible responses from extra-terrestrial intelligence. Shepherd’s story made him the subject of documentaries, TV shows, news features, and other outlets. So began an extraordinary 30-year journey he called Project STRAT (Special Telemetry Research and Tracking). Shepherd is perhaps the most interesting subject of a documentary. The narrative touches briefly on his troubled early childhood – a father who left soon after he was born and an emotionally distant mother with whom he has had very little contact. John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is Netflix’s most gripping documentary that premieres on August 20. “While my body was in the local community,” he tells Killip, “my mind was in space and in other realms, travelling the cosmos.” Flickering home-movie footage from that time reveals a futuristic interior filled with screens, consoles and arrays of beeping lights: the Starship Enterprise transposed to small-town Michigan. He specialized in industrial electronics technology and learned technician skills. Although Shepherd is famous for his attempt at communicating with aliens, he does have a day job. I spend time contemplating,” he writes on his personal Facebook page. He is from Bellaire, but now resides in Kewadin since moving there in 2011. Inspired by that sighting and his love for the related sci-fi television shows, Shepherd used his electronic knowledge to design and build a contraption that could communicate with the extra-terrestrials. His broadcasting device proves he’s a skilled self-taught electronics engineer. Shepherd said he grew up on TV shows like The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and One Step Beyond. “It was round about the time that a show called The Outer Limits was on television,” he recalls. FACT CHECK: Is “Text RBG to 50409” a Scam? And a maverick. John Was Trying to Contact Aliens premiered in August 2020 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. I remember some people even thought we had built a Russian spy system.”. Cr. On it, he describes himself as a “music enthusiast, photographer, artist, electronics system and set builder.”. It would soon take over his life, and the lives of his grandparents, who found themselves living amid an expanding array of what he calls “beautiful and unusual instruments”, including dual-channel oscillators, cathode-ray tubes, giant screens to monitor incoming signals and a low frequency transmitter sending signals millions of miles into deep space. “There were certain similarities in terms of their extreme single-mindedness,” he says. In Killip’s tenderly observed portrait, Shepherd emerges as a sensitive soul, aware of his otherness and yet at one with it. I n the mid-1960s, when he was a boy living in rural Michigan, John Shepherd began thinking of ways to make contact with alien life forms. Waiting.”, In the film, he describes his long, strange creative endeavour as “a kind of dream state” that imbued his life with meaning. The group of vinyl records enthusiasts organizes events where others could gather to enjoy a night of listening to vinyl records. Shepherd is perhaps the most interesting subject of a documentary.
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