Thread: Pulling off the HM ballroom scene

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Decided im gunna give it a try. I have a huge living room with 25ft celings and plenty of space. THe scene will be viewed from a window with the guest looking in from outside. IM doing it a little diffrent though. Im gonig to use a projector instead of the Prepper's ghost effect. The images of the dancing ghosts will be projected on to either mosquito type neting or transparent plastic sheets. Here are some plans I drew up real quick.




might also put in the organist. already have an organ. feed back, tips, advice, questions would be great!

That's quite an endeavor. How are you going to get the footage of the dancers? Keep us posted on your progress.

looks like it will be a fantastic thing if you can pull it of... witch i think you can

Originally Posted by RookieSpooker

That's quite an endeavor. How are you going to get the footage of the dancers? Keep us posted on your progress.

Going to get some of my close ghouls to dress up in period like clothing that will glow in UV light. Than film them dancing in UV light against a black back drop. Than what I can do on the copmuter is up the contrast so that they will glow more and be dancing on solid black so that when it projectas it will only be the dancers and not a faint glow behind them. you can also increase the brightness on the projector.

Yes Keep us in the loop I am also interested learning about this effect.
Good Luck.

quite the undertaking, i wish you the best of luck. keep us posted

thanks for the luck guys. I'm gunna need it. This is probaly the biggest project I have done yet!

Is your projection screen some sort of scrim?

As I recall, the HM effect was done as a peppers ghost setup, which is a bit different from yours.

In an ordinary house, I don't see how you can achieve what the HM did exactly unless you have a room below the guests that opens up into the room they are looking at.

If you are using scrim, it should work pretty well, except that it won't give you the depth perception that Disney achieved as a 3-D effect.

What you have laid out still looks pretty impressive, and I'd love to see how it turns out.

To help keep a 3-D look to it, you could use 2 or 3 smaller projection screens (Scrim) at different distances from the viewer. Then use either a different projector for each or the same projector and keep the actors in specified spots when filming so they don't go off the edge of their screen.

Originally Posted by HalloweenBob

Is your projection screen some sort of scrim?

As I recall, the HM effect was done as a peppers ghost setup, which is a bit different from yours.

In an ordinary house, I don't see how you can achieve what the HM did exactly unless you have a room below the guests that opens up into the room they are looking at.

If you are using scrim, it should work pretty well, except that it won't give you the depth perception that Disney achieved as a 3-D effect.

What you have laid out still looks pretty impressive, and I'd love to see how it turns out.

To help keep a 3-D look to it, you could use 2 or 3 smaller projection screens (Scrim) at different distances from the viewer. Then use either a different projector for each or the same projector and keep the actors in specified spots when filming so they don't go off the edge of their screen.

Like I said mine is much diffrent from the HM. I am pretty much an HM adict and know everything about th Mansion. Peppers ghost would be great but there are problems.
1) Don't have the corect viewing space
2) need moving statues
3) Need a HUGE pice of glass or plexi glass.

So the easiest and most efficent way seems to be the projector idea I thought of. I plan to use on projector that has all the actors fillmed in one part. Also I can go back and edit the ghosts to fade in and out like the mansion.

This will be a tough undertaking, even when doing it as you've described. But then again, I've seen some of our members (and others) do amazing things that I couldn't have imagined, so I'm rooting for you! I'm looking forward to seeing some preliminary set ups and work.

Just thought that I'd mention that the technique you're proposing was used in the HM as well... in the graveyard. They use a screen to project the ghosts that fly upward from behind the graves. They also had mechanical ghosts in front and behind the screen to add to the depth of the scene.