I had a very clear look at Marley’s ghost footage in the 1938 trailer: it is without a doubt a double exposure.
I familiar with using Peppers ghost having used this in haunted houses and in live theater and opera.. and this is NOT what was used.
I can tell because of the movement (frame jumps from minor camera movement are different from the foreground vs background)
There’s a theater truck called “Pepper’s Ghost” that is used to create transparent phantoms in a live stage environment. It’s currently rather famously used in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride.
What you do is have the stage area and then angle a sheet of transparent glass between the stage and the audience. Then you have a second staging area beneath the audience out of sight. You have the person or object that you want to appear transparent on the stage in this second area and light them up very brightly.
The reflection of the phantom will be visible in the otherwise invisible glass in front of the stage, and if you like the angles up properly, the reflection will appear to be standing on the stage in front of the audience: a live transparent ghost.
Latest Answers