Discuss the Ghostbusters movie that was released in 2016.
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By Alphagaia
#4878708
Now that the movie is done, the special effects houses that have worked on the movie are starting to put out show reels of their involvement in GB:ATC.

Here we see drones/humans rigged with lights being replaced with ghosts:

https://vimeo.com/180110425

and another one showing of the subway segment:



and another:

https://vimeo.com/182545402





Last edited by Kingpin on October 11th, 2016, 4:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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By Sav C
#4878711
I love VFX Breakdowns! That was cool how they were using the drone for tracking, if you aren't using a motion control rig that's a really smart idea. Since I made a fuss about it earlier, I might as well bring it up now: all of the shots were nice and smooth (and easy to watch!) Just what I wanted to see.

The color looks better than it did in all of the trailers, also.
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By PeteVenkman_Jedi
#4878775
I always enjoy vfx shorts like this. As much as I like movies it was the behind the scenes specials that really got me interested in making films.

I can appreciate the effort put into the effects for this film and their execution fits with how I pictured their approach. They did a lot of hard work and I respect their efforts. However I did feel the ghosts did look a bit too 'Scooby-Doo' in the final product. I have an idea as to why the ghosts just seem a little off and I don't know why I haven't mentioned it before as it was my first thought when I saw the trailer way back in the beginning.

The problems is not the designs of the ghosts, the designs were interesting. It's not the costumes or the CGI either, I actually give Paul Feig props for doing as much practical work as he did. My take on the ghosts and why they don't look quite right is subtle. It's something I wouldn't have thought of if not for struggling with the problem in my own fan short, transparency.

The ghosts aren't transparent. Sure you can see into the ghosts and see their bones in some places but you can't see through the ghosts. They're too solid, the backgrounds don't show through them. It's subtle but it's something the brain registers even if you didn't notice it. It was one of the things I actually spent a lot of time trying to get right my self. Too much transparency and the ghost loses all vibrance and gets lost in the background, too much opacity and the ghost looks too solid and well, fake.

Anyway, just a thought. It's a subtle thing as I've said, but I think it makes a world of difference in selling the final effect.
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By Razorgeist
#4878799
My complaint was that the ghosts weren't as monstrous as they could have been. Ghostbusters (as well as some other 80's movies) always gave the ghosts a very inhuman edge. While I liked the ghosts in ATC I think they could have used more of this.
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By Alphagaia
#4878963
Well, not always. The Grey Lady, Gozer and Lady Floaty mcBlowjob Von Lickenstein are prime examples of just humanoid encounters. From GB1 I can think of Slimer, the terror dogs and the Subway specter as more out there.

GB2 benefitted from the cartoon going more wild, which cartoonified the scoleri Brothers, but the runner, Vigo, Janosh the crossdressing stretchy babynapper and the Titanic ghost are just humans with added glow as well. GB2 showed some variables in the montage though.

Feig did chose to depict more lifelike humans form for the designs but slimer, Rowan, and Mayhem are more out there.
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By MagicPrime
#4879182
Kingpin wrote:I realise I'm committing sacrilege here, but I actually prefer the look of the ghosts in ATC to the Scoleri Brothers... the latter just look too comedic, almost Evil Dead comical.
Have to agree to disagree on that one.
Image

Those guys a multitudes more creepy and creative than any of the baddies in ATC. Mayhem was... Ok, but kind of generic.
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By Kingpin
#4879188
At the very least the parade balloons, especially when they morphed into their evil counterparts, is something in line with the design aesthetic of the classic films.
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By MagicPrime
#4879196
Kingpin wrote:At the very least the parade balloons, especially when they morphed into their evil counterparts, is something in line with the design aesthetic of the classic films.
Eh, we'd have to differ there too -- I thought they looked very hokey.

That aside. If the parade balloons had been setup earlier in the movie, maybe they would have worked for me. But its just RANDOM BALLOONS! that can somehow take 3 proton streams like a champ but pops like a soap bubble once it gets pegged with a swiss army knife.
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By MagicPrime
#4879201
JurorNo.2 wrote:They're 1930's Macy's balloons, their job was to be hokey. ;)
Hokey as in "that looks like a cutscene from a bad videogame" rather than Hokey like the Balloons from Batman 1989.
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By JurorNo.2
#4879204
MagicPrime wrote:
JurorNo.2 wrote:They're 1930's Macy's balloons, their job was to be hokey. ;)
Hokey as in "that looks like a cutscene from a bad videogame" rather than Hokey like the Balloons from Batman 1989.
Look I'm not into FX at all, but the effects in ATC are clearly not poorly produced or anything. They are CGI and perhaps that's what you're bumping up against.
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By Kingpin
#4879301
MagicPrime wrote:That aside. If the parade balloons had been setup earlier in the movie, maybe they would have worked for me. But its just RANDOM BALLOONS!
They weren't just "random!", they were a part of the rest of the paranormal chaos feeding off of the city's history that'd been stirred up by the ley lines being charged.


The only thing that struck me as looking kinda hokey in the effects department were the daytime shots of the Mercado, sadly they just didn't feel that realistic (though it looked fine in the nighttime shots).
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By Alphagaia
#4879303
Yeah same here, at the end of the movie, after the Mercado rebuild itself I found the building a tad too fake, as if the colors and details did not match the rest of the scene. For me that and the portal scene were the only scenes where the effects seemed a bit sub par. Where they could have given those a bit more polish.

I still am a massive fan of how Eldridge looked and acted. Those cold, vengefull eyes and smirk were absolutely menacing.

Image
By lozbloke
#4879304
I generally enjoyed the special effects on this one. My only criticism really would be that the ghosts were a bit too solid - i would have preferred more transparency.

Moving forward, I would love some designs that mirror "true to life" hauntings - the kinda stuff that you would expect Ghost Adventures or Paranormal Lockdown to find etc, including the use of similar tech. Could be an interesting angle....
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By Razorgeist
#4879411
Alphagaia wrote:Yeah same here, at the end of the movie, after the Mercado rebuild itself I found the building a tad too fake, as if the colors and details did not match the rest of the scene. For me that and the portal scene were the only scenes where the effects seemed a bit sub par. Where they could have given those a bit more polish.

I still am a massive fan of how Eldridge looked and acted. Those cold, vengefull eyes and smirk were absolutely menacing.

Image
Yeah she was great...uuugh that looks gives me shivers.
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By MagicPrime
#4879423
It's amazing sometimes how different people see things. I don't think she looks creepy at all. I think she looks constipated, and like shes caught under a black light.

To each their own, I guess.
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By Alphagaia
#4879425
MagicPrime wrote:It's amazing sometimes how different people see things. I don't think she looks creepy at all. I think she looks constipated, and like shes caught under a black light.
That would give a whole new meaning to this musicvideo:
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By deadderek
#4879480
MagicPrime wrote:It's amazing sometimes how different people see things. I don't think she looks creepy at all. I think she looks constipated, and like shes caught under a black light.

To each their own, I guess.
I think most of the ghosts look straight out of Haunted Mansion or Scooby Doo. Not menacing looking in the slightest.
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By JurorNo.2
#4879487
At this point, I don't think anyone "thinks" the movie looks like Scooby Doo. They've just heard it repeated so much, it's become easy to latch on to, even unconsciously.

And certainly not Haunted Mansion, that is FAR MORE cartoony.
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By PeteVenkman_Jedi
#4879512
JurorNo.2 wrote:At this point, I don't think anyone "thinks" the movie looks like Scooby Doo. They've just heard it repeated so much, it's become easy to latch on to, even unconsciously.

And certainly not Haunted Mansion, that is FAR MORE cartoony.

There are people who think the ghosts look a bit too Scooby Doo / Haunted Mansion, I'm one of them. I've explained my reasons as to why I feel this way in my post above. I will add to that by saying that the amount of glow and the saturation of the neon colour, in Lady Eldridge's case Electric Blue, is a bit too much and further harms the realism of the effect.

The super saturated neon colour and bright glow are the trade mark look for the ghosts in SD and HM and hence why these get compared to them, visually these are their closest relations in film. We can't really compare the ghosts in GB16 to, say, the ones in The Grudge, The Frighteners, or even something like 13 Ghosts as they are completely different visually. The Frighteners could be the closest to GB16 of those examples as they still have a bright glow, but the colours are far more muted and the end result is very different from ATC.

I'm not parroting anyone. I am making observations based on my understanding of how effects are created and insights gained from having done FX for my own shorts. I don't like to brag, but the ghost in my videos (at least at the time of their release) was praised as being the best ghost in a GB fan film. So please understand that while I respect their efforts, I still think that they needed to refine their ghosts a bit more to make them feel more real/etherial and less theme park/cartoony.
By Razorgeist
#4879518
Does it really matter if the ghosts looked similar to ones from another movie. I mean hell besides Slimer the ghosts from the 1984 movie were very similar to the ones from Poltergeist (yeah I know they were done by the same FX house) . I rather enjoyed the more colorful neon look of the ghosts. Besides in universe it kinda makes sense they were being supercharged by Rowan's device.
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By Alphagaia
#4879523
I understand your reasoning, but I do not agree the Frighteners gets excluded from the equation, as they are also blue and glowy and inhabit the same stylistic vibe, while the first glowy ghost from SD is obviously a suit when you see it move and wrinkle.

I do think some people choose to compare them to SD and the HM because these are considered bad movies, and excluding the Frighteners because its' a bit of a cult classic. The Frighteners visual tone is closest to me in style of the GB vibe, instead of a cartoon and a theme park ride, even when the saturation is higher in GB:ATC, because the feel is more tense.

Looking back at film history the glowy blue ghosts thing seems to be connected to comedy and while some of those are bad and create the wrong vibe I personally feel the ghosts in GB:ATC still manage to come over scary and menacing. The first two encounters are great examples of that with a good build up. The balloon peeking around the corner and slow progression felt menacing as well. But I understand completely it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Some comparisons:

This: Image

looks much more like this:

Image

instead of this:

Image

And this:
Image

looks much more menacing and scarier then this:

Image
By PeteVenkman_Jedi
#4879526
Yeah, I was hesitant to use The Frighteners as an example myself but stand by my decision to exclude it. Though similar, and certainly the most similar of the three examples I used, the end product is still different enough. But I can totally see what you are saying. And won't argue that it has a GB vibe to it. It certainly does. If I had to compare Frighteners to a GB film though, it would be GB2.

Also, I don't disagree with you that some people do choose to compare GB16 to SD because they associate them as bad movies, but that is only some people, and probably a small some at that.

I did like the balloon peaking around the corner bit. I didn't find the first two encounters that scary, personally. But I'm not blaming that on the effects. i'm interested in seeing what you dig up.
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By Alphagaia
#4879527
You can find the comparison added in the post above!

How about this clip from SD2:



to this?




Totally different look to the ghosts and how they are animated, with a completely different menacing vibe, if you can call the ghosts from SD2 menacing at all.
Both are going for comedy, but the ghost in GB:ATC actually looks/acts dangerous while SD2 treats them as cartoons and they look and act accordingly. I do not get a cartoony or themepark vibe from GB:ATC at all. Even the Frighteners was more cartoony with ghosts deflating, ghosts morphing into machine gun toting army men and eyes popping out of their sockets when compared to GB:ATC, but I feel the look and tone is more correct in that one.

I can understand the HM effects comparison a bit, but I would still pick The Frighteners over that, because of effects tone, animation and vibe, and because it did it first.
Last edited by Alphagaia on September 5th, 2016, 3:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Kingpin
#4879548
Until one of us has an actual encounter with a real ghost, it seems increasingly silly to suggest one style of ghost is more "realistic" than another.

Some people liked the look, some people didn't, they still look a lot better than some efforts, and it's a nice change from the Grudge/Woman in Black/Crimson Peak/Lights Out/Paranormal Activity/Sinister ghosts that have saturated the ghost movie market at the moment.
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By Alphagaia
#4879549
Kingpin wrote:Until one of us has an actual encounter with a real ghost, it seems increasingly silly to suggest one style of ghost is more "realistic" than another.
I agree, but I wasn't under the impression that we were discussing what kind of ghost was more realistic, just looking what kind of quality and effectstyle the ghosts of GB: ATC seemed most comparable with?

My point was the effects, tone and animation of SD shares next to none resemblamce to GB:ATC.

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