They had some good shots from a real-sized replica prop of the Ghostbuster's Ecto Containment Unit, but unfortunately there were some bits of the unit missing. It also looked really neat and clean for what the directors' had in mind: a rusty, grit and decaying over time ECU whose lid would open in a blast after losing its capabilities.

I sourced some blueprints with accurate measuements from a fansite in Internet and modelled a new ECU in Cinema 4D to simulate the current physical version. Once the base was built, lit and coloured, a brick wall was added, replicating the same environment as in the 1984 movie.

I then animated the different elements of the ECU (LED lights, gauges and lid) until the client was happy, and added the different cameras that would shoot each take for the intro.

Once the take was approved, and since it was a simple frontal zoom in, I exported the first frame, and added rust, grit, cogwebs, corroded paint using Photoshop. I also took photos of lights from a socket and added them to improve the realistic look of the montage.

In order to save time and money, while increasing the overall look of the unit, both the client and I decided to add some real smoke to the take.

The producers had an old smoke machine, so we used a shoebox inserted into a big black cardboard. The smoke machine would be inserted from behind the shoebox, in order for the smoke to accumulate in the box. The lid movement from the digital take recreated using the shoebox cover, while being lit and shot against the black background. We ended up with an isolated flow of real smoke which would have been really expensive/time comsuming to achieve using particles systems.