The original Ghostbusters film is now 36 years old and by today's standards, its visual effects aren't brilliant, but Ghostbusters comes from a time before CGI and digital effects, it comes from a time of camera tricks, optical illusions and physical effects that relied more on ingenuity than computer engineers.
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This classic film was a comedy written by Dan Aykroyd and although funny, it received more praise for its special effects than for its humor. In this breakdown we're going to look at how some of its more memorable scenes were made.
The Ghosts
The ghosts were mainly puppets, some of which like the ghostly librarian we done by making a body mould of the actress playing the librarian to make an animatronic double which was then rigged with cables to allow the face to move and the mouth to open and the jaw to unhinge all this was controlled by just one person. ghosts or spectres that weren't puppets had to be animated in frame by frame so 1 second of footage took approximately three weeks to complete.
Slimer
Possibly everyone's favorite ghost, Slimer was actually a puppet made from 1 inch foam latex that was worn by puppeteer Mark Wilson. the puppeteer was dressed in black and was filmed with a black backdrop so they would disappear when later combined with location photography. Slimer's facial expressions were controlled with cables operated by off screen puppeteers meaning that Slimer had to stay in a fixed position when being recorded. The team overcame by setting the camera up on a dolly and moving it towards Slimer, making it look as if Slimer moved towards the camera.
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
Supposedly over 110ft tall the marshmallow man was just a man in a suit, a very expensive suit, costing around $30,000. it was made from a foam the was possibly toxic (gotta love the 80's) so the puppeteer had to be supplied with air. finding toy cars the right scale was difficult so the team bought about a hundred of the same model and painted and adapted them to suit. In one part they used a remote controlled car to crash into a fire hydrant and the water from the hydrant was actually sand, because water doesn't look right when scaled down.
Neutrino Wands
The neutrino wands had a light bulb on the end of them which was powered by batteries in the proton packs on the actors backs. These bulbs were there so that the animators had a point of origin for the light stream which they created by combining a series of explosions, which were filmed off set with classic animation to achieve a rubberize light effect. There were also a variety of different back packs, the ones with batteries weighed 30lbs, lighter ones without batteries were used when the actors didn't need to shoot the neutrino wands and there were even some rubber backpacks for the stunt scenes.
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