Ghost The Musical FX

[S300]

This is driving me up the wall now!

I can figure everything in this show other than the part where Sam walks through the 'solid door'. I have the principle in my mind, I know theroeticlaly how it's done and what I'd need to achieve it (I think) but I'm lost as to where it'd conceal itself in the set.

If anyone knows and would like to put my mind at rest so I can sleep easy perhaps drop me a PM or discuss?

 

 

[gareth]

Pepper's Ghost. http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif

 

As I recall, there's a cunningly-placed door-height artwork of some sort that is set between the door and audience for that moment, angled the right way to reflect from the wing.

[S300]

1396047102[/url]' post='496565']

Pepper's Ghost. http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif

 

As I recall, there's a cunningly-placed door-height artwork of some sort that is set between the door and audience for that moment, angled the right way to reflect from the wing.

 

But HOW??

For Pepper's Ghost to work you physically have to be looking through glass angled at 45degrees... Don't you?I thought it was the 'empty frame' doing a peppers ghost effect but the fact the you can see the effect even when not looking through it destroys that theory...

[ImagineerTom]

Whilst based on a very old idea the intricacies and adjustments to the method that make it as devastating (and practical) as possible are the work of the effects designer Paul Kieve and do belong to him. Vague discussions about general applications of the methodology are fine but please don't start trying to copy/steal his work or expose it in a public forum; you'd be literally putting him out of work.

[paulears]

I'm not quite sure that much has changed in the magic/illusion circles over the years. People have always wanted to know how illusions are done, and in very few cases have magicians and illusionists resorted to legal means to keep their inventions and designs secret, because presumably to take action, they'd have to reveal the trick. I suspect this is also why very few illusions seem to actually be patented.

 

While appreciating the time, work and effort, not to mention money that goes into designing a special effect, we are, after all a technical forum in exactly the area of work being discussed. It is ok to reveal the lighting designers 'secrets' or the method the sound designer uses to convince the audience they are hearing realistic audio effects. We have discussed the mechanism for a Cinderella Ball dress reveal, and we've covered all kinds of staging trickery. I'm not so sure that a stage illusion has any more 'secrecy' status?

 

In the case being talked about here, there are specific and clearly visible devices placed carefully on stage. We are surmising what their purpose is, and how the illusion is created. If enough clues can be collected then we may well be able to come up with a most likely solution. That is healthy technical investigation, and if we by accident have a Eureka moment, and everything becomes clear, then I see no problem in detailing that here. There is a world of difference between knowing how it was done and being able to do it yourself as my feeble attempts at magic have demonstrated.

 

The fact that the show has been a success means we'd not be putting him out of work, because his next project will use a different technique - so all that happens is that a few technical forum readers get a bit of extra information, while the world at large carries on.

 

As for 'stealing' - Magicians have been pinching each others tricks for ever, frequently moaning about it, but rarely getting seriously annoyed.

 

Personally, if I found out how the illusion was done, then I would indeed consider using it, and not consider it any different from getting inspiration from a certain set design, lighting or sound design where we routinely take one aspect of a designers work and modify it for our own use.

 

If Ghost ever got turned into a schools edition, which I doubt it would for obvious reasons, then would the key feature - illusions - be removed?

 

I'd like to see some drawings with angles, mirrors, screens etc that we could consider and see if we think they would work. If we eventually click and work it out, then that's good - but we'll never know how close we got to the real system employed.

 

Copyright on a magic trick is perfectly valid, but of course, gives the game away.

 

Magicians in organisations like the Magic Circle don't give the secrets away, but we are not in the Magic Circle, so are free to talk in detail about how tricks are done if we wish to?

 

I'm not sure illusions in theatre or other events are off-limits for detailed discussion. Maybe others will disagree, but I have certainly never promised to not discuss this illusion in as much detail as we can discover?

[ImagineerTom]

So if you can figure out how something is done you'll quite happily steal it.... You wanna think more carefully about that statement for a moment?

I know most of my contributions here are rigging/circus related but I am first and foremost a magic/effects designer. I'm sick of the stuff I spend months (even years) researching and developing being stolen by other shows/performers who seem to think if they can reverse engineer it it's perfectly ok to take it for themselves.

It's perfectly possible to,"reverse engineer" les mis, to work out every bit of direction and staging, heck you can even buy DVDs and copies of the score to help you do it, but is it ok for you to then go present your own production of les mis based on all that stuff you just reverse engineered? You can pop the cover off a moving light and reverse engineer it quite easily but does that make it ok for you to start making your own Mac's?

Above all the world of magic and effects is one based on secrecy, we literally sell secrets and the moment people start stealing the material to use themselves it puts people like me out of a job. I assure you neither I nor Paul nor Jim Steinmeyer spend thousands of pounds developing things to amaze people just so they can be taken and if that is what people want to do we will all quickly go out of business.

Peppers ghost is the core effect here and is very old, how it's implemented in this show is much more novel and new, the result of a lot of hard work by Paul, to say this effect is "just" peppers ghost though is to say that the latest moving light is based on an arc light, a statement that is correct but also completely wrong.

The big feature effects included in ghost won't be licensed for any school or armature version, they are simply too complicated and too costly to create and operate anywhere other than on the west end stage - even the touring version of the show had several sequences taken out because they couldn't be toured.

[indyld]

Anyone that can cop a butchers at:

 

The Honor System

 

Chris Jones

Esquire. Oct2012, Vol. 158 Issue 3, p140-170.

 

Has quite a nice look at the, well, ethics, for want of a better word, when it comes to illusions.

 

Until Bakardy came along, Teller had never needed his copyright filings to stake a claim. "It's not like good manners and generosity are inappropriate ways to behave in the world," he says. When he has contacted light-fingered magicians in the past, they have always apologized and stopped performing the trick. For instance, he does a trick in which he spills handfuls of coins into a tank filled with water, and they somehow turn into living, breathing goldfish. It's a throat-catching effect, and a magician in Sweden, who had seen Teller performing the trick on TV, studied the tape and finally lifted it. After Teller called him, the magician said sorry, boxed up his props in a crate, minus the fish, and shipped them to Las Vegas.

 

The article also talks about lawsuits, Steinmeyer and others. Steinmeyer is quoted:

 

"Invention is all fuzzy, sloppy stuff," Steinmeyer says. "I have patents, and I have had patents that have expired. Everything has a limited lifetime. But when a person can't make a living by coming up with new material, that's when you have to wonder about the system. I would say that over the last few years, the last ten years, it's a net zero. I'm putting as much money into it as I'm getting out."

 

Interesting stuff if you can get a look at it.

[Shez]

I'm sure google will tell you all about Teller's recent legal victory over his shadows effect - hopefully setting a bit of a precident.

[indyld]

I'm sure google will tell you all about Teller's recent legal victory over his shadows effect - hopefully setting a bit of a precident.

 

The interesting thing here is that I *understand*, while there is no law against ripping off tricks, the Shadows case was based on the performance itself rather than the technique.

 

(Edit to add: Though I have no idea about similarities in techniques, it appears that the business of cutting up something's shadow and having this translate into reality has been borrowed from much, much older acts. Complex if one is claiming idea/story rather than technique. Reminds me of one of my colleagues who is an musicology expert witness in popular music copyright cases - which bit belongs whom?)

 

Going back to the original question, I've not seen Ghost live but I can imagine there is something based on a Blue Room illusion in the show somewhere, surely? Aptly named for the readers of this forum at least.

[paulears]

Tom - I don't like the idea of lifting something 'intact', but have no moral problem with taking good ideas and expanding on them. Are any designs truly unique? Somebody designs a device that can have an object hung on the end, and then moved about on a black stage to make it fly. A few years later, somebody extends the arm, and attaches a seat so a person can fly over the audience, somebody else sticks a Dalek on the end, or even a flying car? Subtle differences in the implementation, but not really much different to a camera crane used a hundred years ago in silent movies!

 

The creativity in illusions is the good bit, but most of the innovation is the re-implementation of old ideas,and the design just the clever selection of the components.

 

I'm not really too sure how I feel about reverse engineering. I do understand how annoying it is, and possibly expensive, to do something and then have other people work out what you did, but when does research become reverse engineering? Kids at school are encouraged to reverse engineer computer programmes to see how they were done, then use some of the sub routines to do new things with tweaks. MIT in America encourage people to download games and then study how things were done and then the kids produce their 'new' products.

 

Les Mis is a good case to look at - (and We Will Rock You, too). Schools and the amateur groups go to see the show and then incorporate as many of the features into their productions as they can - and it's not a problem.

 

Having seen three magicians do the same trick at a Magicians's Conference, the performance is everything.

 

Lifting something and duplicating it intact I don't approve of, but seeing something good, analysing it and using it as a basis for a different design, seems fair use to me?

[ImagineerTom]

The jib flight system you mention is a bad example, minor changes to an existing system is very very different to the major changes and innovations involved in the GHOST sequences.

Your les mis schools comparison is a silly one, if a school is doing the show they are paying the rights and have the permissions, if you read the show bibles that come with these productions they tell you what you can and can't do and make it very clear that there's certain bits you absolutely should do. Your other comments about educational establishments are a red herring, what's done in the course of education is completely different to what's done in the real world; there's whole pages of legislation in copyright/design laws that enable educational establishments to "break" copyrights for the purpose of educating and teaching.

I also refer you to my previous comments about how magic /effects are fairly unique in that it is precisely because they are a secret that they work.

Also research and inspiration is very different to what's happening here, if the op had said "I want to do something similar to...." Then I'd be the first person to chip in with ideas and pointers, but the specific questions asked here was about the precise mechanics of a specific routine, information that's not needed to be inspired or evolved from; information that is only needed to copy lock-stock-n-barrel. If you want to undertake research or evolve your own system then speak to paul or Jim or whoever created the thing you want to jump,off from, I'm yet to meet a creative person who didn't (when asked by someone who was clearly wanting to evolve their work) wasn't very free, open and helpful with legitimate enquiries and entirely supportive of the next generation of creators. However reverse engineer someone's creation and ignore their hard works and you're stealing the food from their table and slapping them in the face at the same time.

T

[paulears]

I don't mean to wind you up Tom, I realise your views are clearly important. I'm a firm believer in the concept of rights protection - it's just that we differ on the point where lines are crossed - where significant design input creates a new entity rather than a modified one.

I understand your stance, but I have a difficult time with unique implementations of old designs being considered as totally new. The major changes in Ghost may or may not be major changes - this is the problem. Is it a new implementation of an old trick, or a totally new idea? We'd like to know, and the quest for knowledge isn't a bad thing.

 

I really hope somebody explains how it's done!

[david.elsbury]

Mods. .. could you please scour the forum and remove all lighting plans and discussion about any show referring to lighting rigs?

 

Someone might copy ideas and use them... sorry, steal them and put them in another performance.

 

Thanks :)

[ImagineerTom]

What a brilliant straw man argument David, of course the times when people have freely published their own plans/explanations of their own creative works or the times when people have provided more generic advice is exactly comparable with people asking for the specifics (right down to measurements) of a particular creation that it's inventor has specifically NOT published, has specifically asked others NOT to reveal and whose very existence is based on remaining confidential.

[david.elsbury]

Oh no, I was of course referring to all those big pro touring shows that we all wonder how it's done.

 

on second thoughts maybe you've got a point Tom.

 

I guess the designers and creators of all creative works be it lighting or illusion design should just refuse to allow audience in their shows in case someone looks at it and works out how it was done and uses it for another show ;) :)