Patrick Ryan

USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Becoming a ghost isn't always as simple as throwing on a bedsheet with two eyeholes cut out.

Writer/director David Lowery learned that last summer while prepping his Sundance Film Festival breakout A Ghost Story (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands to additional cities through July), for which he was tasked with outfitting Casey Affleck as a sorrowful spook trapped in the house he once shared with his sweetheart, M (Rooney Mara).

"The first thing you realize is that even a king-size sheet does not entirely cover you; your feet are always visible," Lowery says. Also, "you can cut holes but they won't actually function as eyes, because they'll be slanted or move around or fold up. What I wanted was a ghost that looked like a drawing of someone wearing a sheet, where the sheet is very pronounced and defined, and the eyes maintain their shape."

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To accomplish that, costume designer Annell Brodeur engineered a billowy white shroud not unlike a wedding dress, with a wire rim and petticoats underneath. Although the supportive base allowed Affleck to walk without tripping, it also prevented his character, named C, from darting around.

"There was originally going to be a lot more movement," Lowery says. "We had this entire sequence where he was running from one end of the house to the next (and would) jump through walls, but it ultimately felt too physical. There was always some new thing that didn't work and out of all those little failures, we gradually managed to define how this ghost would exist in the world. So when we got to him walking across the field on his way home, that was one of the very last things we shot and that was very easy."

But even scenes of Affleck stationary came with their own challenges. Underneath the sheet, he wore a foam helmet and face mask with a black mesh scrim covering his eyes. Aside from the limited visibility, the costume fabric would bunch up when he turned his head to the side or looked down.

"We had a lot of shorthand for what was happening," Lowery says. "You'd hear me yell, 'Oh, no, he's getting droopy face again!' or 'Uh-oh, he's got elephant face!' Because sometimes the folds would all converge around the nose and it'd look like he had a trunk. So if it wasn't a full-body shot, we'd always have (the costume designer) crouch down at his feet tugging at the sheets."

"We were always worried about making him not look like a dummy," Brodeur adds. "But once we got into a groove, it became really fun to figure out ways to make him look really elegant and imposing."

Brodeur constructed five spectral cloaks for Ghost Story: two of Affleck's crisp, white ensemble, known as the "hero" costume; two outfits that she tattered and dirtied to appear ancient, for later scenes of C in different centuries; and another called the "grandma" sheet, worn by the ghost next door who interacts with C and is played by Lowery. Rather than take the ghosts out for dry cleaning, Brodeur handwashed them on the set to eliminate any unpleasant odors.

After all, Lowery says, "when you're shooting a movie in Texas in the summer, they get pretty funky, pretty fast."