ghostbusters


Tim Lawrence was credited for Creature & Makeup Design for Ghostbusters II but was mostly known for his performance in costume as Nunzio Scoleri in the movie.

About

Ghostbusters Behind the Scenes

Tim Lawrence was hired as a puppeteer for the Terror Dogs during filming at the Temple of Gozer set. In the segment when Gozer pets Vinz Clortho, the two puppeteers inside the puppet were Mark Bryan Wilson in the front and Tim Lawrence in the rear.[2]

Ghostbusters II Behind the Scenes

Tim Lawrence was inspired by the Blues Brothers and designed the Scoleri Brothers based on them. Visual Development Artist Henry Mayo helped refine the designs with extensive input from producer Michael Gross. Lawrence's original concept played more into the electricity motif. As they took steps, the floor would explode and their feet would become less distinct in the air without an electrical ground. The Scoleris were also to have spoken in Italian epithets.[3] Nunzio's gaping mouth was created by dividing the head into two separate units. The lower jaw was attached to Lawrence's shoulders and the upper on the skullcap. Both units would be joined by a single foam latex skin so that each part could move in opposite directions.[4]

Puppeteers controlled the Scoleris' heads with servo mechanisms and pneumatic cylinders while a computerized Synthetic Neuro-Animation Repeating Kinetics (SNARK) system helped control facial expressions in order to achiever full lip-sync on the characters. Lawrence already had over 10 years of experience with animation control systems and incorporated available technology into the SNARK.[5] Lawrence brought in Bob Cooper to make Tony's torso, Mike Smithson to make the heads, Bill Foertsch to make Nunzio's arms, and Buzz Neidig to work on additional details such as teeth and tongues.[6]

Tim Lawrence's original idea for Tony Scoleri was to build him impossibly tall and skinny so no actor could be used. He brought in Mark Bryan Wilson to build a prototype Japanese style puppet. The test shots were liked but the amount of rotoscope animation required conflicted with the production schedule. Auditions were held. Lawrence was leaning towards hiring Allan Trautman but Ned Gorman pointed out to Lawrence that Jim Fye was already on contract to portray the Statue of Liberty.[7] Tim Lawrence and Jim Fye, ended up portraying the Scoleri Brothers and were filmed separately at the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) special effects studio. They wore wire rigged suits in front of blue screen. The footage would later be projected onto flexible mirrorplex then rephotographed. Meanwhile, in place of the actors, full-scale cutouts were used to aid the cast and crew during filming.[8] When the Scoleri Brothers first manifest, they are seated in electrical chairs. For filming, Fye and Lawrence had to pretend to be sitting in midair. Others in the crew stayed underneath and pushed their feet up so their legs bent properly. Despite the scene of them bursting from the chairs being difficult in theory, it was filmed rather quickly. One brother was filmed in the morning and the other in the afternoon. About 5-6 shots of each were achieved each day of shooting. By the time they finished filming, the Scoleri Brothers concept had changed to much that third-scale marionettes on wires could have been used.[9]

Michael Gross requested elements of the first movie and animated version of Slimer to be incorporated into the movie. Tim Lawrence and Thom Enriquez worked on a new design. Meanwhile, Bobby Porter was called into portray Slimer. Some of the technology and techniques used for Nunzio Scoleri were used for Slimer - the divided head construct, pneumatic jaws, SNARK and a fat suit - a departure from the first movie where he was hand puppeteered. Then Slimer was removed from the script. Porter was released.[10][11][12][13] Two weeks later, Slimer was back in the script and had a bigger role. However, Porter was no longer available. Robin Navlyt was brought in. Surprisingly, she was the same height as Porter and fit into the suit very well. Chris Goehe and his mold shop crew made a full lifecast on her and Al Coulter worked on a new skullcap. The Slimer shoot was finished close to the first day of shooting. Michael Gross was onhand to push the crew to keep Slimer subtle and reduce any complicated approaches to moving him.[14][15]

Tim Lawrence and his crew developed four different Mink Coats that actuated by radio controlled servos, hand puppeteering and cable-pull mechanisms. A white fur was envisioned and was the basis for the coat, heads, and legs. After everything was sculpted and cast in foam latex, mechanics finished, actor fitted, and harness was finished, a film test was sent to Ivan Reitman 10 days before the shoot. Reitman was fine with the test but asked why the coat was white. The crew scrambled and redid the coat with darker fur in time for the shoot.[16][17][18] The master coat was the version where all the heads could react. Close-up heads were shot as inserts.[19]

The demonic floating head seen after Vigo returns to the painting was inspired by preproduction sketches done by Thom Enriquez. Lifecasts were done on Wilhelm von Homburg. Tim Lawrence and makeup artist Mike Smithson did a variety of altercations in clay like strengthening the jaw line, straightening out the nose, making a more sinister brow, elongating earlobes, and sharpening cheeks. 10-11 versions were done and sent to Ivan Reitman for approval. Once the final was chosen, Lawrence had three weeks. Then it was cut down to one week. Howie Weed from the creature shop wore the makeup for scenes when Vigo was transformed within the painting and when Ray was possessed.[20]

Credits

Crew

Actor

Trivia

References

  1. ↑ Dignity Memorial Obituaries Timothy Lawrence retrieved 12/30/19
  2. ↑ The Good, The Bad, and The Sequel Stitcher "Special Effects Master Tim Lawrence" 6:18-6:54 4/17/2019 Tim Lawrence says: "Two weeks after that wrapped, Mark Wilson, who I worked with together on Thriller, had gone on to Boss Film in Marina del Rey to work on Ghostbusters. And they were getting close to needing to shoot the Terror Dogs, the big puppets on the steps of the Temple of Gozer. And he said we need some puppeteers, can you come down and be a puppeteer? So I went down, auditioned, got a position. So that's myself and Mark Wilson are in the long horn dog - the one she pats on the head as she walks down the stairs. Mark's in the front and I'm in the back."
  3. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 14. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "Knowing that Dan Aykroyd had written this bit, one of the first images that came to me was the Blues Brothers--and it was this idea of a tall thin guy and a short fat guy that colored my thinking as I developed the characters. I began by generating some rough drawings in my very cartoony style, and then I involved a longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Mayo, to help me firm the concepts into something that was more realistic, yet still broad in intent. It seemed to me that the original draft of the script was 'monster shy' and the ghostly apparitions that did appear were very much of the see-through person variety. There was no marshmallow man, no terror dogs--just a variety of vaporous people.. I could not imagine a Ghostbusters movie without any creature-type ghosts, so I very consciously began pushing the concepts for the Scoleris into a broad caricature direction. I took my cues from the script and extrapolated my own interpretation along lines that I felt would represent the brothers' internal evilness rather than merely suggest what they looked like in life--hence the very exaggerated ghosts that appear in the movie. Both Ivan and Michael were enthusiastic about this approach, and so I hoped to generate further characters of this type of work progressed."
  4. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "For the Nunzio character, I wanted a great gaping mouth. I also had an idea to divide the head into two separate units--the lower jaw to be attached to my shoulders and the upper head to rest on a skullcap, with the two joined together by a single foam latex skin. With this approach, the lower jaw could be sent mechanically in one direction while I turned my head in the opposite direction, thus creating a ghastly twisted cavern in the center of Nunzio's face. Al figured out how to do it using a series of proportionally controlled pneumatic cylinders to move the mass of the lower jaw with speed and precision."
  5. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "The technology for this kind of control has been around for decades. I worked with animation control systems more than ten years ago, and many of the people I count as valuable coworkers were first met in this Hollywood satellite industry. Only within the past few years, however, has the hardware and software approached an off-the-shelf availability, and we incorporated some of this available technology into an original contour with considerable custom interfacing to arrive at the system we used in Ghostbusters II. With the SNARK system, we could either perform the character totally live--as the information outputs were typical joystick conformation--or we could record the initial performance, keep the parts we liked, and then go back in and electronically edit the other functions a channel at a time until a complete and satisfying performance was in the memory. This could then be played back as stored, or speeded up and slowed down at the touch of a keystroke. There is also an override switch for each function allowing partial playback and partial live performance, as in an instance where an eyeline might be critical yet you would want to keep the animated lip-sync. It is all very similar to photographic motion control. The potential of this concept for creature work is immense."
  6. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "To sculpt the body parts not directly fabricated by Henneman and her staff, Lawrence brought in Mike Smithson to fashion the heads, Bob Cooper to provide Tony's torso and Bill Foertsch to supply Nunzio's arms. Additional details such as tongues and teeth were handled by Buzz Neidig. To provide th broad articulation required of the Scoleri brothers, mechanical animator Al Coulter and his crew employed some nontraditional technology."
  7. ↑ The Good, The Bad, and The Sequel Stitcher "Special Effects Master Tim Lawrence" 36:30-37:20 4/17/2019 Tim Lawrence says: "My original idea was because I wanted him to be, Tony, to be impossibly tall and skinny such that it couldn't be a guy in a suit. I had hired Mark Wilson to come up and build a prototype of a Japanese style puppet built off of his body. And we shot tests with that that they liked but they said, "The amount of roto to make this work is just not going to fit our schedule" so it had to be a guy in a suit for that reason. And then I auditioned again and Allan Trautman I liked a lot for that but then Ned Gorman, associate producer for ILM -- line producer, came to me and said, "You know we've already got Jim Fye on contract..." and I went ding ding ding."
  8. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 13 footnote. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Photographed in front of an ILM bluescreen, Nunzio reacts as electricity passes through his body. The footage thus recorded would later be altered by projecting it into flexible mirrorplex and then rephotographing the distorted imagery."
  9. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 17. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross says: "When the brothers first appear, they are sitting in the electric chairs that ended their lives. In reality, the chairs were miniatures that were shot separately from the ghosts. To make the two elements merge, Lawrence and Fye had to hang in midair and pretend to be sitting. "In the Nunzio suit," Lawrence admitted, "it was very hard to pretend like I was sitting in midair. Fortunately, one of the crew members was underneath and helped me push my feet up so my legs were bent properly at the knees. Then on a certain count, he would duck away and I would pretend like I was bursting out of the chair and falling forward in a dive. To get the best negative, we needed the biggest image we could get--so we had to stay in the center of the frame. Therefore, if Nunzio was sitting and he had to burst out of his chair in an upward arch and then dive back down, I had to move my arms and feet accordingly, but I could actually swing through the frame. Sometimes if it was a particularly difficult shot, we would do a black-and-white test and make a quick composite to check our moves. Despite the complications, we actually shot the sequence really fast. We filmed on one brother in the morning and one in the afternoon, and we could usually get five or six shots a day of both." Though the results were impressive, the essential concept for the Scoleri brothers sequence was ultimately altered and simplified to such an extent that the characters could have been achieved much more simply in other ways. "By the time much of the work had been done," Lawrence reflected, "the concept had changed to the point that the brothers were now always in flight, never really spoke, were very transparent and also heavily augmented with roto effects. The facial animation--while excellent--was now all but superfluous. The characters could easily have been done with third-scale marionettes on wires. You just never know how the stuff is going to be used until it is. With the script changing daily, all you can do is adapt and hope you are prepared for anything." The movements of the Scoleri brothers through the composite frame were created later on a track camera by effects cameraman Peter Daulton."
  10. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 21. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "With Slimer's appeal apparently universal, the filmmakers ultimately decided to squeeze him into the second film. In the subplot written for him, Slimer would first be seen eating various types of food while Louis tried in vain to catch him. Then later, when Louis straps on a backpack and tries to help the Ghostbusters, he finds Slimer driving a bus. Louis hitches a ride on the bus and the two eventually become friends. During editing, Reitman would decide to limit Slimer's role, but all the scenes were scripted and completed."
  11. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 21. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "Unlike the character from the first film which was primarily a monster, Michael wanted elements from the cartoon version incorporated as well, and to this end had had Thom do the new series of drawings--which were fabulous. Slimer was not in the first script that I saw, but once we knew that he was going to be in the show, I called in Bobby Porter to play the role. I had worked with Bobby before and liked his facility in suits as well as his easygoing personality."
  12. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 21. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "The character was going together quite quickly, but then we were notified that it had once again been removed from the show, and I asked them to wait--to be very sure that Slimer was in fact gone before letting the guy go upon which everything had been custom fit. But release him they did."
  13. ↑ ebay Tim Lawrence " Details about Ghostbusters 2 Orig. Prod. Artifact: 'Slimer' Design Sculpt Maquette ~ Last One!" retrieved 9/16/16 Tim Lawrence says: "Slimer for Ghostbusters 2 was an evolution and a composite. By the time of the second movie there were essentially three previous Slimer designs and I was tasked with combining them into a new form that included elements from all: the 'monster' from the first movie, the 'character' from the Saturday cartoon and the Tom Enriquez 'storyboard' Slimer."
  14. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 21. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "Two weeks later, Slimer was not only back in, but he had a role of increased importance to the story. We contacted Bobby to check his availability and found that even though he had signed to another show for stunt work, it looked as though the two schedules would fit and allow him to still perform Slimer. As the time approached, however, weather changed his primary commitment and we found ourselves two weeks from shooting without anyone to wear the suit. Our effects coordinator, Ned Gorman, recalled a person he had worked with on Willow named Robin Navlyt. I was convinced no one else would wear the suit, but I had her come in for a fitting and audition. Incredibly enough, she was exactly the same height as Bobby--four-foot-ten-inches--and she fit into both the body pod and the already molded and cast gloves very well. The same day, Chris Goehe and his mold shop crew did a full lifecast on her and Al Coulter jammed on getting the mechanics fit to the new skull cap. It was really close, but we made the first day of shooting."
  15. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 21-22. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "We were able to do some really nice things with the face, mainly because Al and his crew gave us a wonderful mechanical head. It was more than just a monster face. We could do subtle stuff and it would read. When we were originally thinking of Slimer, we had thought of him as this wild, broad character. But Michael Gross has a very good eye for performance and also a very good eye for looking at something and knowing what's wrong--what's too complicated, what's too much, what should be cut back and made simple. He was always on the set and kept going for a more subtle approach--which surprised us at first. We thought Slimer's actions should be bigger. But we did a few things his way and realized it was cool. Michael wanted a lovable character--and for him, the lovability of Slimer would come from a subtle, inner humanness that you might not otherwise see because of the way he looks. Once we saw the subtlety of the expression that was possible, Slimer suddenly had an incredible life to him that I had never seen in such a character before. To see his face light up from very sad to very happy was a wonderful thing."
  16. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 30. Cinefex, USA. Line reads: "Filmed at night on a street location in Los Angeles, the illusion was accomplished using four different coats actuated variously by radio-controlled servos, hand puppeteering and cable-pull mechanisms. Tim Lawrence and his creature crew developed the specialty garments."
  17. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 30. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence says: "When this gag first surfaced, many concepts were discussed and drawn. Some included using live animals--but for obvious reasons, those were discarded early on. What was finally chosen was the approach seen in the film--with one exception. From the very beginning we conceived of the coat as being made from a nonspecific white fur. All of the prototyping and patterns had been generated with a white coat in mind and synthetic fur had been ordered in bulk. The heads and legs--which were sculpted and cast in foam latex--had been hand-laid in a white crepe fur and all that remained was to finish the mechanics, fit the actress with the support harness and complete the assembly. About ten days before we were due to shoot, we sent a film test down to Ivan showing how the coat might photograph in either daytime or nighttime lighting and a test of the 'runway' gag. He thought the look and the gag were fine--but he wanted to know why the coat was white. Michael was as surprised as we were. It had never occurred to us that it might be anything else. Fortunately, we were able to scramble around and redo the coat with darker fur in time for the shoot."
  18. ↑ Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History, p. 151. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA, ISBN 9781608875108. Line reads: "Four different coats, all outfitted with a variety of practical effects, were used in a late-night location shoot on an LA street outside the Biltmore Hotel, which doubled as the Sedgewick Hotel in the original film."
  19. ↑ Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History, p. 168-169. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA, ISBN 9781608875108. Ned Gorman says: "There was a master coat that the lady was wearing, which had all the heads react and do stuff. And there were close-up heads which were shot as inserts, where they were being [manipulated] from behind."
  20. ↑ Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 44-45. Cinefex, USA.Line reads: "The change was accomplished primarily by makeup applications devised by the ILM creature shop. "It was not the first work we did on the Vigo character," noted Tim Lawrence. "Early during preproduction, we were given a variety of sketches by Thom Enriquez depicted a very overweight-looking character with a wild-eyed look and a facial structure such that it would have been impossible to find anyone who actually looked like that. So at the beginning, we were going to be designing a makeup that would be used on an actor throughout the film. Then when it came time for transformation at the end, Vigo was going to be something much more monstrous--some kind of a huge construction that we never quite worked out completely because the whole concept went off in a different direction once Wilhelm von Homburg was cast for the part. Wilhelm has a very distinctive "bad guy" face and Ivan decided to use it without a whole lot of alteration--but he did still want some appliance makeup. So we did lifecasts on Wilhelm and then Mike Smithson and I did a variety of alterations in clay--fairly subtle things like strengthening his jaw line, straightening out his nose, giving him a more sinister brow, elongating his earlobes and sharpening his cheeks. We did ten or eleven versions of the makeup in clay and then photographed them in black-and-white and made up a little book that we sent down so that Ivan and the producers could see the various directions it could go in. They picked one that they liked and we made a set of appliances for this guy. The problem was that they wanted this very elaborate makeup to be used for the whole film and I had asked for three weeks to do it. They said they could only give us two weeks and then wound up giving us one; but they said, 'Don't worry about it, because it's just going to be used for a photo shoot as a guide for the artist who is doing the painting, but that when he comes to life he should look more realistic and less stylized. So we did the makeup very quickly for the photo shoot and then Wilhelm was used without makeup for the film itself." The final transformation was likewise toned down. "We did a lot of drawings for the Vigo monster--some of them pretty horrendous--and we had other things going on as well. At one point the slime was going to bring to life things from some of the other paintings--so we had little Hieronymous Bosch characters running around and a spirally kind of Escher character. Over time, however, all that got more and more watered down to the point where instead of making a Vigo monster we were asked to come up with a makeup that simply represented Vigo's inner evil essence. We sent about fifty concepts down to Michael Gross--some of which were altered photographs. Early in the show there had been some mylar tests done on Ned Gorman--our effects coordinator--to show how the Scoleri brothers could be distorted and stretched. Some of those bizarre photos were blown up and artwork was done on them--and it was one of those that was selected. The difficulty for us when it came time to do the makeup was that the basic understructure was not a human head. Obviously the makeup had to be something that could be added to a real person--we could not stretch a person's head to do it--so we had to start by roughing in a sculpture and getting a lot of people's interpretations as to what the stretch marks and bizarre washes of color on the photograph actually meant in three-dimensional terms. When we got as close as we could to the accepted design, we molded and cast the makeup in about seven pieces." Howie Weed--one of the creature shop crew members--wore the makeup for scenes of Vigo transformed within the painting and for a subsequent scene when Ray becomes entranced by Vigo and momentarily turns into a demon before his friends restore him with a blast of positive slime."
  21. ↑ Gremlins 2- Commentary (2002) (DVD ts. 1:04:00). Warner Brothers Home Video.

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