The classic Ghostbuster character was brought to life with a performer in suit filmed against black cloth and old-school optical compositing.
With Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in cinemas soon, I thought I’d look back at one of the characters from the original 1984 film: everyone’s favorite, Slimer.
Here’s an excerpt from my Masters of FX book, which includes a section on visual effects supervisor John Bruno.
This section discussions how Bruno helped realize the character while at Boss Film Studios working with Richard Edlund on the effects for Ghostbusters.
“In discussing the ‘Onion Head’ I had a long conversation with Dan Akroyd, who said it was supposed to be (his friend) John Belushi,” notes Bruno. “He said the best way to think about that character was Bluto from Animal House—he was a slob. Always. A disgusting blob.”
“He was supposed to be floating three to four feet off the ground,” adds Bruno. “The character was created by a performer, Mark Bryan Wilson, wearing a foam rubber suit that was painted lime-green and filmed in front of black cloth. No blue screen or green screen. Mark’s legs were wrapped in black duvateen so you couldn’t see them, and the suit rested above his waist.
“His mouth and eyes were operated by puppeteers dressed in black, sitting below and behind him. Someone else’s arm operated the tongue. The camera was locked off and we would move ‘Slimer’ around according to the shot.
“To make him look hyper-kinetic we shot the footage at six frames a second. It was just such crazy footage that in dailies we’d be laughing our asses off.”
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