Just watched that Troy programme on tv and no matter how much i think about the tricks,i cannot fathom out it is possible for anybody to do what they do. I know that its misdirection but even knowing that, i sill cannot work it out.

The penn and teller, copperfield stuff, doesn’t impress me because its on a stage in a controlled environment and is ‘smoke and mirrors, but when the magicians are on a street i really can’t think of a possible explanation.

Does anyone have any theories about how the tricks are possible??

Troy walked down the outside of a building in LA last week.
He also put some guy’s iphone behind the mirror glass in a barbour. Both these trick must have been staged. There’s no other way.

IN exactly the same way as you note there is no magic and when I watch Dynamo [ a friend is a magician] I can explain his tricks- they are brilliantly executed for example

Takes the egg trick [ assuming we watched the same programme] then he had the 20 p in his hand and placed it on the egg just as he dripped it – you could see his finger go on the egg – notice how he chose the size of the coin – as it falls and breaks it will land in the egg.

The gate was good but he put his legs through first and then when he showed his legs by lifting the screen he had a fair degree of movement as he only needed to keep his hands still – still very skilled to have done this and it must have taken hours of practice

The broken glass would , I assume, have involved weighted or heavy cards – possibly wood – but he still required the skill to throw it accurately.

I’m still trying to work out how the hoverboard in back to the future works.

Troy instantly went from one side of tower bridge to the other. Its the stuff like that that baffles me. I’m an engineer/scientist and i like to know how things work

I’m only really familiar with David Blaine, but I’m afraid even the slightest digging reveales that there isn’t a huge amount to his tricks

Many of his street illusions can be bought online. They are just simple props

When he levitates in his tv special (the one that made him famous) – he was hoisted up by a crane, and the hoist thing was removed in the editing suite

Magic is disappointed if you start digging

And don’t get me started on derren brown (gets v cross just thinking about the lottery numbers thing)

‘Smagic innit?

The ones that ruin it, bearing in mind we know it’s tricks, are the ones like the Arsenal score one. We know he couldn’t know this till after so it has to be staged.

The sleight of hand ones impress me far more.

Teenrat, the only answer to your example is he didn’t it was staged/edited.

Magic is disappointed if you start digging

Eh?

You mean it’s not actually magic? Well knock me down with a rabbit from a hat…

Of course it’s disappointing (rather than disappointed), because it’s all a trick…

I know it’s all a trick, I have no problem with that

My beef is with TV magic that claims to be done “in camera” but actually uses special effects / editing etc

Both Derren Brown and David Blaine are guilty of this

There’s an episode of Jonathon Creek where he explains how banal magic is when you start looking to see how it’s done. It true. There’s always a stooge or a helping hand somewhere or editing done afterwards. It’s fun trying to work it out but usually the trick is so simple it spoils the effect somewhat.

Derren Brown

Apart from a couple of the big specials (Lottery, Russian Roulette) I reckon his stuff is as it looks, its just often not the done the way he points you towards.

I’ve always thought Derren Brown’s been pretty up front that it’s all bollocks.

What I want to know is how can Paul Daniels produce a rabbit out of a hat, but cannot produce a hair out of his head. 🙄

I once saw Dynamo appear out of thin air in a London park. I don’t think he was performing at the time. I still can’t work out how he did it.

I saw Debbie McGee once in waitrose in twyford about ten years ago. I probably would have.

I stopped watching when I realised that loads of it is edited after filming and is therefore little more than a film with some special effects. Completely pointless.

Derren Brown

http://www.karmaloop.com/guru/david-blaine-wows-kanye-west-will-smith-bryan-cranston-sticking-ice-pick-hand/

Yossarian, Dynamo is about 3ft2 so you probably just didn’t notice him before.

Two novels for those interested in magic:

The entertaining ‘Carter Beats the Devil’ by Glen David Gold and the superb and criminally underrated ‘Deptford Trilogy’ by Robertson Davies.

Magic is at the heart of the former and less central to the latter.

can’t we just burn them? they must be witchs.

Arrrre go on, i’d clear up the mess afterwards…. please…….

Get a decent cameraman & post-production team.

The penn and teller, copperfield stuff, doesn’t impress me because its on a stage in a controlled environment and is ‘smoke and mirrors, but when the magicians are on a street i really can’t think of a possible explanation.

Penn & Teller are brilliant. Ironically recently after Dynamo & now Troy I yearn to see live magic in a theatre, saw Barry & Stuart a couple of years ago & they were great. The whole street magic thing is interesting but no less staged than Copperfield, & about as real as the Blair Witch Project or any other found footage movie.
A magician wants to trick you & anytime you put a tv camera between them & the audience it makes it much easier….

I can do the David Blaine Levitation. It’s all about what angle you stand to the people watching it…

The David Blaine floating one or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balducci_levitation “the Balducci Levitation” as it is known is an absolute doddle. For complete success, get your mates completely rat arsed or spike their tea with acid, then if you turn your back to them at exactly the right angle and raise yourself up 6″ using the furthest away foot only, you will completely freak them out and probably give them a really bad trip.

For full on levitation the big players simply use powerful magnets and electricity, which has long been known to make things hover.

The point about the Balducci levitation is that it’s easy to do, BUT it gets you only two or three inches off the ground. So David Blane does it on the street, they film the actual reactions of the people, then edit the footage post filming so when you see it on TV he goes about a foot off the ground, turning a well known easy to do trick into the seemingly impossible. Making it in my view utterly pointless. Now if I see any magic on TV, street or elsewhere I know I’m probably not seeing what actually happened. So it’s just incredibly irritating instead of entertaining.

As andylc says

I can do the levitation too – Blaine uses camera tricks on tv as the illusion would look rubbish on tv

I sussed one of Dynamos tricks the other week when it was on BBC 1. He’s in a tattoo studio and a woman says she’s not happy with one of her tattoos, it’s a picture of a woman winking, and she wishes she wasn’t. Dynamo puts his thumb over the winking eye and magically the eye is then open. She’s a stooge and you can see the makeup covering some of the eye. HDTV not good for magicians 🙂

we could all levitate around a great big bonfire.

One of my first year students can do lots of the card-based stuff; I assumed he’d been practising for ages, but he only started in the summer.

He uses it to get free cakes and drinks by entertaining the Starbucks staff 🙂

Whats the point of stooges and editing as it produces something completely false rather than trickery through the magicians skill. I must say i was naive to the ins and out of the world of tv street magic.

the close up card and sleight of hand stuff, done well is a joy to watch, I don’t really go in for any of the bigger stuff.