:00:03
Original Production Notes
provided courtesy of Don Shay.
(c) 1985 Don Shay all rights reserved
:00:21
The New York Public Library at
Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street...
:00:24
was the location
of this opening scene.
:00:27
Originally conceived
as two separate establishing shots...
:00:30
Director Ivan Reitman
and Cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs...
:00:32
chose instead this sweeping
crane shot.
:00:37
This interior is the Main Reading Room
of the New York Library.
:00:40
To film here
was a logistics challenge.
:00:42
The huge room had to be lit,
the action staged and photographed...
:00:45
and then everything cleared away...
:00:48
all within the hours
between the crew's 5:00 AM call...
:00:51
and the Library's 10:00 AM opening.
:00:57
We're not in New York anymore.
:01:00
While the New York Library exterior
and vast reading room...
:01:03
created a perfect Gothic atmosphere,
the book stacks flunked their audition.
:01:06
For "aesthetic and economic reasons,"
the producers shot these scenes...
:01:09
at the main branch
of the public library in Los Angeles.
:01:11
The final shooting script
called for more than a dozen books...
:01:14
to suddenly fly off the shelf
and land at the feet of the librarian.
:01:17
But at the last minute,
Dan Aykroyd suggested...
:01:20
this more subtle and eerie approach...
the first of 200 optical effects...
:01:23
by visual effects creator
Richard Edlund and his team.
:01:37
This next bit of ghostly mischief...
:01:40
falls in the category of a physical
effect rather than an optical effect.
:01:43
Special effects supervisor Chuck Gaspar
built a bank of card cabinets...
:01:46
rigged with air hoses
to spew the cards out on cue.