Magic Trick Question: Any Idea How It Was Done?

Just FTR, I’d like to reiterate once again: I was not the least bit confused about the duck’s reappearance. That aspect of the trick seemed as obvious to me as it did to the rest of you. I was concerned to ask only about the duck’s disappearance.

Just FTR. I don’t want people to think I’m completely stupid.

-FrL-

But how did the duck get from under the mirrored table to the bucket? That’s what I can’t figure out. :wink:

Once you let the air out of the duck, it packs into a much smaller space.

What about the second half of the clip? This is the one trick that I always remembered (well, that and the crazy one with the candles), when they do it in slow motion. I remember cracking up as a kid. DC places a fake duck in the bucket (it might not be as thick as it seems), and then when the trick is done, he takes out a real duck! I remember the first version of the trick, and you can clearly see an empty bucket (check out the other clip on the Frylock’s link). Oh, and the table doesn’t look mirrored because the light shows through it. Perhaps I’m misreading what other posters have typed…

  1. you cut a hole in the box. . .

  2. You stick your duck in that box. . .

  3. . .

I was totally with this explanation but i’m dubious about the mirrored table. I’ve watched several times between 38-50secs and you get a real good view of the camera **moving ** around the table. Check it out, it really doesn’t seem to be a mirror image, it looks to me like you can see clearly through it and it **is ** the audience on the other side you see right up to the underside of the tabletop. Is there a frame where you think you can clearly see it’s a mirror image?

And yes it is a thick looking table top, and yes birds can be squeezed into smaller spaces than you think, but surely not that small?

Like others here i can’t enjoy illusions for getting caught up trying to figure them out. Damn brain, disengages when it shouldn’t and won’t when it should!

I disagree. Look at the 3-storey high scaffolding (supporting the floodlights?) in the background. As the camera pans around, you see the audience through the “hollow box with mirrors”. But you also see the legs of the scaffolding, and as the camera’s position moves, the legs also move. The vertical columns of the scaffolding seen below the table are perfectly aligned with the vertical columns seen above the table.
The only way to fake that with mirrors would be for the arena to be perfectly symmetrical, with pairs of scaffolding opposite each other, so that each one’s mirror image is identical to itself.

Ducks are cheap.

I hate you for beating me to that! :smiley:

For the mirrors under the table… I don’t know much about optics, but would it be possible to do a parabolic mirror, suspended under the table? That would give you considerable volume to stuff a duck into, and yet it would appear from any angle below and to the sides that the table was not as thick as it actually is (by reflecting the stage surface, I mean). A panel of the right colored material below the table would be invisible to the audience and would provide the right effect.

I usually watch only for the panache. I know they’re tricks, but if the showmanship is really good it can make me forget to try and puzzle it out.

This was the only trick in the show that bugged me, because I knew what he was doing and it dropped me out of the whole ‘be awed by magic’ feeling I had.

Don’t tell me that!

Seriously, I nearly cried when they showed the dead bird in The Prestige.

Besides, that lid seemed pretty thick from the angle I had, and he didn’t spin it because you’d see that the lid didn’t have a depth inside that the outside indicates. Having had birds before, and knowing that they squish down fairly well from how big they look, I figure a short stay in a tight space won’t hurt it.

That’s why he held it around the wings too, so it doesn’t get caught in the lid.

This nails it. A duck was always in the bucket handed to the audience member. The duck put in the box was removed with the lid and hidden in the second table. That’s it. The rest are details taken care of by the equipment and David’s showmanship.

Maybe I was confused with camera angles. DC clearly demonstrated that the duck was real. Flapping wings, etc. I thought he was showing it to the chubby guy from the audience…whatever, doesn’t matter. But then the assistant took charge of it for a period when DC was running a bit of distraction showing off the bucket, and the assistant was certainly kneeling for at least some of that time.

My guess is that the assistant dumped the duck into a trapdoor on the stage, and substituted a “puppet” which DC pretended to place in the box. This object had moving feet, and a head that bobbed along with DC shaking it as he walked. The thing is, the duck wasn’t peddeling it’s feet when DC showed it off before. I believe he instead attached a pull (bungee attached to the rear of his collar) that pulled the puppet duck into his coat. There is a brief white flash at about 00:32 that I believe is the puppet being pulled into the coat. As DC steps back from the box, he briefly adjusts the sides of his coat to insure that the puppet is well hidden. His shirt is also the same color (or lack of it) as the duck to help conceal the moment when the pull does it’s work. The puppet could be fairly insubstantial or even quickly deflated.

OK, sorry about that. The fact is that a lot of people get awfully dissapointed when they find out how this stuff is done. The form I posted was an afterthought after I had said explicitly how I thought it was done.

Yup, not just a fake, but a rather insubstantial, or collapsible/deflatable fake that won’t make much of a bulge when it is hanging inside the back of his coat.

xyz

But trying to figure out the tricks is one of the things I enjoy the most about magic shows. I think I enjoy them even more when I know how they’re done, because i marvel at the skill of the performer.

I enjoy going to close-up magic shows (e.g., Magic Castle in Southern California) because it’s absolutely fantastic how these people can pull off a trick even when you know what they’re doing and how.

I love knowing how they’re done. In fact, I do not enjoy them if I do not know how they were done. This is why I hate magic shows. I can’t stop trying to figure out how its done, and also, I usually can’t figure out how its done.

-FrL-

There were wires under both tables. They looked like guy wires to hold the things together.
One reason might be to conceal or confuse the edge of a mirror. Another might be to keep the table from collapsing because it has no solid top.

The left table undoubtedly had no solid top, but a cloth stretched over an open frame.

All magicians tables are a lot thinner at the front than the back.
And that lid with the duck in it looked like it was solid and 2 inches thick, but was probably thin aluminum with a 2" frame in the front tapering to a 3" frame at the rear. When he picks it up you can see the back panel attached as a flap, which would shield the duck from the rear audience, and provide another 3" cloth pocket frame when set on the table.

A duck or rabbit will squeeze to 1/3 or 1/4 size without injury- they are all fluff.

Here’s a size diagram

Notice the size of the table, marked in yellow, just after he places the lid down.
It’s about as thick as his head is tall, making it say 8 inches.
Now just consider that all of those “solid boards” are really frames with a thin aluminum sheet for the very top board and all the rest have stretch fabric.

OK, I know I already responded to this, but you had me thinking I was seeing things.

Stacey, meet the duck

Duck passed to standing assistant
Assistant later kneeling on stage

What I thought was a fake duck flying into the open shirt appears to just be a strobe firing behind DC:
Flash on DCs right This flash appears for about one frame. It was really hard to grab this one.DC adjusts shirt as he steps back from box When I originally watched this, I thought the open shirt was a jacket. I need a bigger monitor, or to sit closer I guess.

Watching this several times, I think others are correct. The duck is attached to the lid. All the other sides of the box, DC flips in his hands to show both sides, but not the top…he takes pains to insure that only the top surface is shown.

Anyway, the fact that I noticed several events in the video, and Frylock would swear I must have watched a different video show how easy it is for a skilled performer to manipulate perception.

But do see post number 12 in this thread.

When I posted I had only watched a couple times, and when I surf I generally have several tabs open at once while I wait for things to load in other tabs. I’m pretty sure I just missed the first few seconds of the clip, without realizing I had missed that much.

-FrL-

The thing to notice is that when he puts the duck into the box, he lifts a thin flap not the whole top of the box. When he takes the top of the box off, it is quite a thick thing, with mouldings. The duck is in a hollow top of the box, under the thin flap lid. Note he has to really push down on the thin flap lid to squash the duck into the fairly shallow compartment in the top. That’s all there is to it.