There was 100% a helper in the wardrobe and I saw them in real time.
When she is doing the build up to changing into the green dress on the clothes rack, there is a side angle shot, it cuts away as the hand begins to come out, shows the straight on main camera shot and then cuts back and you can clearly see a black gloved hand holding on to her dress. Then the green dress flies on to her!
This accomplice most definitely assists on all the changes when she is near this extremely large wardrobe.
He’s good at moving cubes in and out of his jacket and from his little desk. To make one side change color he is probably pulling off or sticking on something that covers the whole side in the right color. When he changes the cube to all blue I think he’s pulling it out of his jacket after Alyson names the color. I don’t know how he does the finale though where Alyson had her choice of colors, just can’t see a move where he could change the color under the cloth. Maybe he just got lucky and loaded up the blue cube initially and didn’t have to do anything else. P&T mentioned ‘feats of engineering’, so they may have picked up on something else. I thought when he pulls out a stack of 10 cubes from a bag there might have been some hollow nested cubes there. And any of the might have been foldable into a compact shape.
I think her assistant in the box was pulling at an invisible thread to peel away the green layer - and probably the same answer when the outfit of white strips fell away. In fact, the assistant was probably doing more work than she was throughout the routine, and their timing together had to be (and was) absolutely perfect.
The most impressive part of the act to me was near the beginning when the red dress changed to a leather outfit with leggings. Amazing.
Impressive as her act was, I really doubt P&T were fooled by any of the quick-changes, but by all the dresses appearing on the hangers, which was indeed a great magic trick.
Yes. It could have been her husband who she said is a magician as well. It was very well rehearsed. And it is not easy to just stand there smiling without batting an eyelash while clothes are violently ripped off your body. Some of those changes were gentle but the green dress being exposed happened extremely rapidly. One little flinch can ruin the illusion.
Yes, I think the green parts of the dress are being pulled away, but through something on the back to make them hold the shape of her body. Even then it’s remarkable in appearance, I think it is not as simple as we imagine to get it to look so good.
Oh, I completely agree. Even if we’re able to figure out the basic mechanics, it surely took many hundreds of hours of trial and error and construction and rehearsal to get it all to work as well as it did. Extremely impressive.
When he changes the cube to all blue I think he’s pulling it out of his jacket after Alyson names the color. I don’t know how he does the finale though where Alyson had her choice of colors, just can’t see a move where he could change the color under the cloth. Maybe he just got lucky and loaded up the blue cube initially and didn’t have to do anything else.
I was thinking about this too. Initially, he asks her what her favorite color is (she says green, but it’s not an option at the time, so she changes it to blue). At the end of the trick, he asks her what her favorite color was again, probably assuming she would pick the same color, so he likely had it pre-loaded at that point. But in my mind, I’m wondering what would have happened if she changed her answer to “green.”
For the black tights, she already has them on but is wearing flesh coloured tights over them. On first look it appears as though you’re seeing her knees and lower thighs but on closer look they appear a bit “off”. The knees look kinda wonky
I noticed the flesh-colored tights immediately. I half expected when we saw her belly, it was a detailed tight-outfit with a belly painted on it. (it’s not, I think)
Daniel K’s thumb cuff routine was super fun. I wasn’t expecting it to fool them, but it was entertaining to behold nonetheless.
Yukihiro Katayama’s act was very graceful and I didn’t catch any of his moves. I remember hearing that Fool Us was big in Japan and so it was nice that they finally got their first win.
Andrew Evans and Naomi Aeva’s “sleight of body” seemed to be the standard dipping your body down into the divot as well as manipulating the light source behind, but it still looked great.
David Stone’s frozen credit card trick was also amusing. I can never follow the plot on these types of misdirects, especially when there are multiple elements going on.
More cup and ball magic from P&T. These guys love their sleight of hand. I’m always amazed at how quick and masterfully they perform this.
Daniel K: Really fun bit. It reminded me of a similar bit that Mac King does, and his energy and pacing was a bit like Mac’s too. I wanted to catch him switching out the cuffs he put on the volunteer for a rigged pair, but they cut to a P&T reaction shot right when it would have happened, so I dunno. The card reveal at the end was unexpected and the whole trick was just super smooth. Great stuff.
Yukihiro Katayama: well-performed, and I don’t know how he pulled off appearing cards in the wine glass. But these types of deliberate, ponderous acts aren’t really my cup of tea. And I found the moving backdrop extremely distracting. I wonder if it was intentionally so?
Andrew and Naomi: The table was the real star here; a well-designed and convincing illusion. Sometimes the old adage “it’s all done with mirrors” is actually true.
David Stone: I liked him and I liked his banter. For me though, there was way too much going on and it was tough to follow the plot. So much distraction and misdirect that he had plenty of chances to set up the punchline, and I wasn’t interested in re-watching closely enough to see where what happened. Fun bit though.
P&T: The trick isn’t really the point. Penn’s banter and the hypnotic side-by-side choreography sold the bit nicely.
Interestingly, I kept switching from watching one to the other. They’re both good, but Teller is just a cut above when it comes to this sort of thing. Penn’s hand was always in kind of a weird and unnatural position when he was loading his cup, while Teller did it all much more casually and smoothly. He is a master.
I don’t think P&T could figure out how he made cards appear and disappear in the glass. The rest of his moves are simple but flawlessly performed sleight of hand. That’s no ordinary glass, but the guys couldn’t figure out how it worked.
Boris Wild: A wildly inventive way to do a card trick by anticipating all the moves in Penn’s voice. I found this method fresh and delightful and was in awe throughout. Honestly, if he didn’t fool them, I would’ve been pissed off.
Ramó & Alegria: I think the show peaked too early because I found this act rather hacky, although the metamorphosis at the end was pretty astounding. I’m curious what Penn meant about it being a “levitation” rather than a substitution trunk.
Jonio: His beard is weird. This was composed entirely of palmings and misdirects, but somehow it got me every time. A lot more clearer on second viewing.
Dr. Ricardo Rosenkranz (& Balsamo): Seems very bold to perform a bullet catch in front of P&T. Also, it’s weird to ask someone to write their initials on a bullet with a fat marker. From Penn’s clue, I’m guessing the bullet was loaded in the blindfold by the assistant.
In the P&T routine, that was such an obvious fake disguise, it really detracted from the whole payoff.
For the usual substitution, Performer A would sneak out the back of a load-bearing trunk that some cape-brandishing Performer B is standing on, right? And would then stand on it when the cape gets handed off, which is when Performer B steps down from the load-bearing trunk to enter it from behind.
So that bit at the end, where it’s apparently just a flat piece of wood on someone’s back? There’s presumably a load-bearing support hidden behind her legs (which explains how they could easily switch places even without a trunk to stand on, and explains why she awkwardly starts reaching back there before getting up).
Boris Wild did an unbelievable trick. I have absolutely no clue how he did it and apparently neither did P&T. Even assuming he was informed about which card was selected from offstage I can’t see any way he could get it into position. Simply stunning. He would have had to manipulate the cards in some way that neither the camera or Teller could pick up.
Ramó & Alegria’s act is described above. Very entertaining change-up on Metamorphosis.
Jonio was also very entertaining. No secrets there, just a well done act. Pronounced ‘beard’ and ‘weird’ very well for a Japanese guy which is what made the act.
Rosenkranz and Balsamo were a funny act. Obviously when the bullet drops in the gun it rolls all the way down through it and into the stand where the assistant picks it up and loads it in Balsamo’s head when she puts the blindfold on. There was a camera cut right after the bullet is dropped in the gun which makes it less obvious. Alyson was funny starting to examine the blindfold.