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Friday, March 26, 2004

"Anderson's Ghost" - adding 21st-Century salt to "Pepper's"

The illusion that is today known in stage magic, motion pictures, haunted houses and optical FX as "Pepper's Ghost" is well-agreed-upon by theatrical historians as having been designed by the English engineer Henry Dircks, who had created a small working model of the effect around 1860. The showman, Professor John Pepper, heard about this optical principle and the two men became partners and began collaborating to create the effect as a stage illusion. They applied for a patent together in 1862. In those days such principles were patentable since late 19th-century science was a period of amazement and phenomenal leaps in all directions. Showmanship was at the cutting edge and premiered many inventions and achievements before their practical applications had been discovered.

Dircks and Pepper used a large pane of plate glass set at a 45-degree angle (either vertical or horizontal) that reflected brightly lit actors off-stage or below-stage, superimposing them with the on-stage set and actors. "Pepper's Ghost" was featured at the Royal Polytechnic in London, a science museum and auditorium on Regent Street. The actor portraying the "ghost" was illuminated by an oxygen-hydrogen lamp (both gases readily available by simple electrolysis of water) and the illusion attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, became the talk of London, made Pepper a lot of money and was imitated around the world. If you've been through "The Haunted Mansion" at Disneyland you've seen Pepper's Ghost; twice, actually. The ballroom dancers for one and "Beware of Hitch-hiking Ghosts" for the second.

The illusion was a permanent installation at the Royal Polytechnic requiring one monstrous sheet of plate glass the width of the stage and almost double the proscenium height. Pulling this gag in a community theatre production today is not even a physical possibility let alone a financial or logistical one. Where are you gonna get a 40 foot square piece of plate glass to start with? In your dreams. And then what? Forget it. Not that it isn't used today: smaller pieces of plate glass, doorway-sized, still amaze people in "dark rides," haunted houses and stage magic illusions but the gag is outdated, unwieldy, expensive and transparent (pun intended) to today's sophisticated audience.

Welcome to the 21st Century! First, let's look at the future:

Tim Hansen of Oasis Stage Werks and a major force in ESTA (Entertainment Services & Technology Association) was interviewed by Bill Sapsis of Sapsis Rigging Inc. Part of the interview went as follows:

Sapsis: "Care to gaze into your crystal ball and see where the industry is heading in the next 5 years or so?"

Hansen: "I see more technology entering the industry, more moving lights, more motorized rigging, more projected and video effects, more LED's, for instance. This is not a bad thing but it will require more savvy
technicians. It will also allow bigger and better shows in smaller spaces. As the technology becomes more affordable, the things that the High School drama teacher has always wanted for a show now become possible. Helping people execute their creative vision is a really great thing."

Thanks, Tim! "Projected and video effects" is the phrase I needed. Allow me to introduce "Anderson's Ghost," the state-of-the-art ghost effect for every production from Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" to Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit." It requires components readily-available to every high school or college theatre: a digital camera, a laptop computer, a digital projector (800 lumens or more), an overhead electric with dimmable fresnels, Adobe Photoshop or a similar editor and, if you really want to wow the crowd, an animation utility for GIF89a such as GIF Construction Set or Microsoft GIF Animator.

Effect: An actor enters the stage, totally transparent. The audience can see through the actor as he/she passes across the set. At any given point, the ghost interacts with objects behind it such as straightening framed pictures or picking up objects such as a flower from a vase. This is seen through the back of the ghost, yet, as the ghost turns, the object behind it (picture, flower) has changed! Better yet, the ghost becomes less transparent and finally moves to center stage fully opaque!

It's not expensive to snap the components together but it is incredibly complex as far as technical know-how. That's why you'll need my white-paper on "Anderson's Ghost," available via e-mail to Camelot (click the link) or soon on our upcoming website for a nominal fee. We're putting video together soon to show the effect and it's a shocker, guaranteed to make an audience gasp and ask afterward, in the joydit line: "How did you do that?" Write me for details.


Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Intelligent table saw won't cut flesh: brilliant safety device

You'll sleep easier with one of these in the theatre shop. Watch the live video of the SawStop contacting a hot dog and stopping within 5/msec leaving nothing but a tiny nick. Prices start at $700. It's obvously useless as a piece of deli equipment...


Sunday, March 14, 2004

Robotics

I'm working on the chapter in my upcoming book on Special Effects for Community and Municipal Theatre called Robotics. It's important to remember the budget in our field and the budget for Special Effects is usually either nonexistent or buried somewhere within "Set Design" or "Props." So: when the script of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" says, during the Fairy Godmother entrance in Act I, Scene 4: "She motions to a chair and it moves across the floor until it is neatly under her and she sits," the director should start thinking "special effects" and the Special Effects Designer should start thinking "Robotics."
The concept of the "quadruped walker" is well-known among roboticists and well-documented on the internet. While the "cheap-and-cheerful" approach usually involves dragging a chair across the floor with fishline, that doesn't give us the audience "gasp" or the "How did they do that?" response that we stage illusionists want to hear. A robotic walking chair is the only way to play this gag and it requires a windshield-wiper motor from an automobile junkyard and some battery holders and a toy radio-control module from Radio Shack. The plans and schematics will shortly be available on the Camelot website and in my book.
Robotics isn't easy. I have catalogued dozens of links to amateur robotics sites with impressive videos and construction techniques, as well as followed the development of Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio. I really felt overwhelmed when NASA landed the two robots on Mars and felt that the robotics world had passed me by when DARPA announced the million-dollar prize for the first autonomous robot to make it 142 miles across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas yesterday. I thought that, with all of the research and talent out there, it would be a piece of cake. "This is too simple, too easy," I thought, so hadn't even bothered starting work on a machine that could do it.
Well, the contest is over. Not one of the 15 companies, universities or private groups made it any further than seven miles! What a hoot... read the results!
The "Cinderella Chair" only needs to walk ten feet. I'm delighted that we, in live theatre, don't have quite the challenge yet. Of course, we also don't get to play for a million dollars.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Just when I became bored with motion-picture special effects...

...along comes an ad agency like Submedia with a concept that is so elegant in its simplicity that it makes me wish that I lived in Manhattan and could ride this subway every day. You'll need Quicktime or Windows Media Player to view the videos, and a broadband connection is nice, then check out the Dasani ad that's wowing New Yorkers. You might even get thirsty.

Sequential stationary images, but the audience is in motion. That's brilliant! Of course, the Italians have their own version, MotionPoster, but their technology is nowhere near as elegant as Submedia's which uses fundamentally no technology at all!

Saturday, March 06, 2004

Need some Moxie?...

...or any vintage type of soda pop or candy from the last two centuries, in the original bottles and packages and brewed from the original recipes? The Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles has over 300 varieties and ships anywhere (although the shipping costs for the glass bottles are equal to the price of the soda and there is a $12 minimum.) So, when you need sarsaparilla or Moxie for that next production of The Music Man, get the real thing. Who knows? You might even like the taste of it!

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

3-D or not 3-D?

The work of the artist Kurt Wenner speaks for itself, especially his phenomenal "sidewalk art" which takes days to create and each is a masterpiece in itself. Wenner's pieces feature caverns into the depths of hell with demons crawling upward, huge pools with reflections of the live actors standing next to them and even marble pedestals with actual people standing on them... all two-dimensional artwork giving the impression of being actual objects in a three-dimensional world.

While the viewing angle is critical to these works, which lend themselves only to "front-on" viewing (such as photography) or the trick becomes apparent, they utilize the concept of "perspective" as an optical illusion that is seldom considered. I got to thinking one day: "What if you needed walls, columns or furniture on a proscenium stage as a set for a choir or as a special effect?" Take a look and see for yourselves, especially at this piece entitled "Cocito" done in Pasadena, CA in 1988. No, those people are not elevated!

Set designers: try this trick at home. Cut a piece of paper into a long trapezoid then lay it on a table, long edge to the back. Now step backward until it becomes a rectangle. Get the idea?

Monday, March 01, 2004

Technical Certification

It was wonderful to attend the Greater Lakes Association of Performing Arts (GLAPA) production of Ken Ludwig's "Moon Over Buffalo" last Saturday night and to see all of the running crew's names in the program with asterisks after each signifying "Technical Theatre Certified." This meant that every tech on the crew, rigging, lighting and sound, had attended and passed our three-week Technical Theatre Certification Course involving a week on rigging theory, operation and safety, a week on lighting design, programming, instrument intallation, maintenance and operation, and a half-week on audio (mikes, placement, sound effects and operation of the sound board and computers) plus a practicum involving a live performance. These techs now hold certification cards for the Pequot Lakes Community Theatre allowing them to operate the equipment and giving the school administration a degree of comfort in knowing that "the most dangerous place in town" was in trained hands.

It's interesting to see that ESTA, the Entertainment Services & Technology Association, is working on developing an Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP), (follow the hyperlinks) a new industry-wide program being developed with the following organizations: Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology (CITT), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM), Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), and United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). Two key areas have been identified for initial development - electrical skills and rigging skills.

Okay, I'm excited to hear about this initiative but, looking deeper into it, it sounds a bit like herding cats to me. So you've got your ESTA ETCP card; now what? If you're a non-union employee of a community or municipal theatre with ETCP certification hosting a visiting IATSE company loading in, who pulls rank? Can non-union techs even qualify for the certification? Does the ETCP guarantee you IATSE or CITT membership? And my "spider-sense" really starts tingling when I read that a goal of the ETCP is to provide a "legally defensible" set of standards. Yipes! The program is already being designed with a courtroom in mind.

Electrical codes are fully established in all 50 states. Most states have no theatrical rigging codes or inspection requirements. Accidents happen every day, usually involving grade school or high school kids who are setting up a pageant or a show under the guidance of an untrained teacher. "Multi-use, community-access" theatres are the danger ground here, and "Theatre Use Policies" are a must. Is this where the ETCP Certificate holder reigns? Does it give the "legally defensible" right to challenge shool superintendants across the country and to lock down theatres to "certified personnel only?" I'll be interested to see how the ESTA initiative progresses; the driving forces look pretty impressive but I hope they're not just thinking Broadway and Disney World here. The schools, community and municipal theatres are where the focus needs to be; we've got the same gear out here and the owners and administrators haven't a clue until the ambulance arrives.

Camelot Theatrical Special Effects at Blogged