Carved from palisander

In an interview to mark the release of "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" on Blu-ray, Steven Spielberg explains a simple-yet-brilliant directorial move to Anthony Breznican of "Entertainment Weekly" -

"Because I knew Henry was 10 and Drew was six and Robert MacNaughton was 14 or 15, I think, I shot the whole film in continuity... So at the beginning of the movie, E.T. *could* have been a coyote out in the backyard. By the end of the picture on the last day of shooting, they were *actually* saying goodbye to E.T. And so there was an emotional curve that was taking place in everybody's collective subconscious, just based on the fact that we were telling the story one page at a time, one day at a time."