So, how about some behind the scenes info on Episode 1 and the genesis of the series?
I'm part of the Alabama Ghostbusters - we're a fan group dedicated to costuming and promoting the Ghostbusters franchise and brand wherever we can. Basically, we love Ghostbusters and keep it alive. We also do charity events like MS walks, food drives, relief auctions, etc. We're "Geeks For Good!" There are "franchises" like this all over the world! I'm also a professor of media production at the University of Alabama. There are lots of awesome Ghostbusters fan films out there and so I thought it might be fun to throw our hat into the ring, so to speak, but I wanted to try something different. A lot of the Ghostbusters fan films out there lovingly re-create moments from the films such as the zapping and trapping of ghosts. And rightly so! Zapping and trapping is awesome - it's why we all wanted to be Ghostbusters when we were young (and still do today). But, again, like I said, I wanted to be different, or at least try to be. Ghostbusters to me isn't about zapping and trapping. It's about the characters and the situations they get themselves into. So with this fan film, I wanted to ease in to the action and start with characters.
There's also the question of logistics. The Alabama Ghostbusters members come from all across the state so it wouldn't be feasible to get everyone together for an extended period of time to shoot a good, story-driven film so I'd have to shoot it in pieces... A web series! That way, we can do a lengthier GB story and release it in parts, whenever we can get the band together to film!
So, I threw together a script and sent it out to a few ALGB members. Then it was a question of finding time in everyone's busy schedules to shoot it...
I was teaching an Advanced Television Production course at UA last fall. In that course, the students pitch, write, and shoot a television pilot they conceive. It was a production nightmare - the concept was ambitious, the communication between the crew members was less than stellar...in short, the project fell apart. The week before Thanksgiving, I cancelled the production of that pilot. So we were left without a project for the rest of the semester. I wanted to give them something to produce - I didn't want my students to leave the course empty handed. I toyed around with having writers write a short project we could shoot but even that would have been a crap shoot. And then I remembered the ALGB script... I talked with my students about it and they hopped on board - we were going to shoot the ALGB pilot as their class project! With three weeks left to go in the semester, we started to pre-produce the show.
The students were awesome and worked incredibly hard to get the pilot produced. Brandon Sparks stepped up as the producer of the show and did a fantastic job securing actors, locations, etc. Olivia Cathcart as the Assistant Director was on top of things and made sure our schedule worked out. Chase Miller, the director of photography, worked incredibly hard making sure the lighting and the look came out like we wanted. I could go on about the students, but, in short, they stepped up and I couldn't have done this without them.
Casting worked out incredibly well, also. Our main Ghostbuster actors, Brock Parker (the ALGB chief), Bo Bearden, and...The Rookie... have been playing Ghostbusters since they were young, so this all came fairly naturally to them. The other actors are local actors from around Tuscaloosa. Jennifer is played by Naomi Prentice, a UA Theatre student. Incidentally, Naomi was cast in the class' original pilot and even dyed her hair red for the show. Fortunately she (and her red hair) worked out great for the ALGB show. Jennifer's mom is played by Drew Baker - a phenomenal local actress who also runs the Tuscaloosa Children's Theatre. The policeman is played by Anthony Haselbauer who bears a striking resemblance to everyone's favorite EPA antagonist, Walter Peck (that was entirely coincidental, by the way).
The show took four days of principal photography. The first day was the scenes at Jennifer's house. Since we were running short on time and locations, I volunteered my house for that location, so that's my living room and my bedroom you're seeing in the film. Hey, the pilot of The Guild was all shot at Felicia Day's house... I had never done a creepy, ghostly scene before so this was a first for me. Fortunately, we had many discussions about what to do with lighting and camera before we shot so we had a pretty solid plan going into it. Those scenes total took about 9-10 hours to shoot, if my memory serves me. We wrapped around midnight, exhausted, but feeling accomplished.
The second day consisted of the scenes with the Rookie in GB headquarters. Rookie and Brock hail from Auburn, AL, which is 3 hours from Tuscaloosa where we shot, so that should tell you something about their dedication to the project. We shot those scenes at Baptist Campus Ministries on UA's campus. Note the awesome posters and set design! Cameos by Robin Shelby (Slimer from GB2), and ALGB members Judson Hudson and Lee Wright are abound! See what else you can find in there - Rookie had a field day with planting "easter eggs."
Rookie on camera with Lee Wright peeking over his shoulder.
The third day, we shot all of Brock and Bo's scenes together, starting with the car scene. The car scene was an interesting one to film because I didn't want to shoot them while they were actually driving because I'd have to shoot from the back seat and it would be a real big shaky mess, so I decided to do what's called the "poor man's process." So I could get the camera outside the car to get good cross-two camera angles, I decided to shoot all of the driving scenes in my garage and project the driving scenes on the wall. With my gaffer, Courtney Williams, and my apprentice director Chris Harding, I set out to shoot driving out of the window. That footage would then be projected on the wall in the background when we shot. Shooting the actual scenes was a crazy sight.
Panoramic view of the insanity.
We had Chris Harding holding the projector like John Cusack holding the boombox in Say Anything, Courtney Williams behind the car rocking it from side to side, and Olivia Cathcart sweeping her arms in front of the lights to simulate shadows from time to time. I'm surprised that Brock and Bo were able to act with all of that going on! When you watch the final scene, you hear Sam and Dave's "Hold on, I'm Coming" song. That's my little tribute to another favorite film of mine, The Blues Brothers.
Then we moved to shoot the scenes with Brock and Bo and their customer (named Judith in the script, played by the wonderful Sara-Margaret Cates). We shot that at one of my former students' aunt's house (in the same neighborhood that Nick Saban lives in, I think!). An interesting note about that scene - the Ghostbusters are seen talking about "spraying" the house. In this story, Ghostbusters as a company has evolved to be more like Terminix or Orkin - they routinely spray your house to protect it from ghosts and other supernatural occurrences. It's a really mundane job. I wanted Ghostbusters to be a boring job, not something action packed and exciting. It's very blue-collar. A long time has passed since the films, so I wanted to make Ghostbusters something that found its groove as a company. It can be inferred that the original four have now become CEOs or some such, running Ghostbusters, Inc. from NYC.
The warning label on the spray cans.
Me with Brock Parker and Bo Bearden.
Brock and Bo proudly sport their sprayers.
So here we have these characters, Brock, Bo, and Rookie. They're normal folks with "normal" jobs who end up in a not so normal situation. It was important to me to portray what they do as normal and not exciting because if it were all exciting all of the time, they'd have nowhere to go. Brock is your typical working man. Bo is hoping to start a family someday. Rookie wants to make a name for himself and go far in the business but finds himself sitting back at the office holding down the fort. It's my hope that they come across as real people.
Finally, we shot the scene with Jennifer's mom and the police in Jennifer's house. This is one of my favorite scenes because Drew, Jennifer's Mom, really sells it. She is fantastic in this scene and I look forward to working with her more on this series!
Talking DP Chase Miller through a shot.
Principal photography was finally wrapped (we also shot a small news bit with WVUA anchor Danny Salter) and it was time to move on to post production. Working with student editor Sean Dave, we cut together the pilot in a relatively short amount of time and I designed the sound over the holiday break.
On February 4, 2013, we released episode 1 to the public on the Alabama Ghostbusters YouTube channel and the rest is history!
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them! Feel free to leave them in the comments section! There's probably so much more that I could talk about, so I'm sure I left something out. Stay tuned for more posts as we gear up for episode 2! Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment