How to create and film ghost special effects I need to film a piece that is supernatural in nature and has several characters that are ghosts. I've thought of numerous ways of accomplishing this but would like some suggestions on which would be the easiest and produce the best results.

Fortunately I am going to be shooting at a location and I would like to have several camera angles as well as a moving camera for some scenes. The problem is I have several characters that are ghosts. I've thought about planning every character's position carefully and then doing a lot of room shots, angles, and movements, and then putting up green screens and filming each character in the same position where they would be in the video so that I may make them transparent and give them a ghostly effect. That seems like it's very complicated though and it also seems like the editing will be a pain.

Is there any easier or more effective way to give several characters a ghost effect without having to resort to green screening them? I have thought about make-up. Also, if green screening is the way to go, would it be wisest to take the green screen on location and put it over the backgrounds and run the camera through the same courses as I did when shooting the background?
There are so many interesting ways to do this.

One of the easiest ways (in-camera, no post production work) is to use a piece of glass. Film Riot did a tutorial on it, they explain it best, see below:

                
            

Or you could go with a bit of post production work, after effects being my go to tool that I use. Add a background video layer (without ghost), then add your ghostly image, same shot, but this time your ghostly image is brightly lit and everything else is dark. Then change the mode of the ghostly layer to 'add' (or other to create different effects) to create the ghostly effect. See tutorial below: 

                
            

Hope that helps your ghostly scenes.