Ghost Busters

:00:03

Original Production Notes
provided courtesy of Don Shay.
(c) 1985 Don Shay all rights reserved

:00:21

The New York Public Library at
Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street...

:00:24

was the location
of this opening scene.

:00:27

Originally conceived
as two separate establishing shots...

:00:30

Director Ivan Reitman
and Cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs...

:00:32

chose instead this sweeping
crane shot.

:00:37

This interior is the Main Reading Room
of the New York Library.

:00:40

To film here
was a logistics challenge.

:00:42

The huge room had to be lit,
the action staged and photographed...

:00:45

and then everything cleared away...

:00:48

all within the hours
between the crew's 5:00 AM call...

:00:51

and the Library's 10:00 AM opening.

:00:57

We're not in New York anymore.

:01:00

While the New York Library exterior
and vast reading room...

:01:03

created a perfect Gothic atmosphere,
the book stacks flunked their audition.

:01:06

For "aesthetic and economic reasons,"
the producers shot these scenes...

:01:09

at the main branch
of the public library in Los Angeles.

:01:11

The final shooting script
called for more than a dozen books...

:01:14

to suddenly fly off the shelf
and land at the feet of the librarian.

:01:17

But at the last minute,
Dan Aykroyd suggested...

:01:20

this more subtle and eerie approach...
the first of 200 optical effects...

:01:23

by visual effects creator
Richard Edlund and his team.

:01:37

This next bit of ghostly mischief...

:01:40

falls in the category of a physical
effect rather than an optical effect.

:01:43

Special effects supervisor Chuck Gaspar
built a bank of card cabinets...

:01:46

rigged with air hoses
to spew the cards out on cue.