Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Chapter 10)

Chapter 10 has the back story of Garraka and Possessor tries to pull off a heist.

Cast[]

Listed as they appear in film.

Phoebe Spengler
Dr. Ray Stantz
Podcast
Dr. Hubert Wartzki
Samudari (animated sequence)
Fire Masters (animated sequence)

Entities[]

Garraka (animated sequence)
Possessor
Library ghost

Equipment[]

Particle Thrower

Items[]

Explorations To The Indus Valley
Orb of Garraka (stone carving only)

Vehicles[]

Ecto-C

Environmental[]

Death Chill (animated sequence)

Places/Locations[]

Plot[]

Dr. Hubert Wartzki led Phoebe Spengler, Podcast, and Ray Stantz down a spiral staircase. the last recorded sighting of the orb was carved in stone. He welcomed them to the old library and took out Explorations To The Indus Valley and showed them photographs of the carving. He told them the folklore surrounding a phantom god named Garraka, who was imprisoned in the orb. Hubert told them 4000 years ago, Garraka served a bloodthirsty king named Samudari who wished to rule Asia. Together, they conquered half of central Asia. One noteworthy military campaign was called the Battle of the Seven Armies. Samudari became suspicious of Garraka's ambitions and had him captured, branded, broken, and disfigured. His horns, the source of his greatest strength, were forcibly ripped from his head. Garraka waged war on humanity and went on a murder spree. He planned to raise an undead army, wage war with humans, and bring about a second Ice Age. He channeled human's fears into a weapon. Ray translated the name into the "Death Chill," the power to kill by fear itself. Hubert found it so cool and continued about how Garraka was trapped in a brass orb by the Fire Masters, a roving band of mythical spirit catchers, in greater South Asia. Phoebe realized they were kind of like the Ghostbusters. He asked them if they were willing to entertain a little historical gossip.

Hubert opened a case holding several wax cylinders of 19th century recordings. He presented one that recorded Mary Todd Lincoln saying the F-word because she saw a moth. He then played a wax cylinder recording of the chant that could free Garraka. He explained it used to belong to a group of rich assholes who stole relics and artifacts called the Manhattan Adventurers Society and during a party in the middle of July they took the orb out and played the chant that could open it then everyone in the room froze to death. Possessor, a ghost stowing away in Podcast's audiovisual gear, made its move. It possessed the phonograph, shot the cylinder into a trash bag, possessed the trash bag and took off running. They chased after it into the Archives. The Library ghost shushed them as they ran past the aisle she was in. Ray paused and peeked into the aisle. The ghost shifted into her monstrous form and charged. Ray screamed and ran. Outside the library, Phoebe and Podcast checked a pile of trash bags. Ray thought it would be impossible to find Possessor. Hubert spotted the garbage bag and cylinder at Patience the Lion's feet. Hubert boosted Ray up so he could reach the cylinder but they soon learned Possessor had possessed Patience. It roared and leaped down. Ray instructed to Podcast and Phoebe to push "the button" on Ecto-C. Civilians fled the steps while Hubert hid behind a sign and Ray fell on his back face to face with Patience. Podcast eventually unlocked a Particle Thrower from the Ecto-C's sidecar. Phoebe fired and sliced Patience's tail off. The thrower glitched as Patience turned its attention to Phoebe. Podcast frantically pushed the buttons. Patience leaped towards Phoebe. She blasted the statue and the cylinder to pieces just in time but the debris rained down on the police and their vehicles just as they arrived. Phoebe stood up only to be ordered to put her hands up.

Trivia[]

Interior library scenes were filmed in the United Kingdom at the Natural History Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire for the old library scene and at the London Library for the stacks and reading room scenes. The "old library" portion was filmed in Tring.^[1]
Gil Kenan worked with Marcus Armitage of Studio AKA for the animated sequence.^[2]
Marcus Armitage and his animation crew took 2D imagery in the style of hieroglyphics and rendered them in grayscale and transposed it into 3D to create the sense it was carved out of stone then for the actual animation, realistic textures were used to mimic the rock surfaces and cracks alongside dynamic 3D camera movements.^[3]
As part of their research, Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan looked up the lore of central Asia, specifically the Harappan civilization.^[4]
Hubert mentions the Manhattan Adventurers Society.
The 1904 event at the start of the movie is mentioned to have taken place in mid-July.
The gag with the Edison cylinder phonograph was done with simple timers and a safety system composed of a cam and micro-switches to prevent a misfire.^[5]
The trash bag had footholds for the puppeteer to step into and hobble around in during filming. ^[6]
For the first form of the Library ghost, Visual Effects Producer Nicole Rowley searched through hundreds of pages in the original log from the post production office used for the first movie and found a mark named "70mm librarian." She arranged for it to be shipped to the Sony lot from a mine where it was archived. The 70mm reel contained raw and pristine unused takes of Ruth Oliver performing the scene of the Library ghost shushing Peter Venkman. It was used to create the new performance seen in Frozen Empire.^[7]
Kevin Mangold puppeteered the Library ghost's left arm.^[8]
The exteriors are a mix of second unit filming from New York and a set of the library exterior built at Winnersh Film Studios in London.
The main buildings across from the library and everything beyond the first intersection was added in from footage taken by three camera arrays. Cars and pedestrians in the mid-ground were removed then computer generated cars, roads, and foliage were used to help block and everything else was repainted. The array footage also helped with cues such as the changing traffic lights.^[9]
On the steps of the New York Public Library, the advertisement behind Ray and Hubert when the Possessor Ghost in the lion attacks has a reference to Dana Barrett as part of a performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor by the Five Boroughs Symphony Orchestra.
Ecto-C was inspired by Dan Aykroyd's Harley-Davidson Softail motorcycle.^[10]
The key chain's logo was initially made only for the prop department by Richard Gray, a prop modeller. Gray made vinyl stickers and it ended up the crew's T-shirts and hoodies then Ellen Gould made a bunch of keyrings with it and one ended up on the Ecto-C's keys.^[11]
There is a goof when the police arrive at the library. In one shot, the police cars are Crown Victoria models then in the next shot, the Crown Victoria models are gone and replaced with modern Ford Taurus models.

References[]

↑ Gil Kenan (2024). Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire- Commentary (2024) (Blu-ray ts. 58:22-58:29). Sony Pictures. Gil Kenan says: "This scene was filmed in a village in rural England, a village called Tring."
↑ ReelBlend Podcast YouTube "Old, Unused 'Ghostbusters' Footage Led To One Of 'Frozen Empires' Best Moments | Gil Kenan Interview" 15:07-16:01 3/22/2024 Gil Kenan says: "This very very tiny animation studio in London called Studio AKA. I worked with them on my last film A Boy Called Christmas, too, for a shadow story sequence. There's an animator there named Marcus Armitage who I called up, 'I have an idea.' I did a bunch of little drawings, storyboards for it and I sent him my reference images and it was just the most incredibly dynamic process. I felt like while I was making big giant movie, I was making a short film that was really personal and really fun. It was almost my kind of salvation where I would get out of meeting where I was talking about waging war on a massive scale and I would come back to this kind of tranquil Zen."
↑ Skwigly "Studio AKA animate sequence for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" 5/1/2024 Line reads: "Given Ghostbusters' cinematic heritage, our mandate from Kenan was to craft a sequence that unveils Garraka's genesis with clarity and visual allure, all while honouring the franchise's essence. To deliver this, Armitage and his crew employed a blend of 2D hieroglyphic-style imagery, meticulously rendered in grayscale, before being transposed into a three-dimensional realm – as if they had been carved into stone. Realistic textures mimicking rock surfaces and cracks were infused alongside dynamic 3D camera movements, guiding us through the narrative. Armitage, in collaboration with our 3D artists, rigorously tested iterations of this idea until they found an approach that struck the perfect balance between impact and efficiency."
↑ Gil Kenan (2024). Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire- Commentary (2024) (Blu-ray ts. 1:13:50-1:14:29). Sony Pictures. Gil Kenan says: "I should mention that, uh – because I was busy talking about methodology – when we were looking earlier at the parables of Garraka, that in our original building blocks for the character and his mythology; Jason and I looked into some of the very ancient, sort of, uh, almost prehistorical lore of Central Asia, and specifically the Harappan civilization. We were interested in their, uh, relationship between mortals and gods."
↑ Adam Savage's Tested "The "Possessed" Props of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire!" 12:18-12:36 3/21/2024 Adam Savage says: "We just got basic timers. So I can adjust when it happens, I can adjust the duration then I've got a cam here with little micro-switches so it can't ever fire when the handle's in that position."
↑ Entertainment Weekly "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director breaks down how they created Baggie, the haunted trash bag" 3/25/2024 Gil Kenan says: "The SFX department created a trash bag that had a couple of footholds for a puppeteer to step into so that you could hobble around, so that I could block the sequences. The performance of that trash bag with a performer's legs stuck into it is so hilarious and so close to the way that the final animation was created because it just created this loose, weird, goofy movement that I just loved so much."
↑ ReelBlend Podcast YouTube "Old, Unused 'Ghostbusters' Footage Led To One Of 'Frozen Empires' Best Moments | Gil Kenan Interview" 30:14-32:13 3/22/2024 Gil Kenan says: "But the element that I still needed to figure out was the human performance of that ghost before the transformation process and Nicole Rowley, who is the visual effects producer on my film, went through the entire log of the original post-production office, the editing room for the 1984 film which means as they closed down that film once it got into theaters, the assistant editors wrote down every scrap of film that they had and were archiving. She went through hundreds of pages and found one interesting marking on a log book that said "70 mm librarian" and that's kind of all it said and she went through the work of having that archival bit of film pulled from the mines wherever they store this, like Utah, and we got in a box, a pristine roll of 70 mm film that had not been unspooled since 1984. We put it on the big screen at Sony and we had no idea what we would find on there and the image flickered to life and it was the most extraordinary experience. It felt like we had just pushed a button on the DeLorean to travel to 1984. There was raw incredible pristine 70 mm material of Richard Edlund, the visual effects supervisor on the '84 film, filming the librarian shushing the Ghostbusters. So we were able to use takes that have never been used before in Ghostbusters to create a new performance out of that archival material and it felt like movie magic."
↑ Extraplasm Podcast "Episode 80: Extraplasm Gets Slimed With Kevin Mangold of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" 38:12-38:21 4/17/2024 Kevin Mangold says: "I puppeteered spiders and all sorts of things. And part of the Library ghost in this movie. Yeah. I was the left arm."
↑ Sony Pictures Imageworks – VFX "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire | SIGGRAPH 2024 Production Session" 52:06-53:03 10/2/2024 Andrew Bain says: "And after some trial and error, we found that we could still use the array footage for the main building across the street and everything beyond that first intersection. The biggest challenge for us now was removing any mid-ground cars and pedestrians from the footage. To successfully rebuild the mid-ground, we utilized the CG roads, cars, and foliage to help block what we could and then repainted everything else. The array footage also provided us with some useful cues such as the changing of the traffic light. Animation took this cue to bring the cars to a stop and this eliminated the need to extend the cars' animation into the area of the footage, keeping this divide allowed the area of the background to--to keep the filmed area details in the background which greatly contributed to establishing the atmosphere of New York City."
↑ Gil Kenan (2024). Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire- Commentary (2024) (Blu-ray ts. 53:43-54:03). Sony Pictures. Gil Kenan says: "I'll talk about it more in a few minutes, but it was directly inspired by the Harley Softail that Dan Aykroyd himself used to ride down to--down from Canada to New York City when he was first starting out on Saturday Night Live in 1975."
↑ The Ghostbusters Reference Library facebook Richard Gray post 4/14/2024 Richard Gray says: "Hay All, I worked on GB:FE as a Prop Modeller and have had some ppl DM me to confirm if I designed the logo on the motorbike keys. I did but it was only ment to be a logo for the Prop making Crew. I made vinyl stickers and it ended up on our crew T's and Hoodies. Ellen also made a bunch keyrings with it and one ended up on the bike keys."