![]() ![]() “And he said, ‘I like it, but I don’t like the tree.’ And so I took the tree cel out, and put a different one in.” Reitman experimented for a while, testing different combinations and elements, and changing the positions of the acetate layers until he had a composition that he liked then, Eytchison taped everything down. “I set it in front of him and said, ‘This is what a 16th-century Carpathian warlord would wear in battle,’” Eytchison recalls. Gross to Reitman’s trailer, where they presented the painting. ILM representatives came down to Burbank, where Ghostbusters II was shooting, and went with Eytchison and executive producer Michael C. “Then we painted several versions of each element-skies, trees, the burning castle, the throne of skulls-on separate layers of acetate.” “We got a blackboard and we painted a background on it,” he says. “And while they were looking at costumes, I was looking through books of painters from that time and in that geographic location so we could match the look and feel of the period.”Īfter the team had compiled a number of samples, the next logical step would have been to spend a couple of days creating a painting to show to Reitman, but Eytchison decided to do something a little different. “We spent the day doing research to determine what a 16th-century Carpathian warlord would look like and what he would wear,” Eytchison says. So he asked ILM to send a matte painter down to his home in Southern California, where the Pageant’s costume department came prepared with books from their library. It also had to work for Wilhelm von Homburg, who had already been cast as Vigo.’”Įytchison knew they had to get started right away if they wanted to finish in time. “They showed me a stack of paintings Ivan had said that they were 'too Conan.' So our first task was to create a composition that would work for Ivan, and also work for us technically. “Some of ILM’s best people had produced some really brilliant and beautiful paintings, but they had all been rejected by Ivan Reitman,” Eytchison says. “Then they wanted him to come to life and start speaking his lines, and they wanted that to be a really shocking moment.”Įytchison knew he could pull that off, but first, he had to tackle the most pressing issue: Creating the artwork on which he would base his living painting. “They wanted him to be convincing as a flat painting in the early museum scenes where he’s being restored,” Eytchison says. So Eytchison officially signed on and took a look at the script, while Muren and the ILM team outlined what they wanted their living painting to do. “There’s no question we could figure it out, but you already know how to do it,” he told Eytchison. I didn’t want them to go, ‘We’re paying this guy and that’s all you have to do?’”īut Muren wasn’t having it. “It’s not easy-in fact, it's very difficult-but it’s based on common sense: Eliminate the shadows and the set will look flat. “When all is said and done, the Pageant is about wood, unbleached muslin, paint, and light,” he says. When he flew up to meet with Muren at ILM’s headquarters, then located in San Rafael, California, Eytchison intended to talk them out of using his services. or that a lot of their living painting wouldn't ever make it to the big screen. Eytchison, his crew, and ILM had no idea that their creation would become an iconic movie villain. What followed was a whirlwind month in which Eytchison and his team created a painting that would terrify moviegoers, sewed together Vigo the Carpathian’s costume, built a physical set of the painting, and shot footage of Wilhelm von Homburg as Vigo-complete with warlord outfit and facial prosthetics-stepping out of that set to fight the Ghostbusters. There’s no one any better in the world.” Eytchison was also a Ghostbusters fan whose idol was ILM visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren-so, of course, he said he’d help. “We’re the best at it,” he tells Mental Floss. As director of the Laguna Beach, California, show Pageant of the Masters, he had, at that point, been creating tableaux vivants-three-dimensional sets containing actors that were lit to look like flat paintings and would, at the right moment, shockingly come to life-for more than a decade. Living paintings were something Eytchison knew well. They had to do it fast: The movie was due to come out in June. It was early 1989, and employees at George Lucas’s famed visual effects house needed to create a painting of a 16th-century Carpathian warlord that could come to life for director Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters sequel. Glen Eytchison was deep in the planning stages of his next theatrical production when he got a phone call from Industrial Light & Magic. ![]()
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