adam savage from tested here i'm standing on the set of the new ghostbusters stillman it is
in many ways a very real set with signs that have been painted in a
house and born that didn't exist six months ago but it's a ghostbusters film so you know there's
going to be really intense and beautiful visual effects and that doesn't just happen after the
principle of photography oh no no the visual effects team is here on set every single day
lining up things gathering data to make their job after principal photography smoother how
does all that go well we're going to talk to visual effects supervisor alessandro about the
process what is your role here on the production your your visual effects exactly okay but this
is not there's not a lot of practical effects on set today and your job is going to encompass
months between now and the release tell me tell me how that works what are you doing on set right now
well on set we're always on set because there's always something that comes up on a day like today
everything is practical we have a beautiful set built by francois but down there there's
supposed to be a mountain uh so that's the famous mountain where the keys goes and when
there's a temp or so anytime we shoot in the direction even though there's nothing really
that we have to be prepared of is always good for us to be here making sure that the mountain
can be placed where it was supposed to be and you know if like there's some adjustment you have to
do on the camera to have the post production so today for us it's like kind of like a busy day
so so it's it's always nice to be around because you know doing visual effects is part of the
storytelling as well and then knowing exactly what's going on and seeing how the scene were shot
is a very helpful for me and for the team right
but i mean so i think your average lay person when they watch a movie and they think cg they think
well he just has a file with a mountain in it and when they shoot it over there he puts
that mountain but you have to be here every day because you got to see what the light was like
and how that right yes exactly like for something like the mountain that is in the far background
is not that important having the proper lighting reference but when we extend the shot or other cg
ghosts for instance that is surrounding us uh we have to capture all the information as possible
as as many information as we can like we we scan the whole set with a lidar machine okay so you
have which is a physical environment we have a physical reference we take a lot of photography
uh and uh and then we look through the camera making sure that everything works right and then
we capture the lighting reference for instance for one of the ghosts from muncher renaissance
with us is with second unit but we also have like a sample of the skin and we move the skin and the
light to kind of see how it responds and then what we do and there's something very funny today you
don't have the pleasure to see that one by the end we always call for bose and chart and one of
our guys wyatt i usually step into frame with your stick with a grey ball and a crumble yeah i mean
i've been on set with the balls and you play the music as well oh nice yeah so it's a moment that
everyone loves boys and charles so he's stepping in there so we capture as much reference as we can
some days it's like easier than others sometimes you just gotta shoot and you know without worrying
too much and capturing because you know the day you're running out of light but we always try to
be as prepared as possible well i'd imagine you have to capture even more than everything you can
think of because everything you're capturing it's like institutional knowledge based on not having
the right thing on another job yes right like all this information is hard won yeah exactly and we
always try to cover ourselves as much as we can sometimes even when it's not needed it's always
good to protect themselves for later you know this theme goes in post-production you start putting
the pieces together in particular when there's visual effects involved you realize that maybe
you're missing a shot or you're missing something you may be asked to construct a shot from maybe
ask like i don't think in this for this film is the case because jason has like a real like
vision and he knows what he's doing and we're all there and we all see and sometimes as a
collaboration we realize that when we need the shot we might need this other like answer but
it's always better be safe than sorry like we said sure so we always have to be prepared in
case to create like that extra shadow was missing to to help the scene coming together so that's why
we're always around what do you get i'm wondering if you sometimes get jealous of the practical crew
like they get to wrap this set and go away and you gotta live each sleep and breathe this for another
several months that's another thing that me and my producer kelly joseph uh we're always like uh
discussing about or making jokes is that you know everyone the crew they do their job like
please vote over here everybody packed their bag they move on to the next one
and that's where we started the post-production start and then we're there like picking up with
the pieces that we left behind yeah and uh and that's something that to be honest can
go out of control that's why it's important our presence on set right making sure that
you know you you're prepared for every possible scenario to minimize also the extra cost and
everything has a cost so it's everything you you have to be yeah i mean i would imagine sometimes
there are directors who like to make decisions very late in the process are there changes
happening really late and you have to be able to accommodate that right that's very bad i have to
say and again with jason the beauty working with jasmine and that's why i'm so fortunate to be on
this project is that he really want to get things done in in one yes this vision as i said before
and he deserves what you want and we are like also proactively creating building the assets
making sure that they are exactly what he has in mind to avoid to be in the situation where
many times the visual effects uh happens that you shoot everything and then at the end you change
everything yeah because what happened then is that post-production is always like short
it can be like a shortest four months six months if you're lucky
and that's enough time to to do the visual effects or something that you have planned when you start
making changes late in the game you're approaching the delivery then you have to like sacrifice
something and usually it's the quality and then you get like oh the cgi is going bad now where
oh it's because we couldn't render as high enough yeah it's because the way that the filmmaking
happening now the you know well so that's a question i have about that the original
visual effects for ghostbusters uh they aren't necessarily the most advanced visual effects and
sometimes we can see some things compositing artifacts and stuff but i'm wondering if
you're trying to hold to a look that will feel like it like it holds to the original in some way
how are you addressing the old effects versus the new one that's an interesting question because uh
some kind of the mandate that we had from uh very early on from from jason is that he want to have
the the as as you seen and as you can see now is really a love letter to the 1984 film totally
in many aspects and when it comes to visual effects he really want to embrace that look
um you know we have used puppets and yeah it's very rare that nowadays you use puppets and uh
you know we're trying to not to go to sci-fi and try to maintain that optical look that was
back in the days can you go back and read the old synthetic yeah i had the oceanfest from the 1994.
now the the what is going to get a bit complicated is when uh you need to give a little bit of a 2020
look sure so we don't want to go too much into 1984 low and because nowadays the audience is
so used to the visual effects and they're used to see super realistic work yeah so
our work have to have that taste of 1984 but with a 2020 twist let's remove the optical
well we compositor try to introduce some of that but kind of fine tune it in a way that
has a little bit of like a modern modern look to it the that is the the beauty of this project is
not like the usual always visual effects look at this location you could do everything on
green screen right right you know why you want to build this beautiful like uh like the farm
and everything when when you can put a green screen and then do it digitally well because
there are two reasons one is because it's always different you you feel it when it's like but
when it's photographed in the camera you feel the difference yeah and for the audience the audience
and sorry for them um for the cast and the actors they oh it puts them in there it puts them in the
room they put them in with the physical object and they interact with the physical object
and that's i think is something pretty unique in this film we think of technology and advancement
as something like there's a timeline and you start someplace and you move forward but you're
on this you're moving in both directions what direction yes which at the same time is a bit
challenging right because uh you have to be you know to understand that this is practical
and it's going to have a practical look and the audience is going to see the difference right and
i think oh and you have to yeah you know because as i said before nowadays like the the creature
and cg is like you know hyperrealistic and and it kind of goes and people kind of like embrace
that and now when you see something practical like this puppet that is like they call it animatronic
yeah he reads as such but it works for this film he works for that scene because it's definitely
just like a postcard from the past yeah and i think it sits nicely and that's what is the beauty
of this project all this practical effect we're doing they're designed specifically for the scene
well it must also deepen your it must actually deepen your entire no it does it deepens your
whole knowledge base about special effects because you actually get to try these things you've only
read yeah because i don't know how many time i'm gonna have the opportunity to do it again with
like practical effects at this level a friend of mine was one of the crew members on the 1989
ghostbusters two and uh for the river of slime they built a an l bend in the river and they
bought slime from mattel they bought the 55 gallon drums of the slime and they poured it in and they
set up their circulator and it didn't occur to them how much momentum the slime would have so it
reached the corner and 150 gallons went right over the edge and onto the soundstage floor oh my god
and those are the kind of things that only happen when you do them practically yes because in visual
when you're doing cg you control everything yeah and maybe those kind of things those kind of
accidents they might be also fortunate accident because hey maybe you capture that one and it
works for the film and you know that wasn't expected but it happens and we love it um
and i think that that's again it's like uh bring back some of the magic i think that's
awesome alessandra thank you so much thank you very much for like talking to me absolutely