During the thirteen-month production, all the major special effects studios were working on other films. Those that remained were too small to work on the approximately 630 individual effects shots needed for Ghostbusters. At the same time, special effects cinematographer Richard Edlund planned to leave Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and start his own business. Reitman convinced Columbia to collaborate with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which also needed an effects studio, to advance Edlund $5 million to establish his own company, Boss Film Studios.[8][9] According to Edlund, lawyers used much of the setup time finalizing the contract, leaving only ten months remaining to build the effects studio, shoot the scenes, and composite the images.[8] The Boss Film Studios' team was split to complete work on Ghostbusters and MGM's science-fiction film 2010: The Year We Make Contact.[1] The $5 million effects came in at $700,000 over budget.[16] The strict filming schedule meant most of the effects shots were captured in one take.[41] Gross oversaw both the creation of Boss Film Studios, and the hiring of many conceptual designers including comic book artists Tanino Liberatore (whose work went unused) and Bernie Wrightson (who helped conceive several ghost designs), and storyboarder Thom Enriquez, whose designs contributed to the "Onion Head ghost".[20]
Creature effects
Steve Johnson created the final design for the "Onion Head ghost", later named "Slimer".Edlund's previous work on the supernatural horror film Poltergeist (1982) served as a reference for the ghost designs in Ghostbusters. Gross said it was difficult to balance making the ghosts a genuine threat while fitting the film's more comedic tone.[47][48] Special effects artist Steve Johnson sculpted the gluttonous, slimy, green ghost then known as the "Onion Head ghost" on set due to the puppet's unpleasant smell.[13][49] The creature was given the name "Slimer" in the 1986 animated television series The Real Ghostbusters.[1] The Slimer design took six months and cost approximately $300,000. After struggling to complete a design due to executive interference, Johnson took at least three grams of cocaine and completed the final design in one night, based in part on Aykroyd's and Ramis's wish for the creature to homage Belushi.[e] The full-size foam rubber puppet was worn by Mark Wilson and filmed against a black background. Puppeteers manipulated the model's movements with cables.[1][50][51]
Aykroyd tasked his friend, referred to as the Viking, with designing the Marshmallow Man, asking for a combination of the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy in a sailor hat.[10] The Marshmallow Man outfit was built and portrayed by actor and special effects artist Bill Bryan, who modeled his walk on Godzilla. There were eighteen foam suits, each costing between $25,000 and $30,000; seventeen of them, worn by stuntman Tommy Cesar, were burned as part of filming.[16][52] Bryan used a separate air supply due to the foam's toxicity. There were three different heads for the suit, built from foam and fiberglass, with different expressions and movements controlled by cable mechanisms. The costume was filmed against scale models to finish the effect. The effects team was able to find only one model of a police car at the correct scale and bought several, modifying them to represent different vehicles. The water from a burst hydrant hit by a remote-controlled car was actually sand as the water did not scale down.[16][53][54] The "marshmallow" raining down on the crowd after it is destroyed was shaving cream. After seeing the intended 150 pounds (68 kg) of shaving cream to be used, Atherton insisted on testing it. The weight knocked a stuntman down, and they ended up using only 75 pounds (34 kg). The cream acted as a skin irritant after hours of filming, giving some of the cast rashes.[10]
Johnson also sculpted the Zombie Cab Driver puppet.[55] It was the only puppet shot on location in New York City. Johnson based it on a reanimated corpse puppet he had made for An American Werewolf in London (1981).[55] Johnson and Wilson collaborated on the Library Ghost, creating a puppet operated by up to 20 cables running through the torso that controlled aspects such as moving the head, arms, and pulling rubber skin away from the torso to transform it from a humanoid into a monstrous ghoul.[56] The original Library Ghost puppet was considered too scary for younger audiences and was repurposed for use in Fright Night (1985).[5] The library catalog scene was accomplished live in three takes, with the crew blowing air through copper pipes to force the cards into the air. These had to be collected and reassembled for each take. Reitman used a multi-camera setup to focus on the librarian and the cards flying around her and a wider overall shot.[9][16] The floating books were hung on strings.[16]
Randy Cook was responsible for creating the quarter-scale stop-motion puppets of Gozer's minions Zuul and Vinz, the Terror Dogs, when in motion. The model was heavy and unwieldy, and it took nearly thirty hours to film it moving across a 30-foot (9.1 m) stage for the scene where it pursues Louis Tully across a street.[56] For the scene where Dana is pinned to her chair by demonic hands before a doorway beaming with light, Reitman said he was influenced by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). A rubber door was used to allow distortion as if something was trying to come through it, while grips concealed in a trapdoor beneath the chair, burst through it while wearing demonic dog-leg gloves.[16] Made before the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI), any non-puppet ghosts had to be animated. It took up to three weeks to create one second of footage.[16] For Gozer, Slavitza Jovan wore red contact lenses that caused her a great deal of pain, and she wore a harness to move around the set.[7]
Technology and equipment
Hardware consultant Stephen Dane was responsible for designing most of the Ghostbusters' iconic equipment, including the "proton packs" used to wrangle ghosts, ghost traps, and their vehicle, the Ectomobile. The equipment had to be designed and built in the six weeks before filming began in September 1983.[33][57] Inspired by a military issue flamethrower, the "proton packs" consisted of a handheld proton stream firing "neutrino wand" connected by a hose to a backpack said to contain a nuclear accelerator.[12][58] Dane said he "went home and got foam pieces and just threw a bunch of stuff together to get the look. It was highly machined, but it had to look off-the-shelf and military surplus".[59]
Following Reitman's tweaks to the design, on-screen models of the "proton packs" were made from a fiberglass shell with an aluminum backplate bolted to a United States Army backpack frame.[58] Each pack weighed approximately 30 pounds (14 kg) with the batteries for lighting installed, and strained the actors' backs during the long shoots.[16][59] Two lighter versions were made; a hollow one with surface details for wide shots, and a foam rubber version for action scenes.[16][58] The fiberglass props were created by special effects supervisor Chuck Gaspar, based on Dane's design. Gaspar used rubber molds to create identical fiberglass shells.[59] The "neutrino wand" had a flashbulb at the tip, giving animators an origin point for the proton streams.[16] Fake walls laced with pyrotechnics were used to practically create the damage of the proton streams.[34] The "Psychokinetic Energy meter" ("PKE meter") prop was built using an Iona SP-1 handheld shoe polisher as a base, to which lights and electronics were affixed.[60] The PKE meter prop was designed and built by John Zabrucky of Modern Props in partnership with an outside fabricator.[61] The technology was designed to not be overly fancy or sleek, emphasizing the characters' scientific backgrounds combined with the homemade nature of their equipment.[34]
The Ectomobile was in the first draft of Aykroyd's script, and he and John Daveikis developed some early concepts for the car. Dane developed fully detailed drawings for the interior and exterior and supervised the transformation of the 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance conversion into the Ectomobile.[62] According to Aykroyd, the actual vehicle was "an ambulance that we converted to a hearse and then converted to an ambulance".[63] Early concepts featured a black car with purple and white strobe lights giving it a supernatural glow, but this idea was scrapped after cinematographer László Kovács noted that dark paint would not film well at night. The concept also had fantastic features such as the ability to dematerialize and travel inter-dimensionally. Two vehicles were purchased, one for the pre-modification scenes.[62] Dane designed its high-tech roof array with objects including a directional antenna, an air-conditioning unit, storage boxes and a radome.[64] Because of its size, the roof rack was shipped to Manhattan on an airplane, while the car was transported to the East Coast by train.[33] Sound designer Richard Beggs created the siren from a recording of a leopard snarl, cut and played backward.[64]
Logo and sets
The alternative "correct" design of the "no ghosts" logo features a diagonal bar that runs top-left to bottom-right.[65]In the script, Aykroyd described the Ghostbusters clothing and vehicle as bearing a no symbol with a ghost trapped in it, crediting the Viking with the original concept.[65][66] The final design fell to Gross, who had volunteered to serve as art director. As the logo would be required for props and sets, it needed to be finalized quickly, and Gross worked with Boss Film artist and creature design consultant Brent Boates who drew the final concept, and R/GA animated the logo for the film's opening. According to Gross, two versions of the logo exist, with one having "ghostbusters" written across the diagonal part of the sign. Gross did not like how it looked and flipped the diagonal bar to read top left to bottom right instead, but they later removed the wording. According to Gross, this is the correct version of the sign that was used throughout Europe. The bottom left to top right version was used in the United States as that was the design of the No symbol there.[65]
Medjuck also hired John DeCuir as production designer.[15] The script did not specify where Gozer would appear, and DeCuir painted the top of Dana's building with large, crystal doors that opened as written in the script.[15] The fictional rooftop of 55 Central Park West was constructed at Stage 12 on the Burbank Studios lot. It was one of the largest constructed sets in film history and was surrounded by a 360-degree cyclorama painting. The lighting used throughout the painting consumed so much power that the rest of the studio had to be shut down, and an additional four generators added, when it was in use.[9][34][67] Small models such as planes were hung on string to animate the backdrop.[9] The set was built three stories off the ground to allow for filming from low angles.[16]
The first three floors and street-front of Dana's building were recreated as sets for filming, including the climactic earthquake scene where hydraulics were used to raise broken parts of the street.[7][68] Broken pieces of pavement and the road were positioned outside the real location to create a seamless transition between the two shots.[34] DeCuir said: "They had one night to dress the street. When people went home early in the evening everything was normal, and when the little old ladies came out to walk their dogs in the morning, the whole street had erupted. Apparently, people complained to the New York Police Department and their switchboard lit up."[69] For the scene where Dana's apartment explodes outwards, Weaver stood on set as the stunt happened.[16] Similarly, the scene of Weaver rotating in the air was performed on set using a body-cast and mechanical arm concealed in the curtains, a trick Reitman learned working with magician Doug Henning.[7]
