Have you accumulated a huge Ghostbusters Collection? Talk about what you have and show it off!
By Alex Newborn
#4784405
Mods, feel free to move if this is the wrong section.
~~~

Recently I was browsing around Spook Central's excellently researched article about GB2 stock footage...

http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral/gb2_stock.htm

... and I noticed that in one of the takes for the moviegoers fleeing the theatre ghost, the camera kept rolling even after all the extras were out of frame, giving us a better glimpse of the posters on the wall than what is visible in the actual film.

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Within minutes, I had Googled the poster art for all three of these films and looked up their imdb stats to boot.

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They Came From Within and Rabid were both produced by Ivan Reitman, although I was unable to find any connection he had to Sssssss.

[On a personal note, I'd like to add that while I have never seen the first two, as a kid in the 70's or 80's I did watch a TV broadcast of Sssssss just because the commercials advertised that Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica was in it, and it scared the unholy crap out of me.]

So then I had the idea to make a little diorama using those posters and the Theatre Ghost figure which Mattel produced.

As I really began to study the exterior of the theatre used for this location shoot, again with the help of some great detective work by Paul Rudoff and Spook Central (http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral/ ... ater-ghost), I realized there was another poster visible in the shot.

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If the three posters in the interior walls were the Coming Attractions, it seemed reasonable that the posters facing the sidewalk would be the Now Playing.

A pic in the Spook Central article strengthened this suspicion.

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In 1986, posters for Police Academy 3 were in both of the exterior frames, reinforcing what was seen on the marquee above.

Reasoning that the set decorators would have likely mimicked this policy while putting the giant red letters up for CANNIBAL GIRLS, I looked up the poster for C.G. and it seemed to match the poster seen from an angle in the movie.

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I printed all four posters out, as well as some computer-drawn signage to go above them.

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My handy-dandy paper-trimmer gave me some nice straight edges.

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And I even decided to print a second set of everything to further flesh out the environment if needed.

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I'd been invited a few weeks ago to contribute a photo every Wednesday to Cross the Streams: Ghostbusters Podcast's FB page, with the hashtag MidWeekMattyMatters. So far, I'd only used older photos; I hadn't taken anything brand new for them, and I really wanted to create something fresh this week.

This morning, after two days of printing and trimming tiny posters, I set everything up, put my camera on the tripod, and took two pics-- one with the ghost and one clean plate so I could paint out his support stand and also render him slightly transparent.

This was the resultant image, which I'm happy to say got a Like by GB producer Michael Gross-- a talented photographer and painter-- just a few minutes after it was uploaded.

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Oh, and here's a little video you might also enjoy.



Alex
Last edited by Alex Newborn on April 16th, 2014, 6:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
Morydees, Zack, John Stevens 87 and 2 others liked this
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By CaptCyan
#4784444
Hey Alex!

Very nice work on the Posters and Theatre Signage. Are you keeping you diorama minimalist or going all out with sidewalks pocked with chewing gum?
By Alex Newborn
#4784491
CaptCyan wrote:Are you keeping your diorama minimalist or going all out with sidewalks pocked with chewing gum?
My dream version would be much larger, to include the lighted marquee out front, doors to the box office, glass over the posters, a mesh wastebasket, maybe melt a pink candle down the side of the sign for slime, and even a grate in the sidewalk like the one that, elsewhere in the city, makes the fur coat come to life.

I made sketches of how to achieve pretty much all of those details, and even began to prep some of the graphics, like the banner:

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But ultimately I decided it was overkill for one single pack-in ghost.

Who knows? I might revisit that idea someday and build it more ornate and permanent.

Alex
#4786319
So cool. How long do you take to build each? You're very prolific :)

My dream diorama would have been a complete HQ for the 6" figures PLUS the never-to-be Ecto-1. (I started building a 1:24 scale "doll-house" of the HQ for my 1:21 ecto but halted it when I learned about the 1:18 ectos, which are more detailed).

*EDIT*

About the lifesize movie posters: in a word: PATHETIC! ;)
Alex Newborn liked this
#4786361
CaptCyan wrote:Once I saw your set of Muppet Studio parts, I was hoping you would get around to doing a "World of the Psychic" dio.
Heh heh, yes the TV cameras are re-purposed from the Muppets and the chairs are from Bob and Doug McKenzie, but I give you full credit for the Mr. Bigglesworth brainstorm for "Ira the hairless cat".

I thought I'd had a brilliant flash of inspiration for that, and was feeling really proud of myself... then a couple days later while re-reading an older post, I saw where you'd already done the exact same thing. Must've been rolling around in my subconscious for a while before I stole it thinking it was my own.

The Muppet and McKenzie stuff were toys I already owned, but I had to go looking on eBay for a Bigglesworth. Funnily enough, I got a great deal on the Austin Powers Pinball Machine replacement part, which is just the action figure accessory with a hole drilled through its tummy.

I was going to either putty the hole shut or digitally paint it out of the pics, but once the piece arrived and I put it in Peter's hand, it falls by happenstance into a very natural spot for his thumb to slide into, to grip the cat better.

So yes, at the end of that video you glimpse Bill Murray impaling a cat on his thumb.

Alex
#4786388
Alex Newborn wrote:... "Ira the hairless cat"...I thought I'd had a brilliant flash of inspiration for that, and was feeling really proud of myself... then a couple days later while re-reading an older post, I saw where you'd already done the exact same thing. Must've been rolling around in my subconscious for a while before I stole it thinking it was my own.
That was actually in Christphern's thread here:

http://www.gbfans.com/community/viewtop ... 05#p431205

Please feel free to use any other stuff I come up with if it helps with your Dioramas. After all, that's what a big part of this site is all about, sharing ideas and helping each other out. If you can remember who did the origional, even better. :wink:
Alex Newborn liked this
#4786558
Well, finishing the half-spheres for the walls of the WOTP set is taking a little more time than I anticipated.

So I'm gonna give myself one more week to finish it.

As a filler, I made this my #MidWeekMattyMatters pic for today.

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I thought I'd keep with the GB2 theme so as not to interrupt my flow.

Although I did have a couple of GB1 possibilities in mind.

Alex
Heroic35 liked this
#4786939
You're on the right track. It's Alfred Pennyworth's jacket on the Courtroom Peter body. The color of the sleeves matches pretty well.

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Which also means that right now there's a proton-pack-wearing Michael Caine on my shelf.

I also digitally erased some of the horizontal points of articulation in the courtroom photo. I just found them so distracting, and it only took a moment to remove.

Alex
Sutton621, alphabeta001 liked this
#4787572
More World of the Psychic backdrop progress. I hope to have it finished by Wednesday.

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What you see here are the half-spheres to go on the walls. I made a diagram of their sizes, color, and approximate locations.

The largest two sizes are styrofoam craft balls cut in half and spackled, then sanded.

Unfortunately the two smallest sizes of craft balls were so large they could only be the two largest sizes of half-spheres.

I was stymied for a bit, then decided to make a Super-Sculpey push-mold of some found objects that looked to be the right sizes. The bottom of a table-pod for my camera became the third size, and the head of an old push-pin became the fourth. Oddly enough, that pearlescent push-pin head has been in my Super-Sculpey container for YEARS.

I had to make six of size 3 and a monotonous nineteen of size 4. Just got finished molding them. Next is to cure them and sand their bases flat.

Alex
#4787623
Alex Newborn wrote:You're on the right track. It's Alfred Pennyworth's jacket on the Courtroom Peter body. The color of the sleeves matches pretty well.

Image

Which also means that right now there's a proton-pack-wearing Michael Caine on my shelf.

I also digitally erased some of the horizontal points of articulation in the courtroom photo. I just found them so distracting, and it only took a moment to remove.

Alex
Ah ha! I do have a spare Pennywort about these parts. Might need to look into this!
#4787915
Total joke. Where the hell are the curtains?! And no purple carpet?!



PS - now that you have dismembered Alfred, have you seen what he goes for on eBay? Holy sh... I only have a MOC one per research so I wanted to find another one. Bidding wars going into the $80 range.
Alex Newborn liked this
#4787957
Heroic35 wrote:Total joke. Where the hell are the curtains?! And no purple carpet?!
The curtains were easier to drop in digitally than to spend all that time sewing the gathers in them.

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As for the carpet, I honestly started to go buy some purple/grey felt, but figured I already had enough invested in this. I spent $5 on styrofoam balls, another $5 on Mr. Bigglesworth, $2 on the glitter gold paper... Thankfully everything else, including the color of spray-paint for the curved wall, was stuff I already had on hand.

And there were other toysin my collections that I contemplated including but decided against it. The Electric Mayhem's stage from the Muppet collection had some neat lights that I wanted to suspend overhead to make it look more like a TV studio. I went to all the trouble of finding that box in storage and digging it out, but in the end decided the lights weren't necessary.
PS - now that you have dismembered Alfred, have you seen what he goes for on eBay? Holy sh... I only have a MOC one per research so I wanted to find another one. Bidding wars going into the $80 range.
He wasn't that expensive loose. I think I got him for somewhere between $11 and $17 shipped. This was just a couple months ago, though I admit I haven't checked his prices in a while.

But he's not dismembered. All I have to do is swap their jackets back, and they're both restored to factory issue. Neither figure was damaged in any way. I prefer to do such 'temporary customs' whenever possible. Plus, they didn't have that hand-painted-acrylic look, they both had molded coloring and looked like Mattel made them that way.

Alex

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