# How does this levitation trick work? (not David Blaine) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2005, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871 "2005-09-15T22:45:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/21 "2005-09-16T19:39:57Z")
> [@Flipshod](#): > > He seems more advanced than Blaine when it comes to levitation. Well, I wasn’t aware a space race was in progress. Which magician do you think will reach orbit first? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/22 "2005-09-16T20:08:29Z")
The clue to me that the “audience” is part of the show is that none of them block the camera, or get down to look underneath him (I certainly would). I have seen the guy, he walks around Las Vegas filming his “man on the street” segments, and will say that is his real hair. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/23 "2005-09-16T20:17:49Z")
> [@Nanoda](#): > > [Different trick](http://www.howtodotricks.com/andruzzi-levitation.html) - watch the video. From the link: > [@](#): > > To prepare the shoe, you need to cut a hole on the bottom of your lifting foot. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/24 "2005-09-16T20:22:54Z")
If I were going to perform this ‘stunt’ in a way that would look real on video, I’d simply fix up a thin steel wire across the field, to lean back onto. No need for fancy braces, anything mounted in the ground by my feet, or anything. Have a few people mill around, and edit the footage to include separate shots of ‘shocked’ onlookers. And to make sure it looked like you could walk right around without obstruction, the camera would go down the side of my body, being passed underneath the wire. But then, as **ianzin** so helpfully points out, I could _never_ know, because I’m not a _real magician_. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/25 "2005-09-16T20:23:42Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > From the link: > > > [@](#): > > > > To prepare the shoe, you need to cut a hole on the bottom of your lifting foot. Never let it be said that magicians don’t suffer for their art. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/26 "2005-09-16T20:38:34Z")
Pardon the hijack, but the classic magician’s trick of passing the hoop over the levitating lady- how is that done? (It’s so passe now that it has to be ripe for revelation.) As for the guy above, it’s clear to me that HE’S THE DEVIL! ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/27 "2005-09-16T20:40:48Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Pardon the hijack, but the classic magician’s trick of passing the hoop over the levitating lady- how is that done? She’s on a table (note she always wears a flowing dress), supported by a strut which goes through the curtain at the back. The passing the hoop actually includes a flourish which moves the hoop around one end, across the front and around the other end, without ever passing completely along the rear of the table. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/28 "2005-09-16T21:04:43Z")
> [@Flipshod](#): > > The guy is Chris Angel and has a show on A&E on Wednesday nights (I think) called Mindfreak. > > He does variations on this that belie some of the explanations so far. > > He seems more advanced than Blaine when it comes to levitation. Interesting. Do tell! (for us non tv-watching souls) ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/29 "2005-09-17T00:01:35Z")
…when I was a Banquets Captain at the SkyCity Conference Centre, we had a Circus for the staff in the Ballroom. There were a number of different acts, like clowns and monkeys and magic shows, and there was this one act where a pretty young lady appeared ( to the audience ) to levitate off the ground. Being “backstage”, I was standing in a position where I could see right up her skirt! (I wasn’t looking, honest! ) Suffice to say, without revealing what I saw, the trick was revealed for me, and ever since then, I’ve never tried to look up a magician’s skirt again… ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Large\_Marge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/50afbb/32.png) [@Large\_Marge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Large_Marge)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/30 "2005-09-17T04:55:55Z")
That is Criss Angel. I can’t get enough of him. In that segment, he also levitated a girl in the park, pretty much the same way you see it happening to him, IIRC. I’ve never seen levitation that looked so believable. He’s INCREDIBLE. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/31 "2005-09-17T05:53:31Z")
There’s no need for a “drop-down” brace, since his right leg never moves. I think the hanging jacket is a deliberate misdirection. It looks a bit wrong, but it doesn’t _quite_ reach the ground, and you can indeed see that there’s nothing there – but it draws your eye. That’s art. If I were to attempt this trick, I’d try to do it like this: A brace from the right foot to the small of the back, hinged at the knee, with a 90 degree range of motion. At the base, the brace has a socket arrangement that connects to a discreetly buried support in the ground through the heel of the shoe. Once you contrive to fix the brace to the support, you get your assistants to gently lower you, bending at the knee until you are parallel to the ground (where the hinge’s range-of-motion ends.) Conscripts are okay at the hands, but you want someone you can trust at your head, so you don’t get hurt. The brace give you solid support under one thigh. As an experiment, (and because no-one was around to see what I dumbass I was being) I did a little experiment using my freeweights: I loaded up a barbell with enough weight to counterbalance me, put it against the wall, laid one thigh on the end of my bench, hooked my foot under the barbell, leaned back, and then lifted the other leg (to the extent that I could.) I’m sure I looked a complete prat, and it was extremely discomforting to the foot that was taking all the weight, but it’s easy enough to balance that way, and of course it would be much easier if your heel was mechanically secured to the ground. I probably shouldn’t have admitted that I tried that. Friday night at Mudd’s! Woo! 😃 Anyway, everything about doing it that way would be trivially easy – the first trick would be to engineer a gimmick that securely attaches to the ground and can take the weight, and the difficult performance part of it would be keeping it concealed and managing to get it locked into position without being obvious about it. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/32 "2005-09-17T05:55:15Z")
Which I guess is to say that I agree with **Bryan** and **Q.E.D.**. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/33 "2005-09-17T06:37:15Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > Professional magician here, just dropping by to offer a relevant fact. > > The only people who _know_ how this is done won’t tell you. > > The people willing to speculate and comment about how they _think_ it _might_ be done don’t really _know_. > > This is why it’s a little bit pointless posting GQs that ask how magic tricks are done. Them that know don’t say. Them that say don’t know. > > Just for the record, I’ll offer two more bits of relevant information. (1) It’s a little bit misguided to ask about ‘the’ method, as if there’s only one. There are almost as many different methods for performing a levitation trick as there are magicians. (2) You can _never_ figure out _for sure_ how a trick is done from watching a video tape of a performance. It’s impossible to say whether the demonstration or performance has been ‘enhanced’. Sometimes this is done just by being careful to position the camera in such a way that the trick looks better than it would if you saw it from a slightly different angle. In more advanced cases, the video may have been subject to digital editing or post-production. So you never really know. For Pete’s sake, unless there’s video manipulation involved it’s obviously some sort of cleverly disguised brace. Why get all fussy about people trying to pick a part interesting magic tricks. That’s half the fun. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/34 "2005-09-17T06:52:27Z")
Ugh, please don’t let **ianzin** derail another illusionist thread. ---
**Author:** ![Large\_Marge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/50afbb/32.png) [@Large\_Marge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Large_Marge)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/35 "2005-09-17T07:52:53Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > DON’T DO IT Q.E.D., you’ll be [violating **ianzin’s** intellectual property](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=266080). :rolleyes: > Since this is GQ, how about a cite? > > Back to the OP, can we all agree that the “audience” is bunko? I mean the woman doesn’t even sound convincing, and the black guy only seems to be able to say “Oh Shit!”. > > If you accept that the whole thing is completely staged (a la David Copperfield and making the giant \_\_\_\_\_\_ disappear) then I think it gets a lot easier to figure out. There’s no need for any stealthily placed items. I’m all for the brace idea, but his foot is so far off the center of gravity, that it seems like this would have to be one hell of a brace to hold him up only on that one point. I don’t think his audience was fake. He does his bits all over the streets of Vegas, stopping strangers on the streets to perform. Crowds gather, and they appear to be real. I also believe that is his real hair, but that was the first time I’d seen him in a hat. The levitation at the park was a long segment that followed some Frisbie tricks. He was moving about freely then, bending and reaching to send and catch the Frisbie, but there is no telling how much time elapsed between takes. I think you’d all have a better idea of what he’s about if you watch a show or two of his in its entirety. It really is **different.** I have to agree somewhat with **ianzin** in that if it were really that easy to figure out how a magician did his tricks, then everyone would be doing them, and they really wouldn’t be tricks anymore. I think there is an incredible talent required to make people believe–a talent that involves physical strength and stamina, mind control, optical illusion, flexibility and a high pain threshold. And charisma. Don’t forget charisma. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/36 "2005-09-17T16:37:24Z")
Not having seen the video here, the speculation is that there’s some kind of rod coming out of his pants that holds the shirt up? Hell, that’s no mystery. I could do _that_ trick and I don’t need a brace. I just can’t do it in public since the restraining order. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/37 "2005-09-17T18:04:01Z")
> [@Large Marge](#): > > He does his bits all over the streets of Vegas, stopping strangers on the streets to perform. Crowds gather, and they appear to be real. Are the same crowds present in all shots? My observation of the crowds in this clip are that in the shots where he’s visible, they’re all standing around quite calm. There’s separate close-ups of the ‘gasp, hands over mouth’ variety, but there’s no evidence that these were filmed at the same time, whether actors or not. (David Blane uses exactly the same editing-in of ‘shocked onlookers’ all the time.) ---
**Author:** ![filmyak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@filmyak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmyak)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/38 "2005-09-17T18:27:59Z")
Ooh, cool thread. I work on the show, so I know a little bit about this piece. 🆒 No, I can’t/won’t tell how it’s done, that kills the fun of it. But I WILL use the opportunity to shamelessly plug the series (Wed nights at 10pm on A&E), and for those of you with no cable, the DVD of the series will be out later this year. And yes, the reactions are taped at the same time as the effect with a 2nd camera. =) Actually the best reaction was completely missed (darn that live, unscripted TV thing). A jogger in the park was watching as he jogged by… to the point where he fell over mid jog from not looking where he was going. Hehehe. ---
**Author:** ![Flipshod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f19dbf/32.png) [@Flipshod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flipshod)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/39 "2005-09-17T18:53:15Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > Interesting. Do tell! (for us non tv-watching souls) e.g. he levitates over a moving escalator; he rises up from the floor and onto a chair; he levitates a girl off the street (supposedly) with no part left touching the ground (it appears), he rises up over ten feet high in one shot–much higher than Blaine’s few inches with his back turned–lots of variations that imply that he might have a better method than the foot-attached-to-the ground method ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2005, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871/40 "2005-09-17T19:30:43Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > Interesting. Do tell! (for us non tv-watching souls) He’s billed as “a postmodern Whodini” accurately if that tells you anything. Just watch one of his shows on A&E. You can read about it [here](http://www.aetv.com/crissangel/). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-levitation-trick-work-not-david-blaine/321871.md?page=3)