Future General Corporation Future General Corporation or FGC for short , was a research / , founded in by Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich and located on the Maxella Avenue in Marina del Rey , California . Goal of the company was to further develop and exploit filming techniques , Trumbull up to then had invented or developed , most notably , an early filming technique . A deal was brokered between Trumbull and then president of Paramount Pictures , , and its then holding company Gulf + Western to provide full funding , in the process becoming sole shareholders and holding company with Trumbull and Yuricich acting as CEOs . It was FGC that was offered the job of providing the VFX for around the turn of October / November 1977 , but was turned down by Trumbull as he and his company were then deeply committed to the post - production of . Upon completion of that project Paramount withheld funding for a new project , Trumbull had lined up , forcing him to let go of a large part of his team ( see : Dave Stewart for a contemporary line - up of personnel employed at the time ) , many of them moving on to employment at companies like Robert Abel & Associates ( RA & A , ironically to work on " The Motion Picture " ) and Apogee , Inc . , whereas others ( re - ) joined the restarted Industrial Light & Magic ( ILM ) , that was gearing up to start production on the second installment of the " Star Wars " franchise . ( " Cinefex " , Issue 1 , p . 4 ) A year later however , in early , FGC was again approached to do the effects , as the production ran into troubles after RA & A was pulled from the project on 22 February 1979 . By that time relations between Trumbull and the Paramount management had deteriorated due to the fact that , " " Paramount had no vision at all and [ was ] going through a big management change . The guy that I did the deal with was ousted , and Michael Eisner and Barry Diller came in and they couldn ' t see what I was trying to do and wanted to get rid of it . I don ' t know , there ' s just a whole train of disillusionment that accompanies my history in movies . " " Closure of the company was only prevented on that occasion in 1976 due the fact that Trumbull and Yuricich had just secured the " Close Encounters " VFX commission . As a result , the relationship between the two founders and Paramount became a very strained one , which translated itself in that Trumbull failed to communicate , when originally approached for " The Motion Picture " , that the work on " Close Encounters " was almost completed as it already premiered on 16 November 1977 . As a matter of fact , Paramount , stung by , and reacting to Trumbull ' s rejection , was in turn already in the process of shutting down FGC as Trumbull – already serving from Christmas 1978 onward as an unpaid consultant , but only as a courtesy to his old friend Robert Wise , the director of the feature , with whom he had worked on Wise ' s science fiction film " " ( " " , pp . 202 - 205 ) – recalled , " " I was under contract at Paramount , who began closing down Future General in order to provide my cameras to Bob Abel ' s company . At the same time , Bob was already a year into the production , trying to implement a radically new computerized and computer graphics driven process . " " Getting back the equipment , they initially were forced to surrender to RA & A , both Trumbull and Yuricich used the problems the studio were in as leverage to secure a proviso that they would be released from their contractual obligations if they accepted . For the work , Trumbull , now paid , was able to partly reassemble the team he had on " Close Encounters " . As if to underscore the disdain Paramount felt for its own subsidiary , neither FGC nor its EEG subsidiary , received an official company credit for " The Motion Picture " , though many , but not all , employees received an individual one . Paramount subsidiary Magicam Inc . however did , as did Apogee and , most ironically , RA & A . The two founders left FGC upon completion of the project . The relationship between FGC and its holding company , had soured considerably by then as was evidenced by the fact that the company was passed over in 1981 for the visual effects of in favor of Industrial Light & Magic . According to Trumbull , FGC actually underbid ILM by $ 1 , 5 million dollar , but the studio claimed that they wanted to cement the relationship with ILM that had begun with . ( " Cinefantastique " , Vol 12 # 5 / 6 , p . 65 ) After that all activities within the company ground to a halt , though the company , as of 2010 essentially a shell company , is still listed as one of the subsidiaries of current holding company Viacom . The only other credits the company has to its name are the 1978 movie " Night of Dreams " , and the 1980 " Close Encounters of the Third Kind - The Special Edition " , the team of FGC embarked upon directly after " The Motion Picture " . Entertainment Effects Group . To cover legal liability for the studio model s , which included handling of the models during filming of " The Motion Picture " and additional detail construction , Trumbull also secured permission from Paramount to establish a subsidiary company the same month at the same location , Entertainment Effects Group ( EEG ) . ( " " , p . 181 ) Some employees from RA & A ' s Astra Image Corporation , which EEG also replaced as art department , moved over to the new company , after the former was pulled from the project , followed by a few model makers from Magicam , Inc . , who were made responsible for applying additional paint jobs and detail construction work on the models , as well as handling the models during filming . EEG subcontracted Greg Jein , becoming Gregory Jein , Inc . later that month , in July 1979 for the build of the interior section models of " V ' ger " . ( " Cinefex " , issue 2 , pp . 42 - 45 ) EEG fared somewhat better upon completion of " The Motion Picture " , as Trumbull retained ownership of that company , and that company provided the studio models for " Blade Runner " ( 1982 ) , Trumbull ' s own " Brainstorm " ( 1983 ) , " Ghostbusters " ( 1984 ) , " 2010 " ( 1984 ) , and " Fright Night " ( 1985 ) . Trumbull sold off his company in 1984 to Richard Edlund for it to become Boss Film Studios in 1985 . ( " " , p . 181 ) Staff . People employed at the time of the production of " The Motion Picture " :