As part of this year’s Sony Creators Conference, an entirely new Ghostbusters short film was presented that returned the Ecto-1 to the streets of New York City, thwarting a menacing marshmallow man, all filmed using real-time game engine technology, said to be a proof-of-concept project.
As our friend Jason at Ghostbusters News writes: From Sony Pictures Entertainment, in collaboration with Ghost Corps, Pixomondo, PlayStation Studios, and Epic Games, the project is powered by the Unreal Engine, being used in conjunction with a motion capture stage to film visual effects shots, pushing for photorealism in real-time, while providing filmmakers with more accessible storytelling options.
Being directed by Ghostbusters: Afterlife‘s Jason Reitman, the short, which can be found above, provides a small glimpse at just what is possible, with Reitman talking up the benefits and providing his impressions, saying:
“As a director, there’s nothing more important to me than performance. Pixmondo gave me the opportunity to direct a real-life actor and get a performance out of a digital character that I would have never been able to do if I was standing over an artist’s shoulder.
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“I mean, the benefit, you know, is really clear, you know, all we want as filmmakers is to have more time and more scope. It’s the idea that I could be on a stage and be able to set the time of day, direct my actor, and not worry about what time rush hour is going to be, what time the sun was going down. To have control of the environment like that really changed my view about what was possible.”
Set in a highly realistic digital rendition of New York City, the two-minute feature was revealed to be filmed in just one day, something that would not be possible using traditional methods. Reitman, as part of the Sony Creators Conference presentation, compared the production to the recent second unit filming of the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel.
“If we’re shooting in New York City, like we just did on this last Ghostbusters film, you’re thinking about how many shots you can get done in a day, and in New York City, it’s very few because you are very limited in scope, and there is a kind of natural flow of traffic and pedestrians. You have to let traffic go every once and a while.
“There’s so many obstacles to shooting there, and you know, you’re lucky if you can get six or eight shots in a day there, and here we shot this entire thing. Like everything you just watched, we did in a day.”
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Watch the short here:
Watch the full presentation video here:
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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