Ghosts is a show that follows a woman named Samantha Arondekar (Rose McIver), who decides to turn an upstate New York mansion into a bed and breakfast alongside her boyfriend Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar). However, after Sam has a near-death experience, she discovers that the house is haunted by eight different spirits who now need to coexist with the couple.
Because Sam is the only one on the show who can see the ghosts, many scenes must be shot twice. According to McIver during an interview with Variety, since their filming in Montreal and it’s French Canadian, they call it “fantômes” and “sans fantômes” — with ghosts and without ghosts. So scenes are typically shot first with the spirits, then without spirits.
“It’s definitely more technical than I ever would have expected a half-hour sitcom to be. We do have a lot of fun on set, but it’s definitely some of the most focus that I’ve had on a project — trying to remember physically where people are located, whose voice was coming from where, the energies that they were each giving in each take, [which] I want to be matching.”
McIver said she tries to take a photo imprint of what they’re doing during the scene and when they’ve left. Since there are 10 of them, the whole project is a massive exercise in listening. Make sure they make enough room for everybody, serve each other, and set each other up to knock it down. According to her, that’s what works so well in the project. “It’s a very generous cast.”
“It’s very technical for our crew as well. Like, we can’t have a piece of furniture move that they’ve been sitting on. For example, when one of the guys sits down on a bed, so that they’re not physically leaving an imprint, which we normally would do, they put a board of wood underneath the sheets. There are lots of little details like that that people have to think about all the time. For something that ends up coming off very fun, I have a great deal of respect for all of the concentration that has gone into it.”
