Hi guys, i´m building my gun now… and i would like to make it like in the movie, when they encounter Gozer, and they enlarge the tip of the gun. Does any one know if it´s done by turning the handle with your hand? (like you see in the movie) or turning the green knob up on the gear box? Have anyone done this on their proton packs?
Thanks again !!!
Sal-
Green knob on the gearbox?
Get your terminology straight!
It is done by flipping the green trigger next to the trigger box. Anyone who thinks it was done by twisting the grips isn’t a fan of the movie because they aren’t watching carfully enough!
Just want to get this straight for everyone.
actually, aj..frame by frame does indicate that ONE ghostbuster did twist the front handle to extend the tip. it is implied but not seen that the ghostbuster to the left hand side does NOT twist the handle to extend.
trust me…i have seen the movie probably more than 200 times.
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gotta love the continuity!
mechanically speaking though I would think that it would be alot harder to implement a system to have the tip extend through twisting the handle.
just stick with the green trigger on the gun box.
Huh?
One of the gun’tip tip extends just because you can’t see his hand?
in the last scene with gozer, after they heat um up..the next scene is the barrel extension scene. IT has a clear shot of one thrower in center screen, and the front grip is twisted, you can tell because in watching the retangular block infront of the front grip obviously turns in that scene. (it is a little hard to see the hands turn because of the black gloves)
but of the other 2 throwers in those scenes, one cannot even be seen, whilst the other one is just the front half of the barrel. And it does not appear to twist at all…just moves up and down before the barrel extends.
but like I said before, alot of talented prop artist on here have made the extension mechanics work INside the gunbox…just go with that. I would think trying to create a systems to make barrel extension work by twisting the handles would be a really REALLY big pain.
But more power to ya if you wanna try!! nothing wrong with adding to the community!
Gearbox? You guys know thats on the Pack, not the gun.. right?
I’m ashamed to admit, I haven’t watched the movie in a while. But I remember thinking the last time I saw it, that the last scene with Gozer, the tip would still be extended with the green lever. The barrel was probably loose, combine that with a tight grip and the motion he made with his arms and it just appears the twisting action causes the barrel to extend.
But… But… It could be possible, however unlikely, that the first guns were made to extend with the twisting of the barrel. Once the prop makers decided such a complicated action took to much time to build and was not cost effective, they built the guns with the green lever…
Like I said though, I doubt that was the case and more likely it was the asthetics of the shot, like I mentioned above.
The answer lies right here:
Toward the bottom of the page, Pete_Venkman_Jedi’s post.
Thanks again, as always you are a big help.
Sorry if my therminology is not well , but english is not my native language so sometimes i get confused…and I AM a true fan of the movie!!! like anybody else here. 
I’m gonna go with AJ on this one buddy…
If you watch the movie, all you can see in the frame is the barrel getting rotated. You don’t see if the lever is pulled. BUT! You can see that the barrel extends before the barrel even starts rotating. Now, if the gun was made to deploy the barrel by twisting it, how did it extend before it was even turned?
Answer:
The barrel extends by the green lever. It’s been discussed many times before and we’ve come to that conclusion. PVJ does a great job of showing how you can put it into your own gun.
Cole,
This is how it worked, except I don’t think the barrel was spring loaded. I think you could have retracted the tip in the same fashion that it extended. Watch the special featurette from 1984, and you’ll see the tip come up and go down a little. (no barrel rotation).
It is foolish to think they would have made a few work by twisting and a few with triggering.. and more foolish to believe that thinks work differently because you couldn’t see the whole shot. Its kinda like thinking there is a switch somewhere on the pack to turn it on because Egon did it in the elevator.
The knobs on the right is not a knob but a shaft collar holding on the linkage for the green lever.
It’s not foolish, for the reason I stated, that first ones could have been different. But I did say it was unlikely… The point I was making about not seeing the whole shot, was to prove the point it was the lever and not the twisting. It just looked like it was the twisting.
I guess it doesn’t pay to speculate. Just take things for what they are.
Well when you tell everyone it was done with a lever for 6 years, and people still come around saying it was done by barrel twisting it gets annoying.. I don’t want to have any misinformation spread.
The real hero guns barrel’s extended with the green trigger, not with handle rotation.
The handle rotated purely for comfort, there were aluminum stop blocks to prevent it from over rotating. There is also a palm rest right next to the handle…
I wasn’t disagreeing with you, I didn’t even mean to sound like I was questioning your knowledge… I guess I was just kind of thinking out loud. I didn’t mean to confuse anybody… I’ll make sure I think before I think next time. :lol:
…sigh…same old arguments…
AJ, it’s funny how they never learn, ay?
It’s KNOWN that the barrel extended via the green lever, the handle turning was believed to have been attached to another idea entirely that no one really knows about. For now it’s known for being purely for comfort, just as AJ mentioned, with the aluminum “half-gun-ear” block that apparently was also used to attach the front grip.
…and…well…that’s it.
What FUN ! !
Let me throw this into the pot -
Perhaps the apparent left hand twisting motion seen in the Gozer frames is a reflex action caused by rotating the gun to gain a better right-hand access to the Green lever !
The gun I built releases from the lever (sorry - mine’s not green). It’s a much easier mechanism to construct.
Ray’s proton pack is different in the gozer scene. Watch the approach when you see their proton packs in slow motion.
All the cyclotron lights are moving counter clockwise except for Ray’s. His move clockwise.
Then when they say heat em up and the vent light turns on, in the closeup, the gun is changed to one with an orange light cap to the right of the vent light. Notice: In all other scenes this cap is white. This is the gun seen in the featurette.This is also the only gun that has the scrolling bargraph effects.
On Make em hard everyone has thier thumbs on the green lever, the camera pans right to show the effect of the acrylic tube extending and the thumbs are no longer seen. Only’s Ray’s barrel turns 45 degrees counter clockwise for the effect. I am not arguing the fact it was done with the green lever but just observing some interesting construction
EDIT: The proton packs are so hard to keep track of in this scene. on the rooftop looking down at stay puft you see the cyclo go in this pattern - Winston CCW - Ray CW- Venkman CCW- Spengler CW
one edit Spengler will have the pack with the foam padding on the motherboard in another he doesn’t this is not counting the foam packs in the little alcove on the roof with the static cyclo. Oy! Im working on the lighting of my pack and I guess its a little bit of “whatever”
So in the above photos, how does the lever work? I guess without the barrel in there, its hard to visualize. Sorry if it has been over-explained already.
YA just like noslliT posted, I was making notice of construction and observation of the mechanics and illusion that the grip twist gave to the general viewer. But like I previously stated, the mechanics of making the extension from the grip twist would have been a huge headache to construct over the simple and KNOWN green trigger switch.
But I second the motion to get a link or some pics up on this thread showing people a little more detail of how the switch works.
I had them saved, but i had to wipe my drive recently…otherwise I would have posted them.
Someone sells a gun with grip-twist extension on ebay from time to time. The front handle has some kind of metal rod that sticks out which makes it look ugly imo.
Not sure if anyone knows what I’m talking about though. 
The green lever mechanism is a bitch to make as it is.