Gryner also said Rio was unlikely to suffer from the "ghost town" effect that blighted central London during the current Games, as non-Olympic visitors stayed away, fearful of transport chaos and long lines.

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The former James Bond says that he was very aware of it while watching "The Ghost Writer" at Berlin because Polanski told him about the precise effect he wanted.

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For the projection aspect, a San Diego company called AV Concepts used a variation of a visual effect that was discovered in the 19th century, known as Pepper's Ghost.

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The effect was first used in an 1862 dramatization of Charles Dickens' novella "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, " staged at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London, according to Jim Steinmeyer, an illusion designer who has written extensively about the history of his craft, including Pepper's Ghost.

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