Gerald Petrovic (Peter Drobac) is a kid who lives in a church next to his school, and is mercilessly bullied by a small gang of boys. His dad (Duffy Knox) is the custodian of the church, but has a drinking problem, so never seems to be around when Gerald has to fend off the ungrateful, officious priest – Father Thomas (Hans de Groot). With the impending visit of the Bishop for Christmas Eve Mass, it is imperative that Gerald helps his dad stop drinking or at least help him with the chores around the church.
I decided to make the opening snowball sequence in black and white to give it a documentary feel (all handheld – at Royal St. George’s School, Toronto) because the ‘magic’ of the story comes a little later. Working with these kids was a great time...they were all very serious about getting the shots right.
Gerald's wayward snowball hits 'Bruno' (Amos Clark) - the school's gang leader, and he is chased into the school by Bruno and his henchmen. Safely inside, Gerald is met by the first of several eccentric characters – Miss Thorp (Darlene Treen) – straight out of the pages of Gary Larson’s Far Side. She has Gerald climb up a ladder to place an angel on top of the school’s Christmas tree.
This makes Gerald late for class and has to serve a detention. He accidentally meets up with the new girl in class – Angela Smith (Katherine Rogers) – a beautiful girl who could’ve stepped out of the pages of Vogue magazine. He is instantly smitten and can’t stop thinking about her.
We shot the majority of ‘Gerald’s Ghost’ in St. Simon’s church, Toronto, where I had been singing for nearly ten years. (Rev. Randall Johnson gave us free reign to shoot anywhere in the building, and we even borrowed some of his vestments). The nice thing about shooting in a church is that we could emphasize the colours coming through the windows. Luckily, I had many different coloured gels at my disposal because I knew the Production Manager of ‘Street Legal’ which had its permanent sets just blocks from where I lived near Bathurst and Bloor. One day while I was watching them shoot, I noticed hundreds of dollars worth of rejected gels in a garbage can, and was allowed to take whatever I could carry. This enabled us to experiment with different colour palettes and moods for each of the many different interior church scenes.
Gerald sees Angela come to life in a stained-glass window as he is cleaning it, and tries to kiss her...until Father Thomas ignominiously snaps him out of his daydream.
This was the first effect I shot with ‘Angela’ and really had no idea if I could pull it off in post or not. I filmed Katherine against a black cloth in the hopes that we’d be able to superimpose her head into the kneeling figure that graced the stained-glass window. (This was just before the digital technology boom – but happily, we managed to pull it off – and the effect is completely convincing).
While cleaning the floors, Gerald hears a sneeze and turns in time to see a ghost (Peter Treen) appear - one who is allergic to dust. He is a lanky, comical looking apparition dressed in 18th century garb. Gerald continues cleaning and is confronted again by the same ghost, but in different clothing – that of Marley’s ghost from Dickens. Later still, when Gerald takes a break to practice the organ, the ghost makes a third appearance – this time from a ball of smoke – dressed as Macbeth’s father. Gerald is not in the least bit scared, disappointing the ghost, who admits he is really ‘Henri de Champignon’ – killed by the great swordsman, Vuillard, in 1749.’
Rather than repeating the ghost effect of ‘Moonshine Island’ utilizing the in-camera Schufftan process, I thought it would be more prudent and less cumbersome to create the effects in post-production. Ultimately, this would give me more freedom and less technical headaches. It meant locking down the camera and shooting the same background twice – once with Peter Treen, and once without. In post, Peter would be superimposed over the empty shot, but as a half-dissolve – the density of which could be determined after the shoot – unlike the Schufftan process. When Peter Drobac was in the scene with the ghost, it usually meant a split screen effect, with only one half of the screen incorporating the half-dissolve – otherwise, Peter Drobac would have become a ghost just like Peter Treen!
The most exciting day of the shoot came when we had to employ smoke machines for Henri’s take on Macbeth’s father. To create the fireball – ushering in the ghost, we placed a red-gelled photoflood on a little dolly and smothered it with a blast of smoke, just as we began pulling it down the nave of the church. In post, we sped it up and added ‘whooshing’ sound effects. Then, we placed Peter Treen on the dolly, lit the church with red gels, blasted the church with two smoke machines, and had two fellows out of frame gently pulling the dolly down the nave, making it look as though Peter was floating as he moved.
After having checked with the Wardens of the church to make sure the smoke detectors would not detect the oil-based smoke, to our great dismay, the fire alarms went off anyway. Steve Coulber (grip, etc.) and I made a mad dash for the fire department, which is right next door to St. Simon’s, to discourage the firemen from leaving their TV dinners. Our attempt failed, as they are legally obliged to respond. They hopped into their fire trucks and travelled the 50 yards to St. Simon’s parking lot – the siren petering out after barely sounding for a few seconds. It was an impressive sight, these firemen dressed in their finery and massive boots, clomping through the church to no real avail. But that blessed alarm was extremely loud, and couldn’t be turned off since the switch was behind a locked door. We had to wait for the custodian – the real one – to arrive and open the bloody door. By this time – and I’m apologetic to this day – an entire ballet class, instructed by none other than that indefatigable Opera Atelier couple, Jeanette Zingg and Marshall Pynkoski, had to be evacuated from St. Simon’s basement. The alarm had been triggered by an infra-red beam, high up in the ceiling, which had been broken by the smoke; I had the custodian switch it off until we managed to get the smoky shots we needed. Once the entire fire department and the little ballerinas had gone home, that’s when the Rev. Randall Johnson arrived on his bicycle, wondering if St. Simon’s was still standing.
Shooting actors in St. Simon’s meant that we had to light whatever space was behind them – which usually was quite massive. Fortunately, I had an arsenal of four powerful quartz lamps, which could fill the entire church, and were gelled amber for day, and blue for night. Even during the day, St. Simon’s could be quite dark, which actually worked in our favour, because in that case, we had full control of the lighting. Notice the difference a lighting setup makes, by the colour and mood of the previous photos, and the ones following. Because of the whimsical nature of the story, I wanted to create the sense that we were shooting a piece of theatre.
Gerald’s father drags in a Christmas tree – messing up the floor which Gerald had just cleaned. Henri appears in time to find his young friend quite depressed over his father’s condition and tries to cheer him up. He slowly walks toward Gerald – passing through the pews. This is an effect which required some thought; I shot Peter Treen against an enormous black cloth in the church hall; I had him placed a fair distance from the camera and then had him walk slowly toward it (which meant lighting the church hall for the length of his walk), then superimposed him into Peter Drobac’s shot. (I had to frame the church shot keeping in mind that Peter Treen would be added much later). In post, (in Pembroke – about a year or two later) the online editor created a hard-edged ‘travelling matte’ – cutting off the lower half of Peter’s body in alignment with the tops of the pews. As Peter walked towards the camera, the line of the matte slowly lowered, giving the impression that the perspective was changing, and Peter was really walking through those pews.
At this point in the story, Henri de Champignon has completely lost his French accent, making Gerald wonder who this ghost is and where he’s from. The father interrupts the conversation and demands to know where Gerald has put the key to his liquor cabinet. The poor kid is forced to hand it over. A slightly darker lighting style – for obvious reasons.
School gets out for Christmas break, and Angela catches up with Gerald, asking whereabouts he lives. He’s embarrassed to tell her he lives in the church. He walks her home and they make snow angels along the way. These were the very first shots we took of Peter Drobac, and when comparing him to scenes immediately before and after, one can see how much he’d aged in the year and a half it took to complete the full shoot. (Also, his voice had changed over the course of the year – wreaking havoc during the edit).
Cut to: Gerald and Henri back in the church. Gerald demands that the ghost tell him his true identity: “Well, my name IS Henry…and I’m from Sudbury, Ontario.” “And how did you die…really?” “Choked on a waffle in 1969.” Finally, the real truth is revealed.
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(above) Henry helps Gerald unblock a vent – which was causing the church to remain very cold. The father happens along and peers into the vent. “How did you get that string in there?” he asks his son…not realizing he has a friend who can walk through walls. Father and son pull on the string, which is followed by a small dust storm, due to the blockage coming loose. (The wall with the intricate Romanesque grill was built out of cardboard and painted to look like brick. We just flipped it and lit it differently so that it could play both the inside and outside of the wall. The grill itself is real and belongs to St. Simon's). Meanwhile, Father Thomas is on the phone to the Bishop, telling him he can actually feel the snow coming on, just as dust drops from a ceiling vent into his lap.
(below) Gerald is bringing a shopping cart full of cleaning supplies home for his father when the bullies unexpectedly show up. (Jamie Tuttle) pushes Gerald to the ground and steals the cart – taking Bruno (who is overcome with motion sickness) for a joyride. A bit of ghostly intervention trips up the two commandeers, sending Bruno into a wrought iron fence. This little action sequence was a blast to shoot and edit…lots of little pieces to string together.
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Angela visits the church and the door is answered by Father Thomas, who is in a particularly cranky mood. She tells the priest she had just seen Gerald enter the church and would like to see him. He tells her Gerald isn’t in and brusquely closes the door.
Gerald is inside decorating the Christmas tree – which is what his dad is supposed to be doing. He wants desperately to go to a skating party with Angela but feels he has to stay on top of things before the Bishop’s visit that evening. Henry transforms himself into Gerald in order to stay behind and decorate the tree. Gerald is both amazed and grateful; he can now get away and see Angela, but also realizes that Henry can’t stay in the church proper too long due to his allergies.
The effect that turns Henry into Gerald was relatively simple, involving a downward ‘soft wipe’ in post. We just had to make sure Peter D. was the same height as Peter T. so that the face dissolved from one to the other. The trickier bit was when Gerald had to walk into the same frame as himself…a split screen to be sure, but one where the split had to move, since Gerald on the right hand side leaves the same side of the screen as Gerald on the left. I believe I may have been influenced by Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' - the shot of the ghostly twin girls in the hallway - when shooting this split screen effect. Naturally, the timing of both performances by Peter Drobac had to be dead on, in order to converse with himself.
The shots in which Gerald and Angela are leaning on the hockey net was also shot in St. Simon's. I taped a black cloth to the wall, put white poster board in front of that to create the boards of a hockey rink...placed the net in front of that and blasted a blue-gelled back light to double for the moon. There was an audio track of people skating to help complete the illusion.
Meanwhile, it is Henry, disguised as Gerald, who is decorating the tree with the father and the priest. His allergies get the better of him, and he has to leave. Duffy Knox (who plays the father) helped me with the lighting of this scene - as well as many of the other scenes - which I thought made for quite a beautiful sequence.
(below) Henry, still disguised as Gerald, comes back to the church after having left the rink, and confronts two of the bullies. He runs off, and the bullies wake up the father who had been sleeping in a pew. They egg him on - he is a bit drunk - and lead him into the Christmas tree. (shot with a Steadicam Jr.)
Henry decides to up the ante and converts the back of the church into an intergalactic tableau, in order to make enough of a dramatic entrance to scare off the bullies.
(If only Gerald had been there to witness it all). It works, and the two boys race out of the church in fast motion - never to bother Gerald again.
Believe it or not, to create this wacky scene, the starry sky, complete with lightning bolts was simply an old 1990's computer screen saver. The planets were cutouts from a magazine, strategically placed on black and shot on a swivel chair. I wrapped Peter Treen (Henry) in black and shot him against black with a quartz lamp aimed directly at the back of his head, and a couple of green-gelled photofloods pointing upward at his face to emulate the great floating green head from 'The Wizard of Oz.' I shot Jamie and Amos (the two bullies) separately in the church. These disparate elements were combined during the online edit in Pembroke. I was so relieved to find that the sequence worked better than I was expecting; it had just the right measure of ridiculous spectacle I had originally intended.
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(below) Father Thomas storms in and berates the father for having destroyed the Christmas tree. He is on the verge of firing him, when suddenly, Angela appears from the back of the nave – literally, for she is also a ghost – and exclaims how beautiful the tree is. Gerald turns in time to see the priest in shock; the tree is standing, and more beautiful than before. Father Thomas collapses. The decorative angel from the beginning of the film magically appears on the floor. Gerald picks it up and places it on top of the tree. He stands back to admire his handiwork, but the angel disappears again. In front of the tree appears Angela; it is now apparent that she has been the little angel all along. She slowly walks past Gerald as if in a daze – calling softly for Henry. Henry appears with a new, sparkly, blurry movement – as did Angela, after her metamorphosis from the angel. (A digital effect, done in post).
Angela is there to promote Henry – from ghost to spectre – due to all the good work he had performed for Gerald. He is thrilled with his raise, and tells Gerald he will always be around the church, if he is needed.
Gerald’s father also seems to have undergone a transformation and gives his son the best Christmas gift he can think of – that of the key to his liquor cabinet…with all the bottles locked away for good.
Finally, the Bishop appears and introduces himself, but notices Father Thomas out cold in the chancel. Gerald’s father tells the Bishop that he had busted Thomas’s ornaments which caused him to faint. Gerald has his dad quickly amend the sentence: “I mean, I busted his Christmas tree ornaments.”
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The film ends with the Christmas Eve service at St. Simon’s. Part of it is staged, but part of it is a real service, with me surreptitiously filming while singing tenor in the choir. The famous choirmaster and composer, Derek Holman, has a cameo while playing the organ.
While Henry is singing ‘O Come all ye Faithful’ in the congregation, he notices Angela appearing in the stained glass window again. He turns and points her out to Gerald, who is a few pews behind him. Angela’s voiceover reminds Gerald that she and Henry will be around for as long as he needs them, and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas.
For Gerald’s Ghost, we shot a lot more story than its running time of 23 minutes (always keeping in mind the length of a real TV half hour). This was a good thing; the whimsical side of the story had no room for the darker material that originally came with the script, and was ruthlessly cut out by editor Pat Edwards.
Online editing was provided by John McMaster at CHRO’s Pembroke station – next to the cows. My digital Hi8 and SVHS tapes had been transferred to BetacamSP tapes, and I had to go to Pembroke armed with time-coded shot lists and the master tapes. The digital world has thankfully changed the whole business of loading and ejecting tapes during the edit process and as a result, many hours and many dollars have been saved.
I look back at this little film and marvel at the amount of work it took – especially just for the lighting alone. All of ‘Moonshine Island’ had been shot outdoors, so we used mostly natural light. But for ‘Gerald’s Ghost,’ 80% of which was shot indoors, absolutely every element had to be lit artificially, and artfully, and I think we were all pleased as to how rich and detailed it looks. The special effects also came out very nicely, because they were pre-planned, fitting into the overall design of the film without looking out of place.
On to the next project!
