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I ain't 'fraid of no ghost
By Spencer Essey
sessey@mscd.edu

Photo courtesy of Braxtan Film J. Michael Weiss stands in a parking lot in full costume. To cut corners for the budget, the cast used secondhand Halloween costumes.

When there’s something strange in the neighborhood, who you gonna call?

There’s always Metro’s crypto-science club, but if they don’t come through, there’s Denver’s own Hank Braxtan, writer/director of the new fan film Return of the Ghostbusters.

Mostly using old Halloween costumes, Braxtan has brought the Ghostbusters back in a new feature-length movie that does not feature Dan Aykroyd or Bill Murray.

Instead, Braxtan and co-writer Tim Johnson (who plays Ed Spengler in the film) penned a movie 80-plus minutes long and shot it over eight months.

The story revolves around three fresh-faced Ghostbusters, complete with updated ghost-busting technology, and their fight to save the souls of Denver and the world. The villain is an evil archeologist who has found an ancient Egyptian artifact known as the Amulet of Anubis.
Braxtan said he hopes to disprove several misconceptions regarding fan films and filmmaking in Denver. First, he wanted to show that a fan film could be good. Second, he wanted to show that there is a perfectly viable film market in any city, not just New York and Los Angeles.

Traditionally, fan films are a continuation of a popular fictional franchise, be it Star Wars or Harry Potter. Fan films are for people who just can’t get enough of the original works. They usually have little to no budget, cater to an obsessive fan following, and have no official connection to the original. In fact, they aren’t even legal.

Since these pieces of conceptual gold are copyrighted, only the original copyright holders have the right to make any media from the ideas. However, fan film creators make no attempts to profit or claim affiliation with the copyright holders.

Braxtan said he hopes Bill Murray would be more flattered than upset at this latest venture. He stressed that he is trying to honor the original movies he enjoyed as a child, not to denigrate them.

Inspired by the idea of the fan film, Braxtan took the idea and ran with it. He wants to bring these homegrown cinematic tributes out of the underground and into a larger forum, relying on professional special effects and more sophisticated production methods.

Using what he calls the Denver Ghostbusters for his vessel, Braxtan hopes the popular franchise and lack of content – there were only two Ghostbusters movies, as opposed to the countless hours of Star Wars and Harry Potter – will create a larger market and get some attention.

Braxtan noted that most independent films rely strongly on dialogue and artistic integrity to gain attention. With Return of the Ghostbusters, Braxton wants to show that an independent film could combine an art-house minimalism with the stunts and special effects of a big-budget Hollywood movie.

Photo courtesy of Braxtan Film Joel Hanson, Arielle Brachfeld and Tim Johnson, stars of the fan film Return of the Ghostbusters, stand in front of Ecto 3, a modified Nissan Xterra, in downtown Denver during filming.

The Denver Ghostbusters made their first appearance in Braxtan’s 2004 fan film Freddy vs. Ghostbusters, a 35-minute short featuring the new Denver Ghostbusters at odds with Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

The film cost around $500 and was a small Internet success. More importantly, it had fans clamoring for a sequel.

Not wanting to disappoint, Braxtan gathered his resources and put together an international staff. The cast and crew came from Canada, Nebraska and Denver, and were willing to work simply for experience and exposure.

Though they certainly didn’t have the resources of Hollywood, everyone who worked on the project made the most of what was at hand.

“I had all the separate crews competing against each other to see who could turn out a better product,” Braxton said. “This ensured that everybody was working their hardest.”

The special effects by Ryan Johnson and Justin Rader give the movie the aesthetic of a big-budget Hollywood film, rivaling the effects in the original Ghostbusters movies. The original score by Jon Vandergriff helps to round out the cinematic experience.

The trailer alone, with its final shot showing the Qwest building exploding, reveals impressive results.

The Qwest building isn’t the only Denver landmark featured in Return of the Ghostbusters. Braxtan and his crew shot scenes all around Denver, including the Mayan Theater, the Capitol and a local fire station, as well as the Tivoli and other locales around the Auraria Campus.

“Everybody we approached about shooting was so friendly and willing to let us use their facilities,” Braxtan said. “Most wanted to be in the movie as extras.”

This differs from New York and Los Angeles, where a license would be required and fees charged. The crew’s willingness to work with only exposure as a reward helped cut costs immensely. The final budget was approximately $2,800.

To finance the film, Braxtan asked for donations on his website and other online forums. At one point, he had to shut down donations because so many people responded. He attributed this generosity to people’s deep desire for another Ghostbusters movie, even if it was a fan film.

While Return of the Ghostbusters will probably never make it the big screen, it will be available for download for free from Braxtan’s website, www.braxtanfilm.com. It will also be released to DVD.
No release date has been set yet, as the crew is still in post-production. Braxton hopes for an online premiere late this year or early next year. Meanwhile, there are plenty of teasers on the website.