This has nothing to do with that old Masked Magician who revealed a bunch of common and pretty old tricks.
This is a Youtube channel, just a few months ago, that does its best to solve how many current magicians are doing their tricks. I like that he openly solved a lot of the street magic type tricks that rose up with David Blaine and so forth.
He usually knows for sure how the tricks are done, but he occasionally offers an analysis and best explanation of the trick, being almost certain but perhaps not 100%.
His videos are very short, which is great. Just 5-6 minutes most of the time and they go over the mechanism of the tricks and pause to zoom in and show how he knows the method.
Things I’ve learned:
Way too many tricks rely on camera tricks and editing. This sucks. Any trick that relies on cutting frames out, hard cuts, or just masking what we would see live sucks.
Many other tricks involve stooges, a method I hate as well. Not instant stooges even, just stooges that know what’s up and pretend to be part of the trick. Lame.
I most love his analysis and reveal of Shin Lim and Eric Chien’s close-up card magic. I confess. I had ZERO idea how their routines worked and now I know, they are extremely impressive. In fact, I could never learn to do card magic like Shin Lim or Eric Chien. I would be too terrified of my tricks failing. These guys are AWESOME.
He does analyze old David Copperfield tricks/stunts as well. Most of those are long-exposed to the world, but it is nice to see his brief overview of: Statue of Liberty, Great Wall walkthrough, floating over the Grand Canyon, etc.
His only long video is a 60 minute video about David Blaine. He gets into his stunts like eating glass(it’s real!), eating nails(it’s fake!), sewing his mouth shut(it’s real!), and how he does some pretty neat tricks. Blaine is for the most part better than a lot of guys out there.
Here is a link to the channel. I highly recommend it if you like Fool Us or just magic in general.
I had seen his channel before but mistakenly thought that it was the other guy with the mask who revealed so many of the older tricks. I was surprised at how many twin assistants there are in show business. lol. I like this channel and usually try and figure it out when he gives the time in his video. I never do though. lol.
Nice. I love to watch Fool Us and I love to have the tricks spoiled and I STILL love the magic and think the magic is awesome. I watched a random video and it was cool. I subscribed, I’ll have to check out more!
I used to be around a lot of magicians and I almost always found it disappointing to learn how illusions are accomplished. It’s often very mundane and I enjoy magic much more when I don’t know.
That said, I’m interested in Penn & Teller’s version of the bullet catch. Penn has talked about it a bit on his podcast but - out of character for him - has not revealed how it’s done (he openly admits to breaking NDAs habitually). But he has said that their method is completely safe. IIRC, they were given or bought the method by someone who brought it to them, and Teller’s reaction at the time was that it was novel and a technique that he would not have previously considered.
OTOH, when I find out I’ll probably find it disappointing too.
I remember back when David Blaine came on the scene and had his first TV special and was scratching my head on how he was doing the street levitation. Turns out he was performing the old Balducci Levitation, filming the reactions of people on the street who were genuinely fooled by it, but then inserting footage of a pair of legs lifting a good foot off the ground.
That so turned me off of David Blaine that I was never a fan.