hey guys adam savage here in my cave with a pretty special thing uh i got to spend a week
on the set of ghostbusters afterlife watching director jason reitman and his team of world
builders as they crafted the next chapter in the original ghostbusters universe holy hell
it was amazing um being on set watching this full crew of true ghostbuster fans as they brought the
story to life it was intoxicating um and the sets i the sets were so immersive and felt so real even
being in them one of the sceptic decorators gave me a detailed tour through the interior of their
farmhouse set which was also an exterior this is rarer than you think in a hollywood movie when
they that they dressed both the interior and the exterior of a building and then used both
for filming and they showed me how they found and crafted and placed every single piece of the set
to make the building feel both real and lived in and part of the genuine ghostbusters universe
i'm standing in the foyer of egon's farmhouse and this is a super cool set for a whole bunch
of reasons uh not least of which is that this is the interior of the one that's on the hill
usually in movies they'll build exterior sets and interior sets but it's not common they
put the two together but here they did and standing in this house it is clear i am in
an ancient building and it tells the story of a man obsessed with things other
than personal hygiene but maybe the coolest part about this set is that it didn't exist
six or eight weeks ago they built this building and dressed this set from scratch and we are
going to talk to alex from the set deck team about just how they implement this kind of storytelling
alex we are standing in the kitchen of the farmhouse and it feels like i'm in any given
semi-ignored slightly messy kitchen but that's not the result of neglect it's the result of you
and your team's careful ministrations can you walk me through what you went through to dress this set
uh before anything else when we have our space we'll add all of our implements and uh general
rule is throw as much at the wall and see what sticks so we'll add as much as we can and pull
back oh so it's easier to take away than it is to add later always easier to take away than it
is to add later especially in the case where we're looking into a character right and seeing his life
and trying to get behind once reading a script get into their head a little bit here's a guy
that doesn't really care about his home life the kitchen does not matter to him so he really wants
to we want to convey the fact that he may have done some dishes once he's had some foods that
he doesn't have to worry about spoiling though yeah do you get them do you build a mood board of
the character and other like uh you gather images of kitchens that are really crappy absolutely our
decorators will go through and they'll get all our and our directors will work together determining
a look and then we'll try and appease and uh successfully pull off that look as much as we can
okay now i'm looking at a sink full of dishes but again i know because i've actually been on a team
like yours it's not just a sink full of dishes tell me about like when you're placing that how do
what is the process of knowing that you've gotten it right when it looks real it's a hard one it's
um you kind of do you step back a lot step back a lot look at it kind of shake your head a little
bit does it look real also is it going to be safe is it going to be falling oh right right stable
stable exactly we don't want things as dangerous as possible uh and we want to make sure that if
it has to come out can it be redone right and with what degree of difficulty oh my gosh i was
just realizing like you could dress the scene very carefully and actually start throwing stuff around
and your life becomes very difficult absolutely yeah do you ever bring in your colleagues and
be like hey i can't get this right what's going on what's what am i getting wrong pretty much
or uh things can also break on the day and you're like how do i fix how do i fix a table that's been
slammed through now i know from talking to jason and from various crew members that in this film
for careful watchers and lovers of the original ghostbusters there are easter eggs everywhere and
i have a good authority there are a couple in this kitchen do you want to maybe point them out sure
absolutely uh up above we have the box from the second movie that they poured the pink ooze into
this one absolutely oh no way so that was the actual token it's the actual toast
yes that's the same brand we found that and sourced that out and then we'd come back and
we'd even get the actual toaster on the counter no this is oh so it's the same one he's been using
oh my gosh that's a great throughput just a small thing right yeah exactly anything we can tie back
in even right down to the foods he eats i mean we've got cheez-its and i had more twinkies
stuffed around but throughout the movie you will see twinkies pop up and uh and crunch bars
crunch bars everywhere from pure specific to to current amazing amazing do you does scenic come
in and do dirtying up after you've done some set dressing as well in some cases or we can do the
breakdown as well if things are too hot before to give our scenic a little bit of a break we can uh
but we would do work together very closely on that now i i'm curious just how long like when
you look at a blank set like this and you've got to dress it what kind of timeline are we
looking at how long does that will take as long as we can oh sure but uh anywhere from a week to
a day wow wide variance depending on the emergency exactly and we work in the rule
of 10 so if we have this whole house we want to do 10 here 10 in another room 10 in another room
so that anytime anyone walks through they're always seeing progress oh interesting you
don't want to do one whole room while everything else is undone exactly oh that's a really good
any notes that come in aren't detrimental to undoing everything all the work you've done nice
if you want to get a sense of just how much work the art department and the various teams
did to make this house look like it does take a look upstairs which is undressed and
you'll get to see what a house that was built in a few weeks and is not permanent looks like
all right now we're in egon's dining room and i want to talk about the logistics of a set like
this because there's a lot of obviously there are a lot of moving parts in pieces but also as you're
we've been watching the last couple days as you shoot in different rooms the crew will gather in
different rooms to watch video and to stay out of the shot and stuff so how do you maintain
continuity of a space like this where someone like me wants to come and pick up everything lots of
photos the best thing that can has ever happened to the film industry so far is the cell phone
camera really because before that we were working off of polaroids and those are hard to see close
details hard to see close details and hard to keep in you have to have binders of just from days days
and days but with the camera we're able to take detailed photos and then go through and put things
back we also utilize other tricks such as uv pens where we'll mark things on tables so if they
do have to move we can quickly put things back because you've marked it in invisible ultraviolet
exactly oh that is gonna hit it with that or even small tape so if we have small colorful tape i'll
place it on on tables on ground wherever it's not gonna ruin finishes and place something back but
ultimately the photo is king because no matter what that's not coming off oh this is a very
compelling little space right here because this feels like it's telling a story of egon sits here
and works on small mechanical devices and actually i've already seen a couple of tools that i haven't
seen before like how much of your own maker dum informs a space like this when you're decorating
it must be a lot it is yeah absolutely and people who would go through and make this uh
the individual that did do this one he is a great little maker and he goes through and uses the
tools that he finds really intriguing and he'll go through and make sure that everything that he
would dream of is in the set right and within the course of filming this is in one day this could
be a live set and then in another day uh jason reitman could be sitting here with a monitor
directing action in the other in the studio 100 all the time i've been on a lot of different
sets and like when you sit on a science fiction like uh spaceship set for instance it's easy to
see the work because nothing there is familiar you understand people spent days and weeks and months
designing and implementing and executing the set when you come onto a set like this it feels like
you're just in someone's messy house but the same amount of work went into this am i right
yeah absolutely i mean and sometimes it's a little easier to go with what's known right uh just
because now we have things we have to we can work with we have uh techniques that are already known
uh with something like this though we don't know what egon's been up to right oh these are nice
little circular okay i'm not gonna i really like want to touch every last thing but um as i've
been looking around the house my favorite space so far is egon study can we go there absolutely
i keep finding cool things about this set and the stack of books which i assume were bound together
is even cooler than i thought because there's an earthquake that happens in the film
and this rocks back and forth so check this out oh that freaks me out
that's oh look it's got a little timeline and everything moves
movie magic there's so much storytelling in this room um a storytelling about obsession
about information about clearly egon is trying to solve a problem with this murder wall he's
built here with all the diagrams can you walk me through decorating a space like this specifically
yes absolutely to focus on the madness we have to show that his madness on a surface level without
showing how not mad he actually is now i also know that this set while we are in a rarity which is a
fully dressed interior that is on an exterior set you guys are moving this house or there's a second
house being built on a sound stage correct will you then be replicating a good portion of this
set on that sound stage as well replicating and moving the exact images over yes so we'll actually
through our photographs and continuity we will have everything packed up labeled
numbered and then reprocessed back at the set that second part sounds like it's maybe even
a little harder than the initial dress it sure can be because so much from when it's
initially addressed to when the film crew shows up changes right so anything can move any small thing
and depending on how close and how important of a set it is so much as the turning of an envelope
or a simple flashlight missing could be you're trying not to leave anything that the audience
that will call the audience to the idea that this is fiction exactly trying to make it look as
realistic suspend the disbelief oh right did i see that there's some practical effect with the mirror
simply for filming oh really yeah i just noticed when i went into the storeroom back here that the
mirror was removable it's just if the camera sees it if the camera sees a reflection we can
angle it oh that's so cool part of our many jobs of camera support as well to make sure that they
are comfortable and able to get the shots that are going to make it look the best that is
really neat i thought you meant for filming camera through here but you just mean to keep the camera
from being seen in uh exactly reflection oh my gosh that's really neat can you tell me
how you how you come about doing this for a living me personally yeah it was an accident
what were you doing at the time i was showing up to build shelves i didn't know who i was
supposed to talk to uh so i show up to a giant building and they say we just have a paycheck for
you just to build shelves walking around looking for anyone who looks like they're in charge yeah
i find someone i say hi my name is alec i'm here i'm here to build shelves
since i don't have shelter to build would you like to cut styrofoam and be insect deck instead that's
great i need to be creative and get paid for it for at least a week and you showed a facility
yeah absolutely you show an aptitude and a work ethic and that's that's really a lot of what takes
you along the way that's fantastic are you still having fun doing stuff like this this looks like
absolutely absolutely yes every day even the worst days is a great day it is as much fun to
look at as it looks like you have making it yes great team people and yeah they do amazing work
going again going again