Post Magazine

August 2016

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GHOSTBUSTERS www.postmagazine.com 20 POST AUGUST 2016 t's been more than 30 years since Hollywood has proven it ain't afraid of no ghosts. It was 1984 when director Ivan Reitman introduced audiences to the now iconic, beloved supernatural comedy Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. The movie was a huge box-offi ce success, and went on to become a pop-cul- ture staple. Now, in 2016, director Paul Feig (Spy, Bridesmaids, The Heat) doesn't shy away from bringing back the familiar storyline, along with the Ecto-1, Proton Packs and Slimer with four, new leading ladies and a host of new ghosts in his 2016 release, Ghostbusters, for Sony Pictures. According to Peter G. Travers, VFX su- per on the fi lm, the movie-making technol- ogy has certainly advanced since 1984, and the days of puppets and optical compos- ite-ghosts. "Back then, you could not make digital ghosts. The digital technology has opened up the possibilities for everything. And every shot in the fi lm is essentially a digital eff ect because we had digital inter- mediates, it was all shot on digital cameras and we color timed everything digitally." The fi lm was shot on-location through- out Massachusetts on Arri Alexa XT cameras in Arri raw format, cut on Avid and the visual eff ects were completed by a long list of VFX houses, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Legend 3D, Iloura, MPC and Zero VFX. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Travers and Sony Pictures Imageworks' (SPI) VFX super Daniel Kramer discuss the 1,700 visual eff ects shots and what it took to bring the fi lm's ghosts to life. Can you discuss the eff ects in this fi lm? Travers: "I started on this fi lm in February 2015 and one of the most important things was to fi gure out what kinds of scenes and eff ects [director Paul Feig] wanted for the ghosts. I asked him, 'Do the ghosts glow?' And he said, 'Yes.' That really sent us down this path of what to do, how to do it, how to shoot it and how to do things in post. Often times, when eff ects don't work in movies, it's because they don't have a supportive relationship with what is shot and so every time you have an actor trying to act against a tennis ball or you light a scene not knowing what kind of lighting you're ultimately going to do in post, or when you try to marry the two together, they don't marry. You can't really force it. You have to do a lot on the front end to fi gure out how you're going to do all this. Raising The Undead HOW VFX & CG WERE USED TO BRING FEIG'S GHOSTS TO LIFE I BY LINDA ROMANELLO Imageworks completed around 300 shots for the fi lm, including a fully digital Times Square for the fi nale.

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