Is this program legit or are the various scenes staged in some way?
According to the IMDB,
So, yes, it’s legit, and yes, it’s staged.
Waiting for my tortellini to boil, opening this thread thinking of pasta—with the OP hover text giving no reason to think otherwise—only to find it’s a person. If the guy’s name had been spelled right in the OP, I would not have mistaken him for pasta.
Moved to Cafe Society, and title edited to indicate actual subject. Please use descriptive thread titles (and spell the subject right;).
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Fully as legit as a magic act ever is, especially one where they can edit the reaction shots for greatest effect.
Saw his live show, from the front row seats. Very impressive illusionist. Some really bewildering moments…really good entertainment and a very nice man when I met him at the meet and greet.
In the case of a magician on TV, what “legit” usually means is that they avoid any camera tricks or actors/confederates. In other words, what you see on TV is what you could see if he were really going on the street with people he’s never met.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell. You can see camera tricks–e.g. cuts mean something was covered up or exaggerated–but you can’t tell a good actor from a real person.
The only real assurance you have is that, once a camera trick or confederate is spotted, the magician gets hurt hard, so it’s in his best interest not to do it. I stopped watching Chris Angel and Darren Brown over this stuff.
I still watch Penn and Teller, though. They have a live show where they actually do the tricks you see, and actually push for a sort of “ethics in magic” where they don’t lie in any way that isn’t obvious.
There were times I thought perhaps the “marks” were, while not confederates, aware of the circumstances, but I’ve seen enough of the shows (20?) to find a lot of instances where the reactions aren’t particularly noteworthy or entertaining to think they’re legit (the one with the two security guards at the Navy Pier really fell flat in their reactions, so much so that it would seem extremely unlikely it was scripted).
There was an episode with outtakes where either the trick didn’t work, or the mark missed the trick or simply didn’t react accordingly. It was actually pretty funny.
I’ve gotten the sense that the marks are aware that they are part of some sort of production, but not really aware of the specific show.
For example, they ask random people if they want to be on a TV show. They say they need to put them in an example situation to see how they react. They ask them to do something like go into a grocery store and try the smoothie at the sample station. Then wackyness ensues. The mark might not know that they are being filmed at that moment, but they know they are being put in a strange situation.
I heard that the show “Cash Cab” did something similar. That’s the show where “unsuspecting people” were picked up and played a game show in the cab. The production company would find people who wanted to be on reality TV. They would fill out preliminary forms in one office and then the production company would tell them to take a cab to another office across town to finish the process. They would go downstairs and “hail” a cab, which just happened to be the special cash cab and they’d film the game show. So the contestants didn’t know they’d be on “Cash Cab”, but they had been pre-screened and manipulated to be in that situation.
Generally, productions have to have the people fill out the release BEFORE filming them. That, and the fact that the cameras aren’t hidden.
Most of the marks in this show seem to be people from temp agencies being sent to temp jobs, so it would be easy to hide a “you consent to be filmed” release form in their job paperwork.
However, there was still an episode filmed at a marina with a stereotypical surfer dude as the mark that just seemed really fake.
But as is becoming apparent with the other show on that network, “Impractical Jokers”, the more popular it is, the harder it is to find people who are not aware of the stars, or who recognize the stars and pretend they don’t to get on TV.
This is not true for every production. Billy on the Street has people sign releases after filming. All of the cameras on Carbonara Effect are either hidden or disguised.
Penn was telling a story about getting reaction shots. The idea they had for the bit was to go up to random people on the street and ask them if they wanted to be on tv as part of a magic special. Almost all agreed. They were told to reaction to a specific spot as if something amazing happened. Without fail they jumped around screaming like someone was raised from the dead in front of them. There was no trick it was all to show how phony cutting to the audience reaction is. I think it got cut out of one of their specials.
No, it was left in, I recall seeing their special where they demonstrated this technique. If I recall it was the same special where they made a submarine or other large watercraft disappear.
Impractical Jokers will also air people who refused to sign the consent, blurring their faces completely (and possibly muting their speech). Usually it’s when one or two people in a large group refuse to sign and they want to use that footage, but occasionally it’s the target mark who they blur, because the scene was too funny to pass up.