Jim Steinmeyer
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Jim Steinmeyer is an American author, inventor, and designer of magical illusions and theatrical special effects. He holds four US patents in the field of illusion apparatus, including a modern version of the Pepper's Ghost illusion. Steinmeyer has consulted for many famous magicians, including David Copperfield, Doug Henning, Siegfried and Roy, and Lance Burton.
Working on British TV series The Secret Cabaret (with, right, Jay Marshall)
Pepper's ghost
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Pepper's ghost is an illusion technique, used in the theatre, cinema, amusement parks, museums, television, and concerts, in which an image of an object off-stage is projected so that it appears to be in front of the audience.
Stage setup for Pepper's Ghost. A brightly lit figure out of the audience's sight below the stage is reflected in a pane of glass placed between the performer and the audience. To the audience, it appears as if the ghost is on stage.
A viewer looking through the red rectangle sees a ghost floating next to the table. The illusion is produced by a large piece of glass, Plexiglas or plastic film (green outline) situated at an angle between viewer and scene. The glass reflects a room hidden from the viewer (left), sometimes called a blue room, that is built as a mirror-image of the scene.
If the mirror-image room (left) is darkened, it does not reflect well in the glass. The empty room (top) is brightly lit, making it very visible to the viewer.
When the lights in the mirror-image room are raised (with the empty room being dimmed slightly to compensate), the ghost appears out of nowhere.