Ghostbusted 3: The Real Ghostbusted Watch at Youtube | Image Gallery Watch the Outtake Reel (40 MB, 14.5 min, Quicktime) Camp Rewind 2003 Image Gallery Photos from the Camp Fastforward 4 Shoot Are these guys afraid of no ghost? No, they are not. See, it's a quote from that movie that one time? Eddie and Seymour have put together an amateur Ghostbusting business, which isn't exactly going well. Do they have what it takes to defeat the vicious Ghostmaster? (Hint: No, they don't.) Max Bookwalter (Jason Santo) has finally realized his dream of becoming a Ghostbuster. With the help of technical whiz and hate-filled man Eddie K. Gore (Mike Stoklasa), local idiot Seymour Gibraltar (Garrett Gilchrist), and suave ladies man Joe Hong (Jonason Ho), and absolutely no help from Max himself who quits halfway through the story (just like in Ghostbusted 1), the Ghostbusters must defeat the evil Ghostmaster, Walter Bluth (Warren Blyth), a strange, lonely man who turned to evil after developing the power to summon the undead. Will good triumph against evil? Who the hell knows ... The third in our improvised comedic takes on the Ghostbusters mythos. These movies were filmed quickly when we were on vacation in South Dakota for the Camp Rewind film festival every year. No one ever wanted to be in them or take them the least bit seriously and cast members would come and go. I think that lends the films a certain je ne sais quoi. I like all three films but this is the one to watch first. (46 min, MiniDV, 2003-2004.) Starring Mike Stoklasa, Garrett Gilchrist, Jonason Ho, Jason Santo, and Warren Blyth. Largely directed by Garrett Gilchrist. Improvised by the cast. A not for profit internet project. No money will ever be made from this film. Any characters referenced or parodied are copyright their original creators.

Too Hot to Handle, Too Cold to Hold ...

In summer 2003, I attended the Camp Rewind Film Festival in South Dakota for the third time. The last two times, I had attempted to film a Ghostbusters-related short film, and failed. It's hard to get filmmakers on vacation to star in a complete short film - their attentions are elsewhere. The first two "Ghostbusted" films became strange documentaries about the fest - not the story of amateur Ghostbusters I had envisioned. This time round, I would film the "real" Ghostbusted ...

I was driving with Mike Stoklasa of Chicago's GMP Pictures this time round. I was about to go to Milwaukee and star in a movie called Indulgence. Jason Santo was also in attendance - he was supposed to be the star of the original Ghostbusted, along with Mike. So I had my cast. My main task was convincing them that I was serious about this, and that we could make a good little movie. We talked through the story together, and they became excited about the idea, that this could work and be filmed in the very short time we had.

Marc and Michael Linn of Linn Productions hosted the Camp Rewind festival every year. They had made their own Ghostbusters segment once upon a time, and had jumpsuits, homemade proton packs, and an Ecto-1-like car. The jumpsuits had Star Wars text on them, left over from Marc Linn's Star Wars fanfilm Heart of the Rebellion. Warren Blyth wound up wearing a Star Wars helmet as the Ghostmaster, and the impressive Giant costume from their unfilmed feature "Pilgrim's Progress" (also used in Heart of the Rebellion) can be seen in the background of some of Warren's scenes. We printed out Ghostbusters logos and applied them to the jumpsuits.

Jason Santo was nowhere to be seen when Mike and I started filming - A scene where we accidentally kill Peter Christian as the "Civil War guy." Jason surprised us by showing up in the middle of the first take, in costume, immediately jumping into the scene in character. No one missed a beat.

Jonason Ho played the fourth member of the team - he was known for his weird sense of humor as a filmmaker and writer, and fit right in. Jesse Maddox, who had made a funny short called "Creepers" and had a comedic rap group called "Dislocated Boner," was on hand, and directors Jonathan Margheim and Alan Winston filmed most of the movie for us, doing a great job. Marc Linn also filmed one scene - taking a phone call in the office - We had to film the scene quickly, in a couple of takes, and Marc nailed it.

As always, since we were filming while attending the film festival, time was very limited. Just like in the original Ghostbusted, Jason Santo vanished partway through, not finishing his part. I realized I had to scale back the plotline we had developed - Jesse Maddox would have had a larger part in the movie as an ill-fated customer of the Ghostbusters. Instead we cut to the chase - running to catch Warren Blyth's Ghostmaster.

The film was entirely improvised, but carefully structured. We knew what was supposed to happen in each scene before we shot it. Mike and Jason shot or directed some of the early scenes, but eventually I was directing the movie with Jonathan or Alan behind the camera.

We had to pull an all-nighter, ignoring sleep, to finish the last scene of the film - it took hours. We were running out of time, and Mike was very tired and depressed, as he usually is, and annoyed with me, as he usually was. He was losing interest in the film, and I had to push him to keep appearing in it so that we could come to a real ending. Strangely, that made his character much funnier. In the film, he just becomes more and more annoyed with my character, and it works. It gave his character a focus - focusing his hate on me. We were getting more and more tired, and our characters are nearly going to sleep toward the end, allowing Jonason Ho to defeat the Ghostmaster.

As we were leaving South Dakota, I begged Mike to film just one last thing - us sitting on the "Ecto-1" type car, so that it could be in the movie. Mike was very unhappy and tired and never quite forgave me for that.

A year later, I was holding my own little get-together in Los Angeles, which we called "Camp Fastforward" - Named for my own amateur filmmaking site, Fastforward, at FFrevolution.com. Founded by myself, Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman, and Warren Blyth, it started as a spoof of Rewind but developed into its own thing. Mike was there, having come from Chicago with Rich Evans. Lisa Renley and Margie Peer had come from Milwaukee. John Brugmann was there. Jesse Maddox was there with Erik Anderson. Local friends John Brugmann, Rob Kraetsch, Amy Mehlhorn, and Jason Gutierrez were also there.

I took the opportunity to have Rich Evans and Lisa Renley play news reporters, interviewing the others present. This footage was perhaps a bit more silly than the rest of the film, but in a nice way. John Brugmann was there and, as in Ghostbusted 2, he refused to be filmed. I wound up with a deleted scene of him refusing to be filmed. Jesse Maddox had died in the Camp Rewind footage, but shows up alive in the later footage. He had been drunk the night before and had a massive unexplained bruise on his arm. The product of ghosts, I suppose. With these scenes shot, the film was now complete.

I finally edited the film together and released it in 2005.