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Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Chapter 01)

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Chapter 01, the beginning of the movie, features the death of Egon Spengler.

Cast[]

Listed as they appear in film.

Equipment[]

Environmental[]

Locations[]

Plot[]

The Sony logo and title card appeared first. Thunder clapped as the Columbia Pictures title card appeared next. The screen faded to black. The Bron Creative title card appeared and was followed by the Ghost Corps title sequence appears. Mooglie flew into the No Ghost logo. "Columbia Pictures Presents" and "In Association With Bron Creative" appeared last.

Late in the evening, a psychokinetic atmospheric disturbance churned above a mountain. Periodic lightning strikes occurred. Suddenly, crossed proton streams shot up at the disturbance.

Egon Spengler, now an older man in silhouette, speeding away from the mountain in a GMC utility truck. He drove over a bridge. A metal gate that read "Shandor Mining Co." and "Est 1927" came into view. He crashed through a locked chain link fence adorned with warning signs, danger signs, and a sign saying the bridge was closed. One side of the fence fell over. Something invisible rushed past. A Trap containing a captured entity was hidden under a sack to the side of Egon's seat. The red beacon indicating a successful capture sounded off. He turned left past Spinners Roller Hop in Summerville proper. He checked the Trap then covered it as he drove past farmland. An invisible entity attacked the side of the truck. The truck flipped over several times into a barley field and came to a stop upside down.

Egon hobbled out of the field with the Trap to a farmhouse. On the porch, he threw a lever on a column upwards and three silo capacitors nearby surged on. The ground hummed. Dirt vibrated. Egon held out the Trap. The invisible entity stepped out of the field. Each step the entity took could be seen on the dirt and heard. Egon stepped on a Trap pedal but the capacitors died out. He tried again several times but nothing happened. The entity growled. He ran into the house and dug through a drawer. He took out a P.K.E. Meter. It detected the entity. Sounds made by the entity were heard. The lights flickered off.

Egon placed the Trap into a secret space and sat down on an armchair. He tapped his boot. An ominous smoke billowed into the room behind him. A vague Terror Dog form manifested in the smoke right behind him. It was Zuul in her Sentinel Terror Dog form. He pressed a rear-side button and the P.K.E. Meter arms rose up into a taser setting. Terror Dog arms burst out of the chair and grabbed Egon.

Zuul yowled. A pink P.K.E. wisp shot out of the house. Egon's body was lifeless on the armchair. The P.K.E. Meter, now under the chair, registered the presence of an entity.

The Ghostbusters: Afterlife logo appeared.

Trivia[]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife Trivia[]

  • For the opening of the movie, Cynthia Millar performed and recorded with the ondes Martenot from Abbey Road Studios in London. She previously performed with the instrument for the first movie.[1]
  • Jason Reitman asked Cynthia Miller what she could do with the ondes Martenot that was never done in the first movie. She went one full octave lower.[2]
  • Even noise was sampled from the original score's multi-track recording. At a loud enough volume, viewers can hear a noise floor shift.[3]
  • Bob Gunton was the primary actor who portrayed Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.[4]
  • Bob Gunton wore no prosthesis nor glasses during filming. He only wore a pompadour wig and dot on his face for special effects reference.[5]
  • Greg Schlosser, a stunt driver, portrayed Egon in the opening scene when he drove the truck from the mine to the farm. He wore a sculpt done by Mitch Devane based on approved art done by Arjen Tuiten after Violet Ramis-Stiel visited the shop to look at his concepts. Bob Gunton acted in the non-driving segments.[6][7]
  • The entrance to the Shandor Mining Company was the Dorothy Ferry Bridge on Highway 848 that crosses Red Deer River in Drumheller.
  • The back of the Shandor Mining Truck indicates the brand is a GMC Ivanbuilt.
    • Ivanbuilt is a stand-in for Peterbilt.
    • Ivanbuilt refers to Ivan Reitman and "Built in 1946" references his birth year.
    • The die for the Ivan Reitman easter egg was made at Cornfield Customs then technician Pete Watkins pounded it out using old school techniques.[8]
  • There were only three left in existence of the truck bed chosen by Jason Reitman for Egon's Shandor Mining Company truck. The team made a replica based on pictures they could find. [9]
  • Parts of the Shandor truck have panels replicated with "Oh So Soft Aluminum" for the stunt. On cue, the technicians would trigger a hidden mechanism wirelessly to suck in the panel at the moment when Zuul is scripted to ram the side of the truck. At the same time, the stunt driver had to trigger the actuator system hidden inside the box on the right side of the truck body then the nitrogen arm under the truck performed the flip. They did light rehearsals to get the timing down but they had only one try to film the scene.[10][11][12][13][14]
  • The diner that the truck turns at, Spinners Roller Hop, was a set built in Beiseker, Alberta at the Apple Pie Diner and Gas Station.
  • The Farmhouse was built south of Calgary at Range Road 21A & 242 Avenue West, Foothills County, AB T0L 1W0, Canada.
  • Three of the location scouts independently logged the farmland that would eventually be used for the Farmhouse set.[15]
  • The farmland used for the Farmhouse set is mainly for canola crops.[16]
  • Everything at the Farmhouse was struck down and removed after production and returned to the way it was before production.[17]
  • Production designer Francois Audouy studied homes from "Psycho" to "Days of Heaven" for research in the making of the Farmhouse.[18]
  • An earlier concept design of the Farmhouse was more of a contemporary farmhouse.[19]
  • For locations like the Farmhouse, Bill Ives used a drone and did a couple of passes around the set location chosen then the images were uploaded into a computer and photogrammetry was done then set design was done in earnest.[20]
  • The antennas on top of the Farmhouse is a nod to the equipment on Ecto-1's roof rack.[21]
  • The Farmhouse was built from scratch twice, once in location in Calgary, Canada and on a sound stage.[22]
  • The production crew scouted dozens of farmhouses and barns in Alberta but they had either one great landscape, barn, or farmhouse and not all three. Eventually, they found a property with a beautiful knoll and great view up onto a ridge.[23]
  • The barn was 130 years old when it was found and it belonged to the Gibson family east of where the Farmhouse was built.[24][25]
  • The barn was found as is with a collapsed roof. The crew took it apart plank by plank. There was old lead paint peeling off so the team had to add a transparent paint to seal it up. A construction team in hazmat suits logged all the pieces of the barn and rebuilt it on the site chosen for the farmhouse which was a couple hours away. The team also had to add hidden structures to keep the barn struturally sound but still look decrepit.[26][27][28]
  • The glass used for the house was antique glass they bought, cut down to size, and laminated for safety.[29]
  • The wood used to build the house was brand new but it was theatrically painted to look old. Prefab took place months prior to the first day of filming at the Farmhouse set on location. Treatments were used to make it peel naturally.[30]
  • The lever for the Trap Field was moved at the last minute. A post was switched out to make it 4x4.[31]
  • The billowing smoke was a practical effect using dry ice.[32]
  • The P.K.E. Meter props in Afterlife were worked on by ISS.[33]
  • The original P.K.E. Meter props from the 1984 movie were 3-D scanned and the props used in Afterlife were made from those scans.[34]
  • Buttons on the P.K.E. Meter props in Afterlife can control the brightness and dimness of the lights and the animation on the screen.[35][36]
  • The arms on the P.K.E. Meter prop with the taser function swing up when the red button on the back is engaged.[37]
  • Zuul attacks Egon in a similar way she attacked Dana Barrett in the first movie with multiple arms popping out of the chair.
  • Arjen Tuiten, Special Make-Up & Live Acton Creature Effects Designer, puppeteered one of the Zuul arms. Tuiten's shop built the arms. There is more footage filmed of Zuul attacking Egon in the chair and is "quite violent."[38]
  • Zuul leaves the Farmhouse in the form of a pink energy wisp like when the ghosts are released from the Containment Unit in the first movie, Chapter 21: Out of Biz.

Tertiary Canon Trivia[]

References[]

  1. ↑ Parade "Ghostbusters Then and Now! See the Original Cast Today and the New Stars of Ghostbusters: Afterlife" 10/29/2021 Line reads: "Those mysterious tones that foreshadow something's going to happen? They're produced by an ondes martenot, an old French electronic keyboard. Cynthia Millar performed on it for the original movie and for the opening of the new film. She recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London."
  2. ↑ Dobly YouTube "Embracing Sonic Nostalgia with "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" | Sound + Image Lab" 32:53-33:16 11/23/2021 Will Files says: "And it goes like a full octave deeper and he was saying on-during the recording, he was like what can you do with this instrument that we never did in the first film? And she goes 'Well, it does go lower than we ever used so that's why you know Rob built in that extra-goes one just full octave lower that it's a very satisfying moment right in the beginning of the movie."
  3. ↑ Dobly YouTube "Embracing Sonic Nostalgia with "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" | Sound + Image Lab" 5:50-6:25 11/23/2021 Will Files says: "We even sampled the noise from the original when as soon as the Sony logo comes on if you-if you're listening at a loud enough level you'll hear a noise floor shift and that's actually the noise that we sampled from the original multi-track recording of the-of the score and it just gives it a little flavor. It was one of those things we put it in and we're like this is going to be silly. We put it in, we're like 'nope, that actually really feels good so it's-there's a noise floor to this film that it's not normal for 2021."
  4. ↑ Yahoo! "The Wrap ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife:’ How Egon Was Brought Back Through Cutting Edge VFX" 12/10/2021 Article reads: "He also appears in the movie's cold open, which establishes Egon's demise and his existence as a shut-in in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma."
  5. ↑ The Containment Unit YouTube "Bob Gunton (Ghost Farmer, Ghostbusters: Afterlife Interview!" 25:31-26:01 3/3/2022 Bob Gunton says: "No, that was part of the digital restructuring. The only thing I wore was just the pompadour. And not even the glasses because they wanted to make sure the glasses were exactly in relationship to how Harold wore them, what they look like, etc. So I put a couple dots on my face but that was basically all there was."
  6. ↑ Ghostbusters Interdimensional Crossrip "#743 - Arjen Tuiten, Special Make-Up & Live Acton Creature Effects Designer" 21:58-23:20 11/29/2021 Arjen Tuiten says: "The idea was ever from the beginning. Jason is someone who knows exactly what he wants when it comes to storyboards and from very early on we wanted to recreate him but not show him in full light because no matter how good the makeup is or the visual effects, it's not Harold. And we weren't out to do that. We just wanted to create an essence to tell the story. And there was a stunt make up on...I forgot his name but Greg Schlosser I believe. So we did a stunt make up which you see the actor wearing in the truck driving. It's only going to be seen as a silhouette. The hair. And the nose. And the reflection on the glasses. It was sculpted by Mitch Devane. And then I did some concepts. Jason asked me to do some concepts of what would Egon look like now and I did a few where he had a bigger beard. A smaller beard. Different hair. Where he's a little more slim. And I remember the day Violet Ramis coming by the shop to take a look at things. I don't remember if you were there or not."'
  7. ↑ The Containment Unit YouTube "Bob Gunton (Ghost Farmer, Ghostbusters: Afterlife Interview!" 7:07-8:11 3/3/2022 Bob Gunton says: "I only had scenes actually written for the end of the movie, climax of the movie, but early on they do a little teaser with the--a car going through country roads and the dirt farm it's called and the guy driving it, I mean I'm not sure everybody understood immediately that was Egon Spengler, but it was also Bob Gunton. That was my introduction to what the character was going to look like that I was going to play in these scenes. And of course I had nothing to do with the driving of the car or anything. That was somebody else virtualized but anyway I had great fun doing it and also, especially in view of the fact that Ivan has passed away sadly."
  8. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 4:40-5:06 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "So back home in Los Angeles, got one of our technicians Pete Watkins sat there and hand pounded that out. They made a die at Cornfield Customs and then the guys back at Jam sat there with him and worked it out and skinned it but he sat there after the die was done and then pressed it and then he actually sat there with us on a bag underneath it, just old school technique, built three of these and this is the one that's on this truck."
  9. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 4:05-4:28 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "We had to make these truck beds. They didn't exist, they're... Jason chose a truck bed that's Unobtainium, you know and it's like there's three left that we could find so we had to make a replica off of pictures and scale it but while we were doing it back home, we just thought it'd be a cool touch to add a tribute to Dad and the hardest part is just verifying that is his birth year."
  10. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 5:48-6:05 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "We've rigged a bunch of panels on this truck also that will be sucked in and so we basically some of these panels are replicated out of what's called "Oh So Soft Aluminum" or O-Temper Aluminum and we put mechanisms, bimbos on the inside with the solenoid and on cue you just suck them in."
  11. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 6:08-6:22 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "We actually did flat rivets and unfortunately they're in paint and body right now but we built a plate with the eye on the back and then we used old technology from you know like aircraft and just hit the blond riveted flat rivets and then just did a little bit of Bondo on top and and hit it."
  12. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 6:44-6:55 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "And then when it finally you know he loses control and the roof is caving in which we've rigged we hit-the stunt guy will hit a button and then there's an arm below here, a big nitrogen arm that'll take the car and he'll just flip it and it'll flip this thing up on this."
  13. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 6:58-7:35 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "When we're going down the road, we'll have everything on wireless so we'll just be in a chase vehicle looking at the screen and we'll hit the button. As for the flipper, that'll be the stunt guy actually has his own button on board, is a little programmable logic controller that once he hits that button, it just starts off a chain reaction for the big flip arm. The valve opens, arm goes down, hits a limit switch, the computer then says retract and high so by the time he's almost upside down, it's already gone, you're going where did it go from so inside of that box right there we've hidden in here is a whole actuator system."
  14. ↑ Tested YouTube "Practical Special Effects of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 8:42-8:51 2/9/2022 Elia Popov says: "And also once you flip, there's no take two. We get one take at making it all work so rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, go for it."
  15. ↑ Tested YouTube "Creating Ghostbusters: Afterlife's On Location Set!" 6:29-6:33 1/19/2022 Bruce Brownstein says: "But it's funny of the scouts, three of us and stopped and photographed this hill."
  16. ↑ Tested YouTube "Creating Ghostbusters: Afterlife's On Location Set!" 3:59-4:19 1/19/2022 Bruce Brownstein says: "So we came here in the winter and we looked at this landscape and it had been a canola crop prior so it it was stubby with snow but we knew we wanted corn, we just didn't know exactly how much corn so in the end, the production designer and Jason, they figured out okay the footprint of the house, the barn, these silos, the dirt field and corn around it."
  17. ↑ Tested YouTube "Creating Ghostbusters: Afterlife's On Location Set!" 4:45-4:56 1/19/2022 Bruce Brownstein says: "No, our obligation is to return this land to the way it was exact full crop field. We'll remove all the pads, the roads, the gravel parking lots and put it all back the way it was."
  18. ↑ Jason Reitman instagram 11/21/2021
  19. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Visits Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Art Department!" 9:24-9:38 2/1/2022 Bill Ives says: "And we started with something a little simpler. At the very beginning, it was more of a contemporary farmhouse, you know, but then we've changed it into a Victorian kind of style and really creeped it up and got all the Egon pieces."
  20. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Visits Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Art Department!" 10:59-11:18 2/1/2022 Bill Ives says: "So what I do with that is I have a little drone that I fly around the location, do a couple passes and then bring it into the computer and do a photogrammetry based on that so when we design the sets, we're designing them on the actual geography of the location."
  21. ↑ IGN YouTube "Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Exclusive Trailer Breakdown with Director Jason Reitman" 02:06-02:14 7/26/2021 Jason Reitman says: "First of all, I'm gonna point out that if you look at the top of the house, you see all these antennas and you know it was meant to kind of echo the top of Ecto-1."
  22. ↑ IGN YouTube "Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Exclusive Trailer Breakdown with Director Jason Reitman" 02:30-02:36 7/26/2021 Jason Reitman says: "This was a house that we actually built from scratch we built twice, once on this location and then once on a soundstage."
  23. ↑ Go Creative Show YouTube "Ghostbusters Afterlife Production Design (with Francois Audouy) GCS291" 11:53-13:03 12/6/2021 Francois Audouy says: "We had-first we looked at dozens and dozens of actual farmhouses and barns and things in in Alberta and we would always find like a great like a great barn with no house or a great house with no barn or a barn on a non-interesting piece of landscape or a house you know we needed a great canvas, a great house and a great barn and you could never-we could only get one of those three things so we ended up-I-I really pushed hard to to do something where we would have absolute control and make it as good as we could possibly make it so we found a really beautiful knoll that was frozen over when and covered in snow when we first went to go scout it but it had this great view up onto this ridge so that we could put the house above the horizon very much like the Psycho house is-you know-you're always looking up at the house with the sky in the background and and we started from scratch and we-I did a lot of research looking at actual vernacular of farmhouse architecture from the Midwest and Oklahoma."
  24. ↑ Tested YouTube "Creating Ghostbusters: Afterlife's On Location Set!" 2:42-2:55 1/19/2022 Bruce Brownstein says: "There was a--the farm we really liked, the Gibson family, they had this barn on their property and it looked pretty much as it does now and so the idea was let's buy that barn, bring it and make it part of our set."
  25. ↑ Tested YouTube "Creating Ghostbusters: Afterlife's On Location Set!" 3:48-3:53 1/19/2022 Bruce Brownstein says: "It's the same barn material that sat on that farm for 130 years."
  26. ↑ Go Creative Show YouTube "Ghostbusters Afterlife Production Design (with Francois Audouy) GCS291" 13:04-13:26 12/6/2021 Francois Audouy says: "We got lucky and we found it in a magnificent barn with a collapsed roof that we were able to salvage and take apart plank by plank and re-erect on site which was really kind of-I wasn't sure that was going to work but it was a miraculous feat of engineering by by the construction team so that bind-"
  27. ↑ Go Creative Show YouTube "Ghostbusters Afterlife Production Design (with Francois Audouy) GCS291" 13:33-14:19 12/6/2021 Francois Audouy says: "When we scouted the barn, it was kind of remarkable it was still standing, it looked like it was ready to fall over at any minute you know so we had to-it was also old peeling lead paint you you it was an environmental disaster area and so we had to go in with a team and seal everything with a transparent paint basically to seal all of that peeling paint and then disassemble everything with a construction team basically in hazmat suits, log all of the you know all of the pieces of the barn so that we could put it back together like a big puzzle piece and then transport it a couple of hours away to our new location."
  28. ↑ Go Creative Show YouTube "Ghostbusters Afterlife Production Design (with Francois Audouy) GCS291" 14:25-14:45 12/6/2021 Francois Audouy says: "And another hard thing well not just the hard thing but another challenge was then then you have to put it together in a safer way that is not going to just fall down on top of the crew and so they were able to put all of this structure invisibly into the house-into the barn to make it appear decrepit but be completely structurally sound."
  29. ↑ Tested YouTube "The Production Design of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 2:19-2:29 1/26/2022 François Audouy says: "So we found old glass. We bought old glass, cut it down to size and then actually had to laminate it for safety so it's laminated so because you can't get anti-glass with tempered so that's the whole process as well."'
  30. ↑ Tested YouTube "The Production Design of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 2:34-2:58 1/26/2022 François Audouy says: "This is all brand new theatrically painted to appear old but we started prefabbing this house months ago in a parking lot near our stages and literally starting with brand new wood and then layering all those-all the five layers of paint to make it look like it was really really old and then we used treatments to make it peel naturally."'
  31. ↑ Tested YouTube "The Production Design of Ghostbusters: Afterlife!" 9:58-10:13 1/26/2022 François Audouy says: "Just the lever that's on the porch changed position at the very last minutes and we switched out the post to make it a four inch by four inch post so those so those things you have to stay on top of it and document almost forensically."'
  32. ↑ IGN YouTube "Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Exclusive Trailer Breakdown with Director Jason Reitman" 05:00-05:13 7/26/2021 Jason Reitman says: "First, you have the shot of the dry ice coming out of the chimney. And this is just another example of how much we wanted to do things practically. I think these days, you know, they would just do that all CG but we wanted to do practical effects as much as humanly possible."
  33. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Inspects Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Hero Props!" 6:18-6:22 10/18/2021 Ben Eadie says: "So that was done by ISS and I believe they did chrome paint."'
  34. ↑ dredmakerroberts Tik Tok "Were original shoe polishers used for the PKE meters?" 00:25-00:27 12/11/2021 Ben Eadie says: "The originals were used. They were 3-D scanned."
  35. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Inspects Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Hero Props!" 7:15-7:24 10/18/2021 Ben Eadie says: "And you can change the brightness and dimness of the lights -- is handled by some of the buttons here. That shifts the animation."'
  36. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Inspects Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Hero Props!" 7:29-7:38 10/18/2021 Ben Eadie says: "And then you will handle how bright it is so if you're in a dim-lit area and it's overpowering and things, you can bring down the lights a little bit."'
  37. ↑ Tested YouTube "Adam Savage Inspects Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Hero Props!" 8:16-8:25 10/18/2021 Ben Eadie says: "Now the red button on the bottom. Of course, it's a dummy one but just giver her a little nudge and then you have the arcs."'
  38. ↑ Ghostbusters Interdimensional Crossrip "#743 - Arjen Tuiten, Special Make-Up & Live Acton Creature Effects Designer" 40:17-40:37 11/29/2021 Arjen Tuiten says: "We did build the chair arms that grab Egon in the beginning of the film. I puppeteered one of them but unfortunately, the cut is so fast, we don't see quite what they are. Because what we shot was quite violent actually. Grabbing him and basically that's it. That's the end of Egon."'

Gallery[]

Primary Canon[]

Images were grabbed from the Blu-ray by Paul Rudoff. Black bars have been removed, which leaves all images at a 2.40:1 aspect ratio.

Behind the Scenes[]

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