View new posts | View your posts The Streams

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The DVD has some extras on the special effects from a general perspective, Mark Johnson's YouTube series on Slimer was a fascinating look at the creation of the ghost and William Forsche's Youtube uploads are incredible, but I've always wanted to see a close look at the creation of the stream effects. At least in GB I, the streams are some of the most fascinating and detailed effects in the movie. I know the streams were composed of several levels of classical animation, but to see a close look from start to finish would be awesome. Anything like that out there?

I could be wrong but I seem to remember hand painting being a big part in the streams.

I remember, the coolest thing I ever noticed about the streams, at least in GB1, was when I was going in slo-mo on an old VCR and realized that the stream is flowing two directions at once. The inner orangeish tube is actually being sucked IN towards the nozzle, while the outer bluish web of lightning is moving away and out.

Somewhere, maybe the novel, had a reference to an 'induction wand' or 'induction rifle', and that term really resonated in my mind when I noticed the 'in' movement.

I must've already caught on to that prior to seeing GB2 in 1989, because the 'lasso' effect in the courtroom scene really rubbed me the wrong way when I saw it on opening day.

Alex

Yeah, most definitely they were hand painted. They probably could not have been done in any other way, or at least would have been that much more difficult. The streams in the second film were just not on par with the first, although IMO the stream effects towards the end of Ghostbusters II started looking better, but Boss Film Studios was astounding.

Micheal Gross came up with the particle thrower explanation...Something akin to it "sucks in atoms through the thrower, and after processing them in a split second spits them back out"...This "theory" is also backed up by an interview with Dan for the Video Game, likening the pack to a "filtration system" and gave a similar explanation to Micheal's...In the end it was a clever way to explain away the animation techniques used...

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One panel shows effects animator Kevin Kutchaver drawing sparks on an enlarged frame from the blue screen filming.

I havent read the article but you can see for yourself if it mentions the process.
http://www.gbfans.com/ghostbusters-2/articles/cinefex/

I remember hearing/reading somewhere that there were 5-7 layers of hand-drawn animation to make the proton streams. If you look at them frame by frame they differ in complexity. The most complex have the main beam, the ringed lightning around the beam, the blue streaks of lightning branching off the beam and the flares at the origination of the beam, plus glow.

Now imagine all of that being done by hand, frame by frame. I think the containment unit explosion had a visual/CG effect of some sort.

Even in computers now adays, I can't see creating proton steams as being easy. That is, unless you have a program with pre-created renders and overlay them. I think HitFilm may or may not have them. I know older versions, Alam DV2 and FX Lab had presets for proton streams. I'm not sure on the new version.

I remember when they filmed at the Biltmore Hotel, Chuck Gaspar's crew made dummy walls with fuses and pyrotechnic material that were lit up on cue then the Proton Streams were produced later at Entertainment Effects Group. I don't know the exact number of layers but I recall they had to use a variety of animation techniques to get the finished product done.

Yeah. They shot at the NY Firehouse with three cameras while Richard Edlund's crew was across the street on the roof of a building. On cue, a crew inside the Firehouse set off smoke bombs then the actors ran out. I remember reading it was a difficult shoot and the bombs went off prematurely due to communication errors. But then after that the ECU explosion was inserted optically. Entertainment Effects Group also made a miniature version of the Firehouse's rupturing rooftop and photographed some live action ghosts put into the explosion. So it is a mix of physical and visual effects.

I love visual effects. I will say that even from the experience of digitally creating lightsabers and a proton stream several years ago using pre-made templates, it is a painstaking process. Figure that consumer video is 30FPS (frames per second) and film is 60fps and that each frame has to be animated frame by frame in the computer.

Now, imagine that instead of a computer, it is all hand-drawn. It is truly a work of art for that reason.

Standard animation is usually around 12 FPS. I'm not sure if they use the same frame rate when animating over film.

I know that traditional animators that tend to think of rotoscoping as a cheap gimmick rather than a legitimate animation technique.

The streams look awesome though for the year that the movie was made.

Working on a bazillion frames with multiple layers is no big deal to an animation house. They do it all the time.

When I was working with Disney Feature animation on Tinkerbelle, I had 4 layers to work on.. Tink, her wings, major pixie dust, and minor pixie dust, times 320 frames.

Back then, doing it by hand was just how it was done, period.

With computers now, that can easily be done in 1/10th the time, but you loose some of that "humanity" in the work process.

The amount of detail in those original beams is intense. Some details you just never ever see unless you literally analyze it frame by frame. At 24fps, my brain hurts. Then again, I doubt it was just one man animating the beam core, lightning, purple chunks and all the glow added to it. If it was, then that man deserves a whole truck load of Crunch bars.

That painstaking detail work is quite common in animation, and odds are different people worked on the different layers.

Typically pencils will be done on paper with has registration pegs, and then those are sent to different individuals, who to the different componants on clear cels (at least thats how it was done back then.) those are then layed on top of each over on top of the frame itself, and then recorded.

When I did tinkerbelle, she was done by a feature animator, her wings were done by a "fill" animator and the pixie dust effects were done by someone who specialized in effects animating.

When I digitized the effects, I actually assembled them in together in two different solid colors, and then hand painted each to blend into the background. it probably took me 4 months of 7 days a week 12 hour days to do the final tinkerbelle artwork. Easily my proudest but also hardest job I've ever done. The last week we were all working 24 hours a day sleeping in the parade garages, because we were not only completing our individual jobs, but also completeing the float work, and making things work together. (This was for Spectromagic, one of the parades that was featured in the various theme parks over the last 15 years.)

I still recall the parade press launch 4 days before the official debut. as one of the main floats with my effect work was trundling towards the gate, the door popped open, and the mouse popped out because of the vibration. I was literally hanging off the side of the float 15 feet before it went through the gate, tucking everything back in, and relocking the latch on the door.

That was nothing though... one of the floats actually caught fire as it circled the trees in front of Cinderella's castle!

After the parade press shoot, many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!