Discuss Ghostbusters: Afterlife, released on November 19, 2021 and directed by Jason Reitman.
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By One time
#4954705
Someone had to decide how the streams were going to look like in the new movie.

Probably "just like '84" may have been a requirement but those 1984 effects were very low fidelity compared to what is possible today (in terms of stream momentum, behavior, color depth, exposure, etc).

Now we have cgi that can present a more detailed view of what the proton streams are (were?) supposed to look like. I'm interested in how they made that decision.

I may be imagining things but to me:

In the 2016 movie they were presented a more pinkish hue of orange and were generated to show a relatively high momentum or resistance to direction change. In the new movie they appear to be a bit more erratic or lighter and more unpredictable in where they are going to go.

Or maybe the variation is too great in the scenes to make an assumption.

A comparison of GB:ATA and GB:A

https://imgur.com/a/oL8ZIXB

GB:ATA https://i.imgur.com/iTBGL65.mp4
GB:A https://i.imgur.com/qhZ1xny.mp4

Do you agree with it? How do you think they should have done it?
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By ihsanamin
#4954956
Hmmm.

I didn't hate the ATC streams, but I have a preference for the GBII streams.

That said, this is the first time in this series that we've seen the streams fired outside in the daytime. I'd like to think they'd take on a different look versus night time and indoors.
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By RealGhostbusterJay
#4955116
I would have liked to see new streams done the way GBATC was done but I get making them the same just maybe more vibrant. There is a hue of more purple then blue in them and the toys of some of the GBA figures have purple streams rather then blue but stating why may sound spoilerish so I'll keep to myself.
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By l3w1sb159
#4955117
I reckon the more purple and orange stream is going to be mainly on the repaired spengler pack that Phoebe uses, and the other packs that the OG GB's use will be the classic blue and orange.
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By BruceWright
#4955147
I’m an effects animator for movies. While I haven’t seen much on the new movie, it feels like they’re going for more of a classic look than the more colorful look of ATC.

ATC, I felt, really leaned in to the more vibrant colors that digital projection can produce, whereas the original, being on film, were limited to the color science of film. (I happen to like this for ATC. I really like an expanded color palette, and I wish movies played into that more).

It looks from the trailer shots that they’re mimicking the look of film in the new movie, which make sense as they’re definitely going for the connection to the originals. We’ll see how the effects turn out, but it looks like they’re doing a great job so far!
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By RealGhostbusterJay
#4955501
Looking at the toys for the plasma series, Lucky comes with a purple and orange stream where as the other figures come with the normal orange and blue streams. May have something to do with wand modifiers?
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By JA Slow
#4955556
The GB1 streams were a bit busy for me. GB2 felt just right. Newer means of animation, all the components of the original but streamlined. The stream was orange with yellow core, white particles trailing, and blue lightening with white core.

I hated the remake streams. Too much lightening and the colors were too cartoony. Can't say much else since I haven't and will not see that movie.

GBA's streams look like GB1's but lower quality. I can hear the RGB sound profile that showed up in GB2 but I can't say I like the look.
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By RichardLess
#4955745
I’m a fan of the more consistent lasso style GB2 stream. That being said, GB1 has the best overall stream effect in certain shots (“Aim For the flat top” and shooting at Mr Stay Puft from the side of the building and then crossing the streams). But the idea they utilized in GB2 that the beam works more like a rodeo lasso is so much cooler than the locked off static shots of the Slimer catch where it looks a bit weird that Egon & Venkman are like 12 feet apart of each other shooting at the same ghost. The shot of them just before the trap closes is pretty odd lol

I HATED the stream effects in GB ATC. HATED them. They were too fat. They somehow looked less real or believable. The CGI style beam has a weird cleanliness to it that doesn’t really work for me. The old style of rotoscoping…the effect just looks better. Isn’t that odd? You’d think they’d be able to duplicate the exact look of the 1984 streams even if they aren’t done by the same method. But I guess not.

The GBA streams are much, much better than ATC but again…they just don’t look right to me. The other beams from the first two movies tended to have this rubberized light quality to it that I’m not seeing in the CGI version. Time will tell how well they did.
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By SpaceBallz
#4955854
A recent documentary on Ghostbusters (Cleaning up the town, maybe?) had one of the f/x guys state that they misinterpreted the desired "rubber band" proton stream effect; if you look closely in some of the proton stream scenes in GB1 you can see that they shoot the "rubber beam" out and the stream jumps back into the wand when they activate it again, like the beam has a life of it's own. I think they rectified it in GB2 and opted for more of the lasso effect.

I wasn't a fan of the streams in ATC, there didn't seem to be much of a "kick" when they shot them.
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By mrmichaelt
#4955855
SpaceBallz wrote:A recent documentary on Ghostbusters (Cleaning up the town, maybe?) had one of the f/x guys state that they misinterpreted the desired "rubber band" proton stream effect; if you look closely in some of the proton stream scenes in GB1 you can see that they shoot the "rubber beam" out and the stream jumps back into the wand when they activate it again, like the beam has a life of it's own. I think they rectified it in GB2 and opted for more of the lasso effect.
In the SFX Team Featurette, Terry Windell said, "And actually took explosions that were filmed on the stage and then rephotographing them with a technique that these guys called pin blocking so we can miniaturize these little explosions so that the tip of the gun had pyrotechnic explosions and flares and things laced in there with five levels of classical animation that was also manipulated on the optical printer by Mark Vargos."

In Slimer Mode on the Ghostbusters Blu-ray, 36:33-36:59, Richard Edlund said, "And so we came up with an animated style for the neutrona wands, where the beam would shoot out and it would hover. And it was funky-looking, but very kind of funny. And there was something about it. We talked about rubberizing light. It wouldn't have been funny if it had just been a straight beam. It's like a laser beam. Everybody's seen that already."

Then at 36:26-36:32, John Bruno says, "And I said, "They'll never point them in the right place so let's just make it crazy, so that once it's connected, it's like a fishing line."

Then at 37:00-37:16, Terry Windell says, "We wanted a certain amount of warmth and we ended up using contrasting colors. So we had this sort of amber orange glow and then we wrapped it with, you know, cool blue electricity. So, you sort of had the whole spectrum in there."

Then of course for GB2, a different team, ILM did the SFX rather than the Boss team returning. At first, they did try to copy the look but then the leads encouraged them to try a different look.
- In Cinefex magazine #40, page 18, Tom Bertino says: "The animated nutrona beams in the first film looked really good and initially we tried very literally to duplicate that look. But then Dennis and Mark Vargo encouraged us to have fun with the beams. We all figured that since people have already seen what the beams could do in the first film, the surprise was off. We needed to take them in a new direction. For instance, in the courtroom, the beams act like cowboy lassos or fishing lines, reeling the ghosts in. The beams catch the Scoleri brothers around the ankles, then the ghosts slip through and and beams wrap around their necks. John Armstrong and Peter Crossman did a great job of animating these shots so that the beams almost seem to have a consciousness of their own. When first suggested these ideas to Dennis and Mark, they liked them. Then we sent pencil sketches down to Ivan and sat with our fingers crossed because we really wanted to get these ideas into the movie."

Then on page 20, Dennis Muren says, "I think the lasso was a pretty neat concept that worked well with the squash and stretch effects we were creating with the mirrorplex. Then we thought that if we could line up the mirrorplex and squeeze the ghosts when the nutrona beams wrapped around them, it would show a more direct effect from the beams. One of our animators came up with the next step on that, which was a very obvious lasso that starts wrapping around one of the brothers and then pulls him tight, squeezing him in the middle. It was just wonderful. Anything that had that kind of character was something we really liked."
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By ihsanamin
#4956217
RealGhostbusterJay wrote: September 12th, 2021, 2:22 pm Looking at the toys for the plasma series, Lucky comes with a purple and orange stream where as the other figures come with the normal orange and blue streams. May have something to do with wand modifiers?
Just checked the lights on the Spengler Neutrona Wand, and sure enough, there's a purple LED in the light cycle.
Probably is specific to Egon's pack.
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