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Written by Matthew Baynton, Simon Farnaby and Martha Howe-Douglas
Directed by Simon Hynd
Cinematography by Álvaro Gutiérrez
Designed by Andrew Lavin
‘Ghosts’ returns in a hauntingly funny feature film; Elements were there to make sure (in our opinion), our national treasure of a cast were brought to life with maximum effect. The key to any spooky scene lies in atmospherics: building depth through lighting, hazer and tactile texture in what would otherwise be dead background space.
One of our standout practical sequences was the slow build-up of water on the roof. Tarps and scaffolding slowly fill with England’s winter downpour, only for the temporary reservoir to burst under it’s growing weight. This causes a butterfly effect, and the water starts cascading down the scaffolding tiers, growing in volume and momentum until…
Meanwhile, down in the basement, several mini bonfires have bin lit, these controlled fires were created in our workshop, where our welder got creative and fabricated remarkably convincing metal twigs (We’ve built our fair share over 29 years of business, these were exceptional). The stick piles then got a spa day with our painter, who magically transformed these shiny metal sculptures into realistic twigs. Back on set the Special Effects department fireproofed the set and set up all the twig rigs. As the scripted fired spread and threaten to spiral out of control, the gush of water from the scaffolding comes crashing down, and conveniently extinguishes this almost terrible accident.
But how did we create the cascading effect?
It begins in our workshop; were all the practical magic starts. A couple hours of brainstorming with our engineers and crew of the company; and the team were put to work creating tipper rigs, small enough to be easily carried up scaffold but big enough to release enough water. Whilst a tipper rig might sound like dark magic, it’s an eloquently simple, cost-effective solution that allows tighter-budget productions to still deliver a punchy effect. We then needed to see how the get the water to flow in the way it would when it’s up on scaffolding, so we made a few adjustments to our workshop steps to give us the height we needed. Some tarps, ladders, kicker plates and a few buckets of water later, and we had done it. The idea was then taken to set, where we refined our rig amongst the scaffold, had a day of testing, then one take and boom, shower of water for the DOP to film.
