Fan Film: GB911 meets the Louisiana Ghostbusters

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This project began in the spring of 2012, was shot in late 2012, previewed in 2013 at Alabama Phoenix Festival, and with the blessing of the Twin Cities Ghostbusters is now ready for release. It is our introduction to a well-established fan film universe (GB911, GB:SLC, Spilled Milk, Alabama GB Web Series) which ties in some of the major players dabbling in fan films and web series, and a labor of love from a few fans of Ghostbusters who wanted to have a little fun over a weekend or two.

We’re planning to pick up from this with a stand alone fan film series of our own which we’ll work on this summer. Enough talk. Ghostbusters fans, we are proud to present our fan film, “Louisiana Ghostbusters.” Special thanks to Ice Park Productions and Ghostbustin’ 911 for sharing Will and Kat with us for a day and allowing us to tie in our plans for a short film to your established world. Also thanks to Adam Schwartz and the crew of Alabama Ghostbusters: A Web Series for letting us use this project and your show to bridge these and other projects together into a cohesive world of fan fiction we lovingly refer to as the GBFCU (Ghostbusters Fan Cinematic Universe.)

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Oh man. This is definitely going to be one for the “favorite characters” list. A GIRL Ghostbuster who’s actually involved in the nitty-gritty of the job (even though she aspires to bigger things)? Yes, more of that please! And that Bayou Man is kind of worth the price of admission all by himself: it’s like “Swamp People vs. the Paranormal,” which is probably the best idea of all time. And I like the deadpan, barely surpressed-rage of the guy who’s in charge. It fits for someone asked to do the impossible with no resources.

And seriously? No containment unit for a city like NEW ORLEANS? Seriously? How you do even move something like that? The Containment Units I’ve seen don’t look particularly mobile!

I like the contrast between this group and the Twin Cities group. The underqualified, underachieving St. Paul Franchise is still in business because shutting them down would lead to too much media scrutiny. Fortunately their actual caseload is pretty light and pretty mundane. The Alabama group suffers from a lack of ghosts to bust, meaning demand for their services is almost zero, meaning they have no income.

Neither of those is true about the NOLA group. For them, business is clearly booming…as it would be, considering that it’s hard to find a supernatural force that ISN’T threatening that region. So why can’t they afford the gear that’s equal to the task?

Well, probably because of profit margins. Corporate takes a cut of all cash a franchise brings in, and the NOLA group, in it’s stripped down state, basically has no overhead costs at all…meaning they are just churning out free money for the head office. In a way, they may be the cash-cow that buffs up the Southern regional numbers enough to keep the struggling franchises like the AL guys in business.

Not that this helps them out in the field. I buy that what keeps them going is that they are that much tougher then everyone else. What they lack in equipment, they make up for with magical knowledge. They are probably more likely then their counterparts to consult Tarot cards, Ouiji Boards, light candles, perform (or contact someone else who performs) exorcisms, chant spells, wear magical talismans… and at least one of them carries a real gun, meaning they probably hunt zombies themselves as well, which is more then the Twin Cities gang did.

… I’ve always been of the opinion that at least one (qualified and properly licensed) person in each franchise should be armed with a conventional firearm, just for those rare occasions when you’re up against a supernatural creature that’s more effected by bullets then proton blasts, like a zombie or a ghoul or a troll or a windigo… the ammo of course would be blessed beforehand to make it as effective as possible.

Basically this group isn’t like any other in the fanfilm universe. I love it. I can’t wait to see what they do next!

…sorry about the wall of text. I get carried away!

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Thanks for all of your thoughts, M.Thunder. We rarely see an analysis of this kind of detail. You really put yourself in that world and tried to reason through much of what we came to conclude before finalizing our storyline.

Good catch with the firearms. Dead rising from the grave are often best dealt with using traditional firearms in that world, which is why two of the guys you see are carrying firearms. You’ll notice Dr. Mok has a high-powered hand gun he draws when they think Will might be a problem upon arrival seeing someone banging on their front door.

The fact that LAGB’s ECU got relocated to Houston will be a factor effecting the group in just about every fan film we do down the road.

We’re glad you enjoyed it!

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Ha! I bet Corporate makes sure all the costs for fuel and transport to and from Houston to empty those traps come out of their own pockets as well. Or give them some tiny “transportation” allowance and act like that’s a perfectly reasonable substitute for an actual on-site ECU and anyway, it’s the LAGB guy’s job to make it work! After all, the Katrina clean-up was a mess; they should consider themselves lucky to still be in business.

…I bet someone in Corporate actually had the gall to tell the LA guys it was a GOOD thing the ECU had been moved before the hurricane because it might have gotten damaged. Even though the odds that it would have been catastrophically damaged are pretty slim, and trying to contain the flood of grief-fueled, rage-filled proto-demon poultergeists all beefed on psyonically charged floodwater without even a way to safely dispose of them, resulting in lots of difficult decisions about weither catching this new ghost was worth letting this other one go…and then dealing with the consequences when someone chose wrong… was ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE.

ah…hem. :blush: Sorry, got carried away again.

Thanks for the film! I’m looking forward to seeing more of this crew! :cool: So glad you enjoyed reading my overly complicated opinions!

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This was awesome! I also have to agree, the use of firearms was essential!! I like the referencing of current events and the stressed out factor was very well portrayed! you guys did a great job! It is nice to see the community coming together and tying all the films into a cinematic Universe of our own.

I cannot wait to see more of these! Keep it Up!

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Well done, guys. I left a comment on the video itself, but it bears repeating. This team has a different flavor altogether, and it’s nice to see. Rock on.

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:blush: …I just watched the film again and realized the hurricane was why they LOST their containment unit, because the utilities weren’t reliable. So they must have had it during the storm itself, at least for part of the time.

so…yeah. Forget that wall of text I typed earlier. My bad. :blush:

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Yes. This.

As we imagined it…

LAGB was set up as an expansion franchise with an ECU in the mid 90’s after the comic book events in that area, but there was a huge slow-down in business coupled with an inadequate infrastructure to support the grid on their ECU, so in an act of really poor timing, the complicated and expensive process of moving an ECU into the next major city, (Houston) was done in the early naughties (2000’s) and they were told to courier their traps which by then could hold an entity for as long as the battery could be kept charged weekly or monthly to the Houston ECU or to catch and release what they removed from one area into a remote area.

Then, as Julie says, BAM, Hurricane Katrina hits and New Orleans becomes the mouth of hell for paranormal activity, so LAGB starts hiring, gets really busy, and that plus the lack of an ECU puts them sitting on a powder keg of a situation with loaded traps and nowhere to put the contents indefinitely.

The day of the fan film, was the culmination of all those events ending in a small catastrophe. They got too backed up, a rookie comes in and releases something from a particularly iffy prototype swamp trap that had to be lain over the water to catch its prey, and you wind up with an unscheduled release. The follow-up to that release will be covered in GB911’s next production.

Meanwhile LAGB is left with a loose entity right in the city waterways (they believe) and a crisis on an oil rig nearby where big money is being lost, so there’s corporate pressure on them to prioritize that job.

Or at least that’s how we envisioned it! lol

Fan fic is fun.

_B

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I love it, it adds a cool element of lost glory to the backstory. I imagine when the LAGB were first established, they were THE SHIT. They were one of the biggest franchises in the country, if not the world, had all the latest and best gear, hotlines to each important person in New York, the respect and fear of city officials and police, the best training and access to just about anything they wanted… Then the lean years hit. And suddenly all thier guys and fancy equiptment are sitting around gathering dust. It was embarrassing. New York stopped answering thier calls. The best stuff got transferred to other, busier franchises. Lots of personnel were transfered or fired. Everything crumbled.

Well, business has picked up again, in a way unparalleled anywhere else. But New York has been slow to awknowledge how much the storm changed things. The floodwaters stirred up all kinds off stuff and the LAGBs are not equipt for them.

Seriously even the AL guys have PKE meters!

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That wasn’t bad at all, and the acting wasn’t bad or overly cheesy (cheesy is good… in moderation…)

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pretty cool and funny

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It just occurred to me that PKE meters went in exchange for the extra traps. A region this busy, finding the ghost usually isn’t a problem anyway.