Tonight an Australian magician called Cosentino selected a person from one of four hypnotized people who in turn were selected from 100’s of people from the public who put their videos on Youtube.
In front of a very large audience of people the hypnotized woman had her eyes closed but parts of her body reacted instantly to Cosentino’s many arm gestures. She levitated and he moved a large metal hoop length-wise around her body showing that there were no strings.
Then at the end they held up a cloth and several seconds later they dropped the cloth and she appeared outside of the building.
She said she couldn’t recall the levitation.
So do people think that this is a trick? How do they explain the metal hoop and how she was reacting to his gestures while her eyes were closed?
Must she have been in on it or is it possible that she was just a hypnotized regular member of the public?
The video will probably appear on the channel 7 website soon. I’ll post a link.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, yes, it’s a trick.
When the hoop was passed around her body, was it done in a similar way to this? David Copperfield- Flying illusion
(The hoops turn as they pass over Copperfield’s body, moving around the wires that are holding him up.)
Her instant response to the magician’s arms gestures, her claim not to recall the hypnotism, and her disappearance/ reappearance outside the studio all strongly suggest she was in on the trick.
I explain it by reminding you that stage magicians lie. They are professional liars. You can be sure that anything they show you and what they tell you is deliberately intended to mislead you.
Oh, come on dude. You’re a bright guy. If it wasn’t a trick, he’d be puppet master of Australia, like some super hero villain. You’d be reading of his antics in the Melbourne Times and your Prime Minister would be on TV pleading for The Avengers to intervene.
In the trick there was one hoop and it was smaller and he went from her feet to her head keeping the hoop straight the whole time. David Copperfield’s trick was very impressive - I guess it could have been done a similar way.
Well hundreds of people applied for the levitation and four were chosen… are you saying that that application process was just a scam? If she was in on it she might need an earpiece to react to his gestures instantly…
It’s like when you choose a card from a deck of 52 cards. There are 52 different cards, but they can usually get you to choose the one they want you to.
Do you really not understand how magic tricks work, in theory?
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Tonight an Australian magician called Cosentino selected a person from one of four hypnotized people who in turn were selected from 100’s of people from the public who put their videos on Youtube.
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Must she have been in on it or is it possible that she was just a hypnotized regular member of the public?
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Just because he took audience submissions on youtube and did a downselection does not mean she wasn’t a plant. In fact, that’s a great way to mask a plant. All the real submissions and real non-participants can all attest they were not in on anything, and *just *missed out on being the one being levitated.
The good levitation act probably requires her to wear some kind of harness, and there needed to be some kind of framework to support the cloth that she “disappears” out from under, so very likely she was a plant. Then there’s getting her from the stage to outside.
This could be accomplished through various means, including verbal/audio cues, or even just well-timed choreography. Or just peeking.
There are a variety of ways to do hoop passes. If you look at the David Copperfield example, he uses an elaborate set up with two big rings being handled by two people and they do two moves. The first come in from the ends, sweep underneath, and go back the way they came. The second uses two perpendicular rings spinning together and the roll underneath him as moved from back to front of stage. Never do any of the rings pass over his hips.
At around :47 seconds, he starts passing the ring around her from her feet. Notice how the ring stops on his side near his waist, and the end swings on around her head. Then he moves the other end to her feet and swings it around the front. This technique relies on a support that is on his side, typically with an S curve. Moving the ring into the S from one side and then the other gives the illusion that he went past his midpoint, but the gimmick is the double pass and swinging it around her head and feet.
Other techniques exist. The point is that there are lots of standard magician tricks to create the illusion of levitation. Since I can’t see the video I can only speculate on the one he used.
After some more thought I think the woman was a genuine member of the public. She was hypnotized and the guy said that she would be made to meditate so that she had no thoughts. How she reacted to his hand gestures is easy - if there were wires supporting her then the wires could be pulled and released in time to the magician’s gestures. When she appeared outside she was disoriented and she said she didn’t remember the time before. Apparently you can hypnotize someone to not remember parts of the hypnosis (at least temporarily?). I think that’s what happened - she was told how to suddenly appear outside and did that part of the trick and when she saw the magician again the trance suddenly ended.
BTW there were four people hypnotized and the most suggestible one was chosen. Maybe the initial 4 were also chosen by their youtube videos and phonecalls about how suggestible they would be. Also the people who applied knew it involved hypnosis so they were willing to get into a trance. On the other hand if he has chosen one member of the audience there isn’t a good chance they’d get into a deep trance.
If she was in on it they should have had no hypnosis involved… that way she could say at the end that she just teleported… which would be more amazing for the audience. But hypnosis means that she simply had no memory of how she got there.
Also it involves the magician not lying. Since my explanation isn’t that hard to achieve I think the magician would have done it that way rather than go to the trouble of having someone that was in on it. Also that way someone from those hundreds of applicant’s videos would have been “levitated” - rather than the alternative of those applications being a waste of their time.
Oh, that is just precious. So, hypnotizing someone is easier than having the person work from a prepared script?
For the record, one of the biggest secrets of stage magic is that the magician is actually doing things in a very difficult and complicated manner, while making it look as if he is easily achieving the impossible.
No, she SAID she was disoriented and she SAID she didn’t remember the time before.
I’m not saying she’s a plant, I don’t know how the trick works, but you can’t really take anything for granted.
FWIW, check out the recent movie “Now You See Me”. In that, a group of magicians hypnotize a man and convince him that he was magically transported to and robbed a bank in France (i think the show was in Vegas). In movie, they explain how they created the illusion as well. In that version of the trick, the guy was a plant but he didn’t know it.
Stage hypnotism is just a way of creating audience stooges on the fly. The audience member is just playing along with it, although they might convince themselves afterward that they weren’t. The selection process is to weed out people who are likely to blab.
Why would a professional magician rely on a random audience member acting the correct way during the illusion?
I have no idea how exactly they did the illusion, but picking a particular element out of set of elements in a way that appears to be random but isn’t is a bog-standard part of a magician’s repertoire. Pick a card at random–don’t show it to me, show it to the audience–now put it back–is this your card? Yes! Wow!
You can dress up the trick in a million ways with the deck of cards thrown in a woodchipper, or pull the card from behind the mark’s ear, or whatever, but the essence of the trick is that it looked like the mark picked a card at random, but they didn’t. They picked the card the magician forced them to pick. That’s the essence of the trick.
As far as floating in the air under a cloth, with hoops passing over to prove that there are no wires–that illusion is hundreds of years old. As for a person being in one place and then suddenly appearing in another place the usual answer is to use two people, and the switch didn’t happen when you thought it happened, it happened much earlier.
One more thing. Stage magic often uses tricks that are so simple that the audience wouldn’t believe they could possibly be fooled that way, but they are. There’s something to be said for skill at sleight of hand and speed, but the biggest part is stage presence so that the audience simply doesn’t notice what is going on right in front of them. Stage magic is a show, and the goal is to entertain the audience. Complicated seeming tricks often rely on dead simple illusions that are hundreds of years old.
In this case they didn’t use a random audience member. He advertized for someone to be his assistant who wanted to be hypnotized and levitate. Their role was to be an assistant, not a skeptic! i.e. in a way they are in on it.
No it isn’t that old trick - the person had a cloth put on and off of them and different parts of their body floated up and down at different times. It is like Copperfield’s trick a bit which is a modern trick.
I haven’t rewatched the video but they did put a cloth on and off of her a few times… it was usually semi-transparent though. Anyone maybe there was a switch at some point so she had more time to get outside.