Lately, I’ve been experimenting with “Pepper’s Ghost” illusions. It’s a very old effect used by magicians and stage performers for hundreds of years and it’s simple to do. Mainly, you just need a piece of clear plastic or glass and a lighted object or a video of an object on a black background. In the case of the video above, I’ve put a piece of trimmed transparency film inside an Erlenmeyer flask at a 45° angle. Then, I put the flask on top of my iPad that is playing a stock video of a goldfish swimming on a black background. The image is reflected back to the camera in the angle of the transparent film. The effect requires a darkened room for the best image. I also found that having some sort of light-colored patterned surface below the projection helps to sell the illusion. In my example, I cut a hole in a piece of wallpaper and put my phone under that so only the video of the fish showed through. This masked away any extra items on the screen and hid the phone from view. Placing objects behind the projection also helps place the projection in three-dee space.
In other experiments, I put a “ghost fish” inside an aquarium with my black and white television. In some versions, the projection is coming from a monitor placed on top of the aquarium plexiglass inside is angled upward but I also tried it by putting a laptop offscreen and reflecting the image to the camera by angling the plexiglass downward. It’s been fun to experiment with this effect and I have no idea how I’ll put it into practical use. However, it’s highly enjoyable and I strongly recommend gathering some household items and trying it out for yourself. See my Instagram videos below for more.