Newsweek has an interview with Dan Aykroyd on the upcoming Ghostbusters video game (previously reported here) and talks about the development on the third Ghostbusters movie.
Here’s an excerpt:
Q: Who got the best digital makeover? You? Ernie Hudson? Slimer?
A: Honestly, I love the way we look in the Wii platform, because it resembles the animation that was done in “The Incredibles.” Anybody who looks like an Incredible is automatically a superhero. And I was so pleased that they shaved off at least 60 pounds from my current bulk. The boys look good. We resemble the actors who were in the first movie. You wouldn’t want us out there looking as we do today. But in the third movie we will! There, we’ll have the benefit of passing the torch to a new generation. Much prettier and much better looking, like Alyssa Milano.
Q: Will she be in “Ghostbusters III”?
A: She’s in the game, and I hope the tradition continues! She’d be terrific as one of our new cadets.
Q: For the videogame, did you do motion-capture or facial capture stuff?
A: They filmed me doing the audio dialogue. They had a digital camera on me, just as they do with animation. We were reading from a script—a script that we had taken and brought back in tone to the feeling of the first movie. The guys who developed this game were real fans, so they had the vernacular already, they had the feeling, they had the essence of it. Our effort was in really providing the volume of audio work that’s required for a videogame. A screenplay’s 120 pages, and a videogame is 600.
Q: There was a lot of improvisation in the movie. Obviously you can’t have that in a videogame. Is anything lost there?
A: There are certain stages where you can throw in extra stuff, throw in ideas. If it’s been animated, of course, no, there’s no room for improvisation. But there were some instances where we were coming up with concepts and slipping them in there. The main thing was to try to restore the quality and the enthusiasm and the passion of our original performances.
Continue reading: Dan Aykroyd on the Return of Ghostbusters.