[00:00] Lauren! God, Joey! It's me. Is the seat taken? What happened to you? I died. How? Why did you die?
[00:12] Because we're doing a tutorial on ghosts. Joey, you don't have to kill yourself to do a tutorial on ghosts. That's what the tutorial is for. Now you tell me. Now what? I'm stuck.
[00:24] Oh my god. Well, let me show you how we were going to do this. So I'm going to turn on the lights. Ah! Where'd it go? You're right over there, Joey. Oh. I'm not dead.
[00:36] Yeah, congratulations. Pepper's Ghost is an illusion technique that dates back to the 1500s. You might have seen this effect on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
[00:50] And the same principle is used on modern teleprompters. So here's how we did it. So we actually used one light, a large sheet of glass or plexiglass, and a dark background for your ghost. And we covered the cushion that Joey sits on
[01:03] with black duvetyne as well, so it wouldn show up in the image And the last thing you need is another light for your ghost specifically Okay so those are all your materials but how do I actually set it up so I can get the image I want
[01:16] Well, let me show you a diagram. So notice here that our glass is actually at an angle. So while we're filming me back here, we're also recording Joey appearing on the glass. Another thing to keep in mind is how close
[01:28] and how far the subjects are from the glass. So we had to have the glass equidistant between the two of us, so both of us appeared to be the same size. So why do this effect in camera instead of with VFX?
[01:40] For one thing, you can have both of your actors in the same space at the same time, running lines like me and Joey did. Another advantage is you can move your camera around during the shot and not have to worry about tracking markers or plates or anything like that,
[01:52] so you can follow your actor around in real time. So this is the setup that worked for us, but no two setups are gonna be the same. Play around with it, change the angle of the glass if it's not working, and figure out what's right for your scene.
[02:05] Well, that was fun. Thanks.