It’s the 3rd of December, 1983. You’ve decided to take a trip into Los Angeles to check out some of the sights while you still get the chance. You pick a spot to park on East 5th street, what has been steadily growing into the city’s skid row for years.
One of the nearest landmarks to where you’ve parked? A disused Fire Station…
A pretty grand-looking place once… But now definitely on hard times. All that graffiti covering the ground floor really makes it look like a demilitarised zone…
A rare bit of insight into the filming of Ghostbusters, provided by Shelton A. Gunaratne on his blog, The Travels of a Journalist.
Although the sequence was ultimately not used in the film, the production dressed the lower half of Fire Station №23’s 20+ foot tall ground floor (and looks like about 6-7 eighths of the 26-foot-width) to match the design of Hook & Ladder №8 in New York (replicating the faux grafittin must’ve been fun). The suggestion from this elaborate effort is that they planned to film a scene of Bill, Dan, Harold and Rhoda Gemignani (the real estate lady) standing in the archway, before stepping through the doors into the dirtied up apparatus bay.
Shelton makes no mention of Ghostbusters in this particular listing, which makes this little insight even more special for the fact that in the spur of the moment. Were it not for him, we might never have gotten to see this effort.
While it does look like there’s some white lettering on the panel covering the middle window, it looks like it might just be a bit of reflection, compared to this shot from an unused sequence:
Or a variation where we see Peter, Ray, Egon and the real estate lady stood looking upwards (the shot of grunged-up Hook & Ladder 8 ), before they proceed to enter the dressed up exterior of Fire Station №23.
The extreme upwards angle came from a website Sony operated featuring loads of snippets of unused footage from Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II that they’d turned into purchasable stock footage.
[quote=RichardLess post_id=4935586 time=1591610623 user_id=47215]What do you mean by the GB2 comment?
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I suspect Derek is alluding to how the Firehouse was set dressed.
When they filmed the first movie, they actually installed a replica section of Fire Station №23’s iconic green & white tilework to maintain the illusion they were the same building. They always shot the open apparatus bay doors from an angle to hide the fact the wall was only “so” long:
They went to the effort of building two of these walls for Ghostbusters II, but undid all that work by using the footage that broke the illusion:
The watermarked Sony clips are from their stock footage library. Usable material pulled from the raw footage of GB/GB2 is available for licensed use and show up quite a bit. They actually show up quite a bit!
I suspect Derek is alluding to how the Firehouse was set dressed.
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I didn’t see the comment from Mr. Less, but yeah, that’s pretty much what I was getting at. The lack of continuity with the black painted brick, no facade covering the H&L 8 sign, just an all around lack of attention to detail. Strangely enough, these elements are even missing in the early concept art of the dilapidated GBHQ. (Watermarked pic from the Containment Unit podcast group-- they’re doing prints!) One small detail I LOVE is the red frame around the logo sign!
In the first film, when the Ecto is revealed, they went to great lengths to hide the interior background of the NYC firehouse. The false walls that Ben mentioned, strong back lighting, fog, framing, editing. This was all ignored during GB2. Somewhere there are pics from the interior of H&L8 from production that show the false walls and door rigging-- I’ve been dying to get my hands on those.
Now that the GB2 commercial is out, my current footage “holy grail” is the night shots of the 1A tearing out of the HQ, heading to the museum.
I think I prefer the Ecto 1A to the Ecto 1. I love the colours and the chic, shiny paint job. True it’s a bit more “busy” but it just looks so damn cool.
I honestly can’t pick between the two, I love them both.
I’m a sucker for the caution striping of the 1A, which Stephen Dane pulled directly from his work on the Jet Car from Buckaroo Banzai. In fact, Dane even pitched having Nascar-esque sponsor logos on the 1A, which was another bit he pulled from the Buckaroo Jet Car.
I think for GB2, the 1A works perfectly. It would have worked better if Reitman had stuck with Venkman’s advertising/merchandising/branding blitz that was originally in the script.
The whole look and color scheme of the light bars scream late-80s, early-90s. Bright, flashy wind suit colors of the time! The shot of 1A screeching around a corner to Bobby Brown is something that never fails to put a ■■■■■■■■■■■ grin on my face.
When I was a kid Ecto-1A was my favorite hands down. I loved the colors and just how in your face it was with all the light bars and scrolling messages. But as I’ve grown older the Ecto-1 has taken over the 1A as my favorite. I love the contrast of the blue and red lights on the white car, and how simple yet at the same time technical it looks. You can’t beat its introduction in the first film either, gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.
The NYC leg of the shoot wasn’t the most planned or organized due to Twins post-production happening at the same time as pre-production on GB2. The GB2 doc goes into more detail on this. I’m having trouble finding the script draft, but around that point in development, the GBs didn’t get arrested during Venkman’s date. In fact, Venkman is the one out on the ledge trying to get Oscar, then Mikey. Mikey is taken by the nanny ghost, Venkman has some sort of “we’ll get him back” line, then we cut to the Ectomobile tearing out of the firehouse.
I for one really want to see this deleted scene from the montage. The effort they put into making that weathered sign is great!
That’s interesting about the Hook & Ladder signage being hidden by a facade. The super obsessive continuity side of my brain wishes it was the same II, but it’s also possible that in-universe it was removed, or even fell-off, at some point. Despite having a super-rushed production schedule, I actually think that signage adds more charm to the fire station. If they ever return back to it in an Afterlife sequel, or TV show, or whatever, I hope that it’s left in place.
