Do you have a cite for that? Not that I don’t believe you, but I would like a few more details.
Waterj2, the levitation trick as described was shown on ‘Secrets of the Street Magicians’. (A Fox special, I think). Dunno if that’s what Blaine did, but the effect was exactly the same.
What I’m curious about is the cop’s shoe trick, along with the other one I saw (may be the same program, didn’t see all of it) where the card appeared stuffed in an empty beer bottle five feet behind the dupe (Is that the right word?). Again no obvious contact.
As for ‘cheating’ I think what people find nasty about the editing of these shows is that they want to experience a magic act, and not a special effects extravaganza. Once you see one camera trick, then you turn off: it becomes boring. Imagine the following internal conversation:
How did he DO that?!?! It was a camera trick/snappy editing/paid actors.
And what about that? I told ya: camera trick/snappy editing/paid actors.
And that? See previous response.
‘Real magic’ is fascinating. An hour of this is just crap.
Having said that, one of the best ads I’ve seen this year was Blaine doing the ‘flipping through a deck of cards, asking the dupe to pick one’ trick straight to the camera. It impressed the heck out of me. It was - for some reason - for a car.
The only evidence I have were several people’s comments on alt.magic.secrets or some other newsgroup. Do a web search on David Blaine and you’ll find web sites that go into exacting detail on how he did the camera editing. Same with the Fox special. There were some “testimony” from people who were there.
What would you accept as proof that he did it that way? It’s pretty hard to disprove something without an independent video of the whole thing. Same with the shoe trick, it’s obvious that he had access to the shoe to put the card in there. Once that is done, the card trick is a simple force.
The general concensus among magicians is that Blaine is a better than average street magician with an excellent presense, a good PR machine, and the willingness to play fast and loose with camera tricks, off camera questioning, and other hijinks.
I don’t think you could find the above explanation plausible if you saw the show; he did not do the lead-foot levitation that any 8-year-old could do, and the crowd reaction was in the same shot as the 8-inch, light-under-both-feet “levitation.”
Look, Telemark, I appreciate your interest in responding to this, but you haven’t said anything new.
First of all, I did a web search, and all I can find is offers to sell me a video that will teach me how to levitate. I can find no one anywhere who has posted the contents of any such video; I can find no blow-by-blow breakdown of how such a convincing levitation is accomplished.
Second, to say “it’s obvious that he had access to the shoe to put the card in there” adds exactly nothing to this discussion. All you’re saying is “it’s not real magic.” Well, duh, but I’m trying to find out if anyone out there actually knows how it’s done.
As far as what I’d accept as proof, I’m not looking for proof. I’m just looking for a plausible explanation. All you’re saying is that a plausible explanation must exist. Again I say “duh.”
The explaination is that the crowd shots of the “impressive” levitation are faked. They show the entire thing in the Fox special, as well as explaining some of David Blaine’s other tricks.
When I have some more time I’ll do the search. The Usenet groups are very good for this type of research. The magicians there (I’m not a magician) can explain in great detail exactly what Blaine did. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not my field of expertise.
He did do the lead foot elevation, he just didn’t show that on camera. You see the reaction of the crowd to the lead foot levitation but on the show it looks like they’re reacting to the overhead crane levitation.
I’ll try to do some searching tonight. Sorry for not having a real cite just yet, but I know they are out there.
Telemark said:
I could understand if the tricks are simple camera editing. But stage presence and PR are the essence of magic. Look, other magicians can be impressed by the technical skill of a trick and how difficult it would be to pull off. But the audience doesn’t care. The most important thing is the stage presence. Look at Penn and Teller…many of their tricks are a simple card force that an 8 year old can do. Then they put in a very complicated presentation of the forced card, like in special contact lenses or inside a fish, or whatever. It doesn’t matter that it’s easy to force some guy to pick the 3 of clubs. What matters is impressing the audience, not how hard it is.
Now, if what we have is camera editing that simply splices audience reactions, then it’s not very impressive.
Oh…regarding the number picking thing. I didn’t see the show, but I have an idea. He picked the numbers of three construction workers. Well, I bet he didn’t have to pick them in order. He just said “37” and the guy with 37 is amazed. Then the give the other numbers. So what looks difficult…picking 3 numbers in a row…is really much easier. I don’t know if he had to pick the numbers in order or not, of if it was edited to make it look like he picked them in order. But if you just say the three most common numbers and the audience self-assigns them your odds of guessing correctly go up quite a bit. Rather than three independent guesses, you really have one guess with three tries.
I can tell you that Blaines magic is indeed mostly editing.
He is a fairly good card man and can do some good up close magic in variations that got him noticed in clubs in New York (he shocked the crap out of Leo DiCaprio and Deniro a few times) I have yet to see him up close but another buddy of mine (and a much better magician)who has when he was up at Magic Castle said his card work was fast and his “draws” (that is getting someone to look away to pocket the card or some variation) were extremely subtle and professional. Also, his presence is well formed masking a pretty good professional in a sorta “wash out” exterior. You can see it on the way he addresses and looks at people, half the time he looks fairly bored or tired.
I have heard there was a lot of editing to help Blaine in the levitation and mental guessing (you have to on the mental guessing, it take a degree of preparation).
I did like his variation on the guess the card by throwing the deck against a window and making the card stick. Very slick and a totally new way that I had seen. But mostly, to address your question, he is using edits and the only real “magic” I would like you to pay attention to, since it takes some good up close skills, is his card tricks. That is where his talents lie
I had assumes that for the ‘card in a bottle’ nd ‘card on the glass’ etc tricks that he had some stooges to plant cards. The card in the bottle had someone’s name written on it, so it wasn’t as if he copied their signature before he met them and planted the card himself.
As for the levitation, in the supposed crane shots edited in later, were the audience members still visible in the frame? Or did they have a shot of he and the audience, then cut to a solitary shot of him hovering?
I don’t think the trick was an obvious lead hiding the other foot, because he wasn’t standing sideways. His back was to the crowd.
I would make a guess as to that being the trick of it, yet I got to see it again to see if that is true or not.
As for the levitation, yes they made a cut to the back of his feet then back to the shots of the stunned audience (making sure to never include the feet in the shot). That pissed me off, since I know he is doing the one leg version then doing some kind of hang for the camera someplace else.
Now I get people asking to do the trick and are disappointed when I do it, saying “Oh I thought it was like the magician on the show”
As mentioned above, David Blaine is not the originator of this illusion. He has made the illusion popular, once again, with his recent television special, “David Blaine: Street Magic.” The unfortunate reality is, however, that we never really get to see Blaine performing the Balducci Levitation. We watch several times as Blaine performs it for others, but we never get to see it for ourselves.
For the television special, Blaine performed the Balducci levitation in front of several different groups of people, and the camera was there to catch their reaction. The method he used for this is the Balducci method, described below. While videotaping these various performances, the producers keyed in on the audience members with the most visual reaction. After the Balducci levitation, the producers of the show had these same people stand by for another taping of the illusion - this time the camera would shoot from behind the audience members to get a
clear view of Blaine in action. The audience members were told that this second performance was to show them how magicians could use wires to levitate. And this is exactly what happened. A small harness and rig (just out of camera view) was set up and Blaine performed a standard wire-suspension.
What Blaine did was a camera trick - known as a post-production edit. The audience at home watched the second (wire suspension) levitation performance, with the audience reaction of the real levitation edited in. It was said, in the television special, that no strings or wires were used to perform Blaine’s levitation. This is true, no wires or strings are required. Unfortunately, we never got to see Blaine’s real levitation - we saw a wire-suspension.
There you have it…if anyone really really needs to learn this trick, email me at shaman1@home.com and I will think about it. Remember though, it take practice
yes, this is not a secret to be trifled with. I learned it in a LeCoq mime class. but I did not respect it’s power, and just really did it terribly.
After I saw the TV special in question the first time (seems like a long while ago), I remember having an almost queasy feeling that I couldn’t name. Then it dawned on me. I had let myself be impressed by somebody whose claim to fame was having impressed Leonardo Freaking DiCaprio.
To cleanse myself, I repeated “Ricky Jay is the real thing” 30 times and one-hand dealt myself 10 royal flushes.
Heath Doolin–
Where do you get your information, that “After the Balducci levitation, the producers of the show had these same people stand by for another taping of the illusion - this time the camera would shoot from behind the audience members to get a clear view of Blaine in action. The audience members were told that this second performance was to show them how magicians could use wires to levitate. And this is exactly what happened. A small harness and rig (just out of camera view) was set up and Blaine performed a standard wire-suspension.”
I wish I had taped it, so I could go back and frame-by-frame it, but it’s my memory that before the commercial, for buildup, they showed only the audience reactions, but when they finally got around to it, I saw at least two or three instances of the levitation and the audience in the same shot, with the authentic audience reaction.
Also, you say you’ll describe the Balducci levitation “below,” but then you don’t.
That’s all I can find on the web, too: do a search for “Balducci levitation” and all you get is offers to sell you a video tape. Isn’t there anyone at all who can describe to us how the Balducci levitation is done?
Lissener
Trust me on this, Using the Balducci method, you must have the audience viewing you on a side view, or a threequarters view(from the back) to perfect the illusion. If in fact people were allowed to stand behind Blaine and view the illusion like that, then they would learn the trick very quickly. I can tell you right now that the camera angle from the back floating as he had done…is impossible without wires. Hence, unless Blaine has come up with a miracle routine to do a new levitation, then its just a matter of editing.
Also, if you watch it again, I will tell you that 1) Blaine and his audience are in the shot but the trick is never there in the shot 2)Who says he was doing the levitating trick? He could have easily did the place card on underside of his shoe ( avariation on the backpocket one mentioned before) to get the audience reaction and then just put that reaction in between the cuts 3) There were cut shots of his shoes and to the audience reaction. I will guarantee you that those were done to insert said back feet shots into the regular trick
And Lis…I said just send me a email to shaman1@home.com and I will explain the trick. I only do this so that I may preserve the illusion of the trick rather than just posting it here and ruining it for people who do not want to know.
That is of course the magicians way.
and hey…I could be wrong and David has a whole new way of levitation. Not very likely, but if he does, I would certainly like to learn it.
BTW
I copied that from somewhere else so I did not list the Balducci method below as stated. Sorry about not noticing that on my part.
I always thought the magicians way was “The trick is told when the trick is sold.”
You’re damn right. (He is supposedly researching a new show, and I don’t really care where he does it–I’m going.)
As I say in one of my routines, “Don’t get me wrong, David Blaine is a great magician, but he’s the Keanu Reeves of card magic.”
Dr. J
When the specials first came out, there was a long series of discussions on the various magic newsgroups and message boards about how each trick was done. They are pretty simple street magic, and, yes, many things which would illustrate how the tricks were done was left on the cutting room floor, but hey, that’s part of redirection.
The levitation was done just as Heath Doolin said. At the time there were several “insiders” who detailed how it was done, and the Fox special did the same on national TV.
Here are some links to help:
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Stage/7308/balducci.html
http://www.maanlicht.nl/magic3.htm
Alas, none of the links offers any more proof than what has been presented above. But if you read any of magic boards, everyone is in complete agreement on how he did these tricks.
Not a slam dunk by any stretch, sorry.
Knead-
Thats another saying. Another is never reveal it to people that will not do anything but disprove it. I have had more than one idiot try and loudly proclaim how my tricks are done. I trust Lis since I have seen his threads in the past hence why I offered to show him how. I believe he will use it as it should be used in good health. Shrug.
But if ya gotta know, go to those places above, I did not violate the code by posting them.
and I agree with Doctor and Knead. Blaine could not clean Ricky’s sweaty forehead. The guy is a absolute master of his craft and I could sit there and watch him all day. Plus add to that that he is such a engaging personality and you got one hell of a show. Please, for the love of god, if you want to see a true pro, go watch Ricky if you can.
Of course, since this thread was on Blaine, I was not going to name drop