Netflix's Encounters Director Says Series Had a "Very High BS Meter"

Encounters helmer Yon Motskin says the filmmakers behind the show went to great lengths while interviewing people to be on the docuseries.

By Adam Barnhardt

Most of the subjects featured in Encounters, Netflix's breakout UFO docuseries hit, had trouble coming forward with their stories for a variety of reasons. Some people weren't sure they wanted to relive trauma for the series while others were worried about what appearing on such a series could do to their reputation. Another reason the filmmakers behind the series had trouble getting people to appear was that they swore to have a high "BS meter" when determining whether or not someone was telling the truth about their UFO encounter.

"I wasn't not a believer going in and maybe that helped for this as a documentary. I went in as a filmmaker saying, 'I want to make the most interesting story and I want to believe that they believe,'" Encounters director Yon Motskin tells ComicBook.com "We had a really long research process and through that process, our most important filters in choosing stories and choosing people to appear in the series was credibility."

That's when Motskin added he and the other filmmakers on the team made sure to examine a person's humanity and character when detemrining which stories to research for the documentary.

"We had a very, very high BS meter, so to speak. I shouldn't call it that. We had a very, very high threshold for credibility, and it was important to me that anyone that told us their story, we wanted to believe. And I would say every single person except for one that we interviewed, I believed that they believed, and that's all that's important to me," the filmmaker adds. "We're not out there saying, what happened really happened or what happened didn't happen. We're not out to prove or debunk. We're just presenting stories of people that believe and experience this otherworldly thing."

In the same chat, Motskin said some people lost their jobs and marriages for pursuing outlets to tell their encounters with the third kind.

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"Some people lost jobs, some people lost money. Some people watched the dissolution of their marriages or friendships, but almost everybody in the four-part series had no motivation to come forward, and it was really difficult," Motskin said. "It took months and months and months of building trust and making them feel comfortable that we are not out to exploit them, but that we're going to approach this with respect and delicacy and honesty and that we are transparent in our intentions and I'm hopefully we've done right by them."

The first four episodes of Encounters are now streaming on Netflix. For more UFO and cosmic tales, check out our ComicBook Invasion hub here.

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