Perhaps a dumb question but stick with me folks. I am not and never have been a magician and thus every trick (or most every one) is beyond my comprehension. Do professional magicians though ever watch others in the profession and have not the slightest clue how a trick, stunt etc… is performed. Or alternately do they understand the basic mechanics and just lack the skills to replicate the tricks of the best magicians. Kind of goes to the heart of ‘magic’ and if there are tricks that have never been adequately explained or replicated what are they?
I’m sure a pro magician can usually guess the basis for a new trick, though may not be able to duplicate it himself. Magicians do know that an important element of any trick is showmanship; a lot of “new” tricks are just jazzed up variations on old ones.
Also, pro magicians often share tricks with one another (though not with outsiders). Try to find a copy of Genie Magazine
–It’s not that a magician lacks the skills to replicate another magician’s trick, he/she may lack the custom equipment. Remember that the “masked magician” that revealed those tricks on Fox TV a couple of seasons ago (Valentino, I believe) was traced by the equipment used.
The “trick” is not how it’s accomplished, but how it is presented. The magic is in the minds of the audience, not on the stage.
As RC mentioned, most magic tricks are variations on simple ideas like misdirection, sleight of hand, and optical illusions. The actual “trick” part of modern magic shows takes up maybe 5% of the time at most; the rest is show.
As an example, pick up a book on card tricks. Once you practice about a dozen different moves with cards, you can do most any trick.
It can happen both ways, really.
I am primarily a card magician, and I’d say that I could figure out a way to do most of the card tricks I might see. Some I might not be able to do, since a lot of card moves take many years to master, but I can usually come up with how they’re done.
Others I might not be able to figure out so well. This might be because the magician is using conditions and convincers that make the obvious method impossible or unlikely. It could be because he has combined ideas in a way that no one would suspect. It could be that he has created something totally new.
A good example of one that has stumped even magicians is Penn and Teller’s Bullet Catch. There are plenty of ways to do such a trick, but they have put so many conditions on their version that no one has been able to figure it out yet.
Dr. J
For a start, check out the site below:
http://www.foreworks.com/bullet2.html
It gives a variety of ways this trick can be done. I think P&T use some form of this, but not exactly. They’ve added a twist. But the page above will give some good info.
SF