Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains

GH OSTWATCH ( 12) Directed by: Lesley Manning Written by: Stephen Volk Produced by: Ruth Baumgarten Released: 25/11/02   Distrib utor: BFI - Archive Television Running Time: 91 minutes Screen Format: PAL, 1.33:1, non-anamorphic Audio : Nicam stereo Subtitles: None Special Features: Audio Commentary, Featurette, DVD-Rom co ntent To mark the film's tenth anniversary in 2002, the British Film Institute released Ghostwatch on home video for the very first time. As the latter format had not entirely disappeared from the shop shelves, the film was also one of the last to be released on both DVD and VHS. The now sold out single-disc DVD edition (at present, a highly sought-after collector's item) featured a modest collection of extras and exclusive DVD-ROM content. The film itself was presented almost uncut - with two (technically) minor omissions being the Lambie-Nairn 'Spinning Globe' and Screen One 'boulder' idents, both of which imm...

If you own the BFI single-disc edition of Ghostwatch (a review of which is coming soon), and have listened to the audio commentary, you might have heard director, Lesley Manning mention 'Harrying in' certain characters from time to time. 'Harrying' is a nickname given to digital compositing by way of the Quantel effects rendering machine, " Harry ". Simply put, "Harry" was a broadcast-quality, digital recording system. The main difference between this and other 'analogue' editing machines was that Harry allowed video sequences to be stored, cut and mixed without degradation - a problem which often occurs when dropping generations on video tape. Using the system, separately photographed images of Pipes the poltergeist could then be superimposed onto other shots - most notably, the scene you voted as being the scariest glimpse of Pipes in our online poll, some months ago. In 1985, Quantel released the "Harry" effects composit...