Watch: BTS with the Skeleton Crew of David Lowery's 'A Ghost Story'

When we spoke to David Lowery about his transcendent A Ghost Story last summer, the director told us that he almost quit halfway through. "There was a point in production where I lost all my confidence," he said, "and I thought it was too high-concept to succeed."

Lowery's primary concern was the viability of the ghost costume on camera. "To make [the ghost] costume work in three dimensions was a feat of mechanical engineering," he said. "I was consistently sick to my stomach thinking that it would not work. In my mind, it worked beautifully, but on set and in all practical senses, it was very much a work in progress for the first week or two of shooting. We were constantly refining the costume and the way in which we had to photograph the costume, and the way in which Casey [Affleck] had to act while wearing it."

But the crew convinced Lowery to stick with it. They were a particularly supportive bunch—after all, the skeleton crew was comprised of Lowery's friends. 

"I wanted it to be my summer vacation movie, to get creative again," Lowery said. "I knew that I wanted to keep the crew very small and very tightly-knit. I wanted all of my usual collaborators to be involved—a very close group of friends, because I knew this was going to be that type of movie that needed that type of support and structure to succeed. Because it was self-financed, there wasn’t any need to go pitch it to anyone or to knock on doors asking for money. We were going to make this movie small enough that we could afford to make it ourselves."

A new video, shot by Shawn Bannon, goes behind the scenes of the film for an intimate glimpse into the homegrown film.

The video, shot vérité, often shows the crew solving problems, from carefully adjusting inconspicuous props to deliberating whether Affleck's character should wear shorts or pants. 

Read our interview with Lowery about A Ghost Story here, in which the director explains, among other things, why they shot in 33 frames per second in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and how they tore down a house for the film's most dramatic shot.

And for more behind-the-scenes tips from Lowery, read our takeaways from his Pete's Dragon production diary.