Have you accumulated a huge Ghostbusters Collection? Talk about what you have and show it off!
#4793272
kaison wrote:Ahah! I love the 3 crosses on the ground for the commercial!
Well spotted!

Yep, I was posing the Egon figure to be looking down at his 'mark' and realized I needed something on the pavement for him to 'see'.

I grabbed a nearby rock and chalked those in roughly, thinking to myself that the camera would never even notice such a detail.

Or at least, no one would spot it once it was posted.

Good eye, glad I thought to put that detail in.

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Alex
kaison liked this
#4794176
CaptCyan wrote:

Did you have to digitally erase original Peck or did the Matty "Clone" fit right over?
I combined pieces of different frames, such as these two seen overlaid as transparencies to line them up...

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... until I had all the elements and none of the humans, except the ones inside vehicles.

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I tried to mimic the pose of William Atherton's which looked most like a rigid toy anyway.

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The Matty action figure is holding a Jakks Pacific wrestling figure briefcase, purchased off eBay specifically to take this photo.

I shot him against a solid color to extract him better, tweaked his color temperature, painted out his horizontal seams, and shaved the bottom of the briefcase off digitally.

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The last detail was to give him a shadow, which is actually the same cutout of the figure turned upside down, squashed, contrasted until it was solid black, and then laid in as a transparency.

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And just out of curiosity, here's how close they are to the right position in the frame.

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Real Peck has a bigger head than toy Peck, and is skinnier. And his briefcase is smaller.

Alex
By Alex Newborn
#4794913
The Scoleris and Slimer struck me as being mutually exclusive occupants of the containment unit, i.e. they never overlapped.

And I was going for a GB1 vibe, prior to Peck releasing them, as per deleted dialogue.

The Deadites are indeed Palisades toys, not Mattel. But I was trying to reference a specific visual.

Someone figured it out on the Cross the Streams FB page already. Anyone care to guess?

Alex
#4795018
The Deadites were the best toys in my collection to use for a specific 'unused concept' reference.

Namely, the Berni Wrightson 'lost souls' sketch from the book Making Ghostbusters.

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Many years ago, around 2008 or so, I bought several Army of Darkness two-packs on clearance at the Suncoast Video in Huntsville AL, mainly to use them as skeletons and zombies with my Indiana Jones collection.

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As was usually the case for action figures from the now-defunct Palisades company-- which also made the wonderful Muppet Show line that I collect-- the Deadites were exquisitely sculpted and surprisingly poseable, but suffer from VERY fragile posts in the shoulders and hips.

Funnily enough, this worked to my advantage for this particular photo, because one of the 'zombies' had no legs anymore, which meant he was perfect for the one in the very front. The others were posed as closely to the Wrightson art as their articulation would allow.

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This is actually two photos combined. It was difficult to get the front zombie and the rear skeleton in focus at the same time, so I put the camera on a tripod and took two photos with differing focal lengths, and then painted the focused foreground zombie onto the other pic where the other three were in focus. (I used this same trick on the Statue of Liberty photo a few weeks ago.)

Notice that the skeleton's arms are very rigid compared to the zombies. No elbow joint. I digitally repositioned his left arm, and then also decided to replace his right forearm with a flipped clone of the left, because the sculpt of the left hand more closely evoked the despairing gesture seen in the Wrightson sketch.

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Alex
By PssdffJay
#4795023
Great job matching the sketch. A significantly easier way to have more in focus is to increase your depth of field. You're already on a tripod, so put your camera in manual, 100 ISO, f22 or f16 and then determine your shutter speed. It may be into the seconds if your indoors with regular lighting. You could also put your camera in aperture priority, choose the aperture and let the camera fill in the shutter speed. Just make sure you select an actual ISO and not auto or your camera will jump up the ISO to try and keep a shutter speed of a 60th.

Anyway, this is going to give you a larger depth of field and have more in focus. The larger the f stop number, the smaller the aperture, the more in focus. The smaller the f stop number, the larger the aperture, the less in focus.

Play with that. You may only need f8 or f11. Depends on how much you want in focus.

Also, if you have a longer zoom lens, use it. Move as far back as you can and zoom in. It will compress the image. Which is a little hard to explain without visuals.

You probably already know this, but my thumbs needed some exercise this morning!

Great job with the photos! Keep them coming!
Alex Newborn liked this
By Alex Newborn
#4797088
Ah, sorry. I posted it on Cross the Streams FB page, I just neglected to post it anywhere else.

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I may take a break from doing these for a while.

Alex
By Alex Newborn
#4798925
For some reason, it was Egon who popped to mind as the videogamer.

By marrying the 'Jump Bug' idea with the moment in GB2's montage where we see three GB's in two different colors of flightsuits, it gave a possible explanation for why Egon wasn't seen.

He just had to break his high score.

Alex
By Alex Newborn
#4802597
The only time anyone ever passed by and commented was at Columbia University.

I was taking measurements of this thing in case I ever want to have a 'Weaver Hall' sign replicated.

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A student came out of Havemeyer Hall (which was used as Weaver in the movie), saw Adam holding a tape measure to a completely nondescript block of stone while I snapped a pic, and said, "That's the weirdest photo I've ever seen."

He never even slowed down or stopped, just kept on passing by. Adam laughed and said, "Should we explain?"

I said, "Nah. Just let him wonder."

Alex

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