$13 million and no CGI: The original ‘Beetlejuice’ VFX designer explains why the film still feels magical 3 decades later
Picture the original Beetlejuice. No doubt a terrifying moment comes to mind first: The open maw of a sandworm; Beetlejuice’s bug-eyed face on the body of a snake; maybe a shrunken-headed man waiting patiently for his appointment in the afterlife. Regardless of the specific image, nearly all of the most iconic scenes from the original film involve some feat of practical effects, and, remarkably, they still hold up nearly 40 years later. Today, the 1988 comedy-slash-horror classic is back in the spotlight thanks to Warner Bros. Pictures’ release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the original film. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is currently doing numbers at the box office and making a splash in the advertising world. It certainly comes with all of the gross and irreverent details one would expect from the franchise, but the film has a difficult time capturing the magic of its predecessor—likely because the circumstances of Beetlejuice’s filming were entirely unique. Robert Short is a VFX designer responsible for many of Beetlejuice’s most memorable moments. In 1989, he won an Oscar for Best Makeup on the film alongside fellow artists Ve Neill and Steve La Porte. According to Short, Beetlejuice’s timeless visuals can be boiled down to what he describes as “lightning in a bottle”: the perfect combination of budget restraints, dedication to practical effects, and stellar team members that resulted in a one-of-a-kind creative environment. We sat down with Short to get a behind-the-scenes look at the original film, which follows young couple Adam and Barbara Maitland as they explore the afterlife, haunt their own home, and get caught up with the trickster demon Beetlejuice. Our conversation explores the secrets behind the movie’s most head-scratching effects, the challenges that designers faced to make it happen, and how its VFX approach compares to the new film. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. What was your approach to visual effects in the original Beetlejuice film? Our main idea was to do everything live on set that we possibly could. It was magician’s tricks, sleight of hand, and forced perspectives. What we wanted to do was stay away from the editing technology at the time, because if you did a composite, you degraded the image completely. What are some specific effects that you worked on for the film? Like I said, we wanted to try and do everything as much as we could in-camera, first generation. That includes the fly that skitters across the graveyard in the model town at the beginning of the film. It’s a hand puppet. You don’t see the puppeteers because they’re dressed in black and it’s a black background, but the puppeteers are in the shot. We slowed down the film rate when we shot that so that the fly was jerky and speedy, like a real fly. We went out of our way to be as ingenious as possible, so that we could keep people off-kilter. When [Beetlejuice characters] Adam and Barbara try to scare their home’s new residents by removing their heads, we had to figure out how to design and set up the shots so that we could convince people it was actually a headless body running out of the room. Part of this was trying to keep the audience in the dark as to how we were doing this stuff, so they just would accept it. [Image: ©1988 Warner Bros.] Did you have any design challenges? How did you solve them? We had a lot of fun working with Sylvia Sydney as Juno, the Maitland’s case worker in the afterlife, when she blows smoke out of her neck. We had the special effects team push smoke through a tube and out of a hole in her neck with a big machine. But it wasn’t getting the smoke to her fast enough for the shot. That was one of those things where we were running out of time, and I said, “Oh, somebody give me a cigarette and I’ll get this smoke through.” So I had to take a big puff of that cigarette and blow the smoke through the tube. [Image: ©1988 Warner Bros.] In the scene when Adam and Barbara realize they’re ghosts, Barbara holds a toy horse in front of a mirror and only sees the horse reflected back. To do that, we put two toy horses on a rod so that [when] you held one horse up, the other one was a foot away. There was a hole in the wall where the mirror would be. We built a negative replica version of the set on the other side of the hole [so that it appears as if a mirror was there]. I would never have known how some of the shots in this film were made before you explained it to me. Well, you know, we used to do that stuff all the time. Beetlejuice was one of the last films ever made that didn’t have a single CGI shot in it. There were movies in production during the time of Beetlejuice that were doing one or two computer-generated shots. When Jurassic Park came out, that was the end. I was like, “Ah, we’re all extinct. We’re never going to be shooting stuff like this again, unless it’s specifically something we want to do.
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Picture the original Beetlejuice. No doubt a terrifying moment comes to mind first: The open maw of a sandworm; Beetlejuice’s bug-eyed face on the body of a snake; maybe a shrunken-headed man waiting patiently for his appointment in the afterlife. Regardless of the specific image, nearly all of the most iconic scenes from the original film involve some feat of practical effects, and, remarkably, they still hold up nearly 40 years later.
Today, the 1988 comedy-slash-horror classic is back in the spotlight thanks to Warner Bros. Pictures’ release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the original film. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is currently doing numbers at the box office and making a splash in the advertising world. It certainly comes with all of the gross and irreverent details one would expect from the franchise, but the film has a difficult time capturing the magic of its predecessor—likely because the circumstances of Beetlejuice’s filming were entirely unique.
Robert Short is a VFX designer responsible for many of Beetlejuice’s most memorable moments. In 1989, he won an Oscar for Best Makeup on the film alongside fellow artists Ve Neill and Steve La Porte. According to Short, Beetlejuice’s timeless visuals can be boiled down to what he describes as “lightning in a bottle”: the perfect combination of budget restraints, dedication to practical effects, and stellar team members that resulted in a one-of-a-kind creative environment.
We sat down with Short to get a behind-the-scenes look at the original film, which follows young couple Adam and Barbara Maitland as they explore the afterlife, haunt their own home, and get caught up with the trickster demon Beetlejuice. Our conversation explores the secrets behind the movie’s most head-scratching effects, the challenges that designers faced to make it happen, and how its VFX approach compares to the new film.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What was your approach to visual effects in the original Beetlejuice film?
Our main idea was to do everything live on set that we possibly could. It was magician’s tricks, sleight of hand, and forced perspectives. What we wanted to do was stay away from the editing technology at the time, because if you did a composite, you degraded the image completely.
What are some specific effects that you worked on for the film?
Like I said, we wanted to try and do everything as much as we could in-camera, first generation. That includes the fly that skitters across the graveyard in the model town at the beginning of the film. It’s a hand puppet. You don’t see the puppeteers because they’re dressed in black and it’s a black background, but the puppeteers are in the shot. We slowed down the film rate when we shot that so that the fly was jerky and speedy, like a real fly.
We went out of our way to be as ingenious as possible, so that we could keep people off-kilter. When [Beetlejuice characters] Adam and Barbara try to scare their home’s new residents by removing their heads, we had to figure out how to design and set up the shots so that we could convince people it was actually a headless body running out of the room. Part of this was trying to keep the audience in the dark as to how we were doing this stuff, so they just would accept it.
Did you have any design challenges? How did you solve them?
We had a lot of fun working with Sylvia Sydney as Juno, the Maitland’s case worker in the afterlife, when she blows smoke out of her neck. We had the special effects team push smoke through a tube and out of a hole in her neck with a big machine. But it wasn’t getting the smoke to her fast enough for the shot. That was one of those things where we were running out of time, and I said, “Oh, somebody give me a cigarette and I’ll get this smoke through.” So I had to take a big puff of that cigarette and blow the smoke through the tube.
In the scene when Adam and Barbara realize they’re ghosts, Barbara holds a toy horse in front of a mirror and only sees the horse reflected back. To do that, we put two toy horses on a rod so that [when] you held one horse up, the other one was a foot away. There was a hole in the wall where the mirror would be. We built a negative replica version of the set on the other side of the hole [so that it appears as if a mirror was there].
I would never have known how some of the shots in this film were made before you explained it to me.
Well, you know, we used to do that stuff all the time. Beetlejuice was one of the last films ever made that didn’t have a single CGI shot in it. There were movies in production during the time of Beetlejuice that were doing one or two computer-generated shots. When Jurassic Park came out, that was the end. I was like, “Ah, we’re all extinct. We’re never going to be shooting stuff like this again, unless it’s specifically something we want to do.”
After watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, how would you compare its VFX approach to the original?
It’s a different mindset. They did do a lot of practical stuff, but they also did a lot of CGI. You can’t not do that these days. It does mean that you don’t have to be as innovative and inventive. They did well with the practical stuff that they did do, though I’m not a big fan of the new shrunken head guys. You can tell that the proportions of the body are a bit off. But they probably felt that would be a bit goofy and a bit homemade, which is how the original film felt.
As far as what they did, they had their own modus operandi. They used the tools that they needed. And when you’ve got CGI as a tool, that opens up so many avenues. There’s probably a lot of CGI in the film that I didn’t even catch.
From your perspective as a designer, what do you think makes the original Beetlejuice and its effects so memorable for viewers?
A big part of it is that it’s all one generation. It takes you for a ride and keeps you guessing as to how things were done. It was [also] very original for its time. I mean, let’s face it, at the time that it was done, it was like, What the hell is this?
It was also that we had such a limited budget, even for the time. Our creativity and ingenuity is what makes the effects so fascinating and timeless—because of our $13 million budget, we were forced to figure out different ways of doing things.
I’ll give you an example. One of the reasons why people embrace the effects is that we sometimes showed less so that your imagination kicked in. Like when Beetlejuice turns around and makes a scary face away from the audience. I get this question all the time: “What did he look like from the other side?!” Use your imagination. That’s what makes it scary.
