For our final project, we will build off our midterm illusion, which featured a half-pyramid hanging on a wall, with video projected onto it to make it look like a hallway, with a mysterious figure crawling towards the viewer.

To expand on this, we want the figure to actually climb/fall out of the frame, slide down the wall and onto a pedestal, which will project a 3D pepper’s ghost.  We want to make it look like the figure is actually climbing out of the wall and into the 3D world, escaping the frame a la “The Ring.”

We can go in a number of thematic directions with this:

The obvious route is the horror/creepy effect, which we approached for the mid-term. The theme of nightmares escaping the comfortable space between it and it’s audience, which seems to be at risk of happening in the real world as the dystopian sci-fi nightmares from our past become a true part of our zeitgeist.

To demonstrate this theme, we would have something horrifying crawling down the hallway, crawling down the wall and onto the pedestal.

-Thinking of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” we could have a gigantic centipede-type creature crawling towards on down the hallway, crawling down the wall, and onto the pedestal, rising onto its hind legs as it moves into 3D space.  This would convey the idea of formerly fictional nightmares making their way into real-world space, a metaphor for our nightmares coming to life.

-We could also do something more abstract like the blood elevator from “The Shining”— Blood rushing down the hallway (maybe with the liquid rush shot in miniature and overlaid onto a shot of a hallway), dripping down the wall, and flooding the pedestal, possibly morphing into a humanoid figure rising out of the blood pool on the pedestal.

-If we want to play with the idea of people escaping the flat psychological world they live in and discovering the marvel of the 3D world, maybe we have a dingy hospital hallway, with a strait-jacketed mental patient running towards us down the hallway, sliding down the wall, and emerging in 3D on the pedestal.

-Another thematic direction could be a bit lighter, playing with the idea of “Virtual Space” merging with real space— For this we could use a wireframe VR-type hallway design, with a flat character running down the hallway and escaping into the 3D world, maybe turning into a 3D CG character as it emerges from the wall.