Smoke and Mirrors - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 5

as a i lm about the legendary Pepper's ghost has been in my head for some time. The inl uential
trick, a sheet of glass angled across the stage, rel ecting the transparent image of someone
brightly lit of stage, had a fascinating story behind it. The trick was not developed by Pepper
at all. He brought it from another, somewhat struggling magician, Henry Dircks, when it was
called, rather clumsily, the Dircksian phantasmagoria (detailed beautifully in Jim Steinmeyer's
topic, Hiding the Elephant ). As in recent times, when a new ef ect, or a new technology, is
developed and i lms are written to incorporate the innovation, so Pepper's ghost appeared
in all manner of stage productions adapted to show of this illusion. Literally, ghosts were
popping up everywhere. Not just ghosts, but lit properly, the i gure could appear to be l esh
and blood, and disappear in the fraction of a second it took to turn of a light. Sometimes, the
nature of the trick was reversed, so the set that was the illusion and real characters appeared to
be walking through solid architecture.
The Victorian stage effect Pepper's ghost, ancestor of our blue screens and mattes (Richard
Haynes).
As the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century technology was letting the
arts run riot. Stage spectacles of ships sinking and chariot races twice nightly at
Drury Lane, competed alongside the less literal miracles of the illusionists and
magicians. In France the Grand Guignol was providing macabre entertainment,
all the more macabre for its taking place in front of a live audience. The stage
spectacles tried to compete with the developing cinema, and they were not
afraid to meet in the middle. The marvellous Georges Méliès, a man I dei nitely