The film, shot outdoors in Méliès's garden on a platform decorated with theatrical scenery, is based on a famous stage illusion by Buatier de Kolta, in which a woman disappeared by escaping through a hidden trapdoor.

The substitution splice also allowed Méliès to add new material to the end of the trick, inventing the appearance and transformation of the skeleton prop and D'Alcy's return.

[2] (The chair onstage was constructed with a breakaway seat, allowing the assistant to slide downwards behind the shawl, through a hidden flap in the rubber newspaper.

[3] D'Alcy, a performer at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, had had much experience with the stage version of the illusion, in which her small stature was ideal for the escape down the trapdoor.

[1] Méliès also took advantage of the substitution splice to expand the trick for the film, adding the transformation to and from a skeleton; the Buatier de Kolta stage illusion ended with the assistant's appearance.

[2] Although he later claimed to have invented the technique independently, after his camera accidentally became jammed, Méliès probably developed the splice after seeing a rudimentary version in an 1895 Edison Manufacturing Company film The Execution of Mary Stuart.