I haven’t re-watched that act yet, but I did notice that after they have written on the bullet and the casing, watch how they show the two parts… their fingers fully conceal the other part. My guess is that the bullet is loosely mounted in the casing so it can be removed easily. The cartridge likely is a blank which would explain why it would feel and smell like it was shot. The bullet had to have been handed off, but I don’t know how it got the rifling marks etc to make it look as if it had been fired.
It’s not that Teller cannot juggle, but he’s not in Penn’s class. He’ll gesture emphatically about that himself.
Obviously there’s a hand-off back stage to scratch the bullets and put some soot on them. I’m looking for that. Just before firing they go to put the ‘bulletproof screens’ behind them and get their protective gear. I would think they hand off early, but there’s enough time between those last two steps to get the bullets transferred.
I think he goofed the trick. I’d have to go back and rewatch but he shows how to do it here. He should have had the patient follow along with the audience.
I don’t think the bill has the audience member’s name on it at all - if it did, it seems very likely that revealing it with a flourish would be part of his big finish (as is so often done with tricks involving signed playing cards etc.)
Instead, he makes it quite clear he wouldn’t want anyone to see the bill…I think it might literally say something like “YOUR NAME”, and when he asks the guy “Does this bill have your name on it?” he’s counting on him to play along and agree.
I have a pretty good idea how the bullet trick works, but it looks like over the last 20+ years, they made some major improvements. My theory involves the following:
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Guns are real. Bullets are “real” bits of metal, but have no gun powder. A real bullet goes against P&T’s code of never performing a trick that can ever harm someone.
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After the drawings are made on the casings, we never see the bullet heads again. P&T each move the bullet around very fast while almost always covering the head. This is because they pulled off bullet heads, and are now trying to prevent anything from leaking out of the open casing. In either case, the bull head is now in their other hand, which no one is looking at because they’re making gestures for us to look at their other hand.
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The stand that holds the glass is hollow. There is a trap door that can fit a bullet. As the bullet falls, they all begin tapping at the glass to mask the sound of the bullet falling. Take note of the red tip on one of the tripods, it’s probably a marker so they know how to position the stand. The bullets falls all the way through, and assistants transfer each bullet to the opposite side, and onto the bulletproof vests.
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They each catch their bullet in their mouth while putting on their vests. Penn has gotten very good at this, and doesn’t change his speech as he does this. His earlier performances, his voice would change slightly as the bullet goes in.
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The guns aren’t fired. The sound is staged. If you watch closely, they don’t pull the triggers. The safeties are probably still on. This goes back to their original rule of never doing anything that can hard someone. Teller is the better magician, and pretends to have some recoil, but Penn’s movement is very fake. Few people notice this because their attention goes to the helmets that fall off their heads.
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They’re both good at hiding things in their mouth. When they shake their heads to shake off their helmets, they’re moving their mouths to drop the bullet into position.
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The mirrors aren’t real. A real bullet would either leave a smaller bullet hole, or just break the entire glass. It’s a trick mirror that can break when activated.
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At the end of the trick, they are able to handle the bullet and the casing without getting burnt. They should be pretty warm, if not very hot at this point. So obviously, no guns were fired.
Just a nitpick FYI, the revolvers they are using do not have external safeties (of course I agree that there’s no actual shooting or danger involved in the trick.)
:smack
Duh, that’s why Penn said what he said.
Thanks for the rundown on the bullet catch. It all makes sense.
I haven’t seen the show yet, but I do want to comment that getting two bills with the same serial numbers is pretty easy. You pay for a set that are the same except for one digit that easily altered to be another digit. You can buy sets of them for bar magic tricks.
That’s how a trick was done on America’s Got Talent where the guy “burned” the bill and had it show up in a sealed back. (The bill he burned was, of course, fake and made of flash paper. But he had a real bill, since he let people handle it.)
I don’t know about this, upon rewatching it Penn shows his open hand to his guy and says “look my hand is empty” and then during the aiming each guy opens and manipulates his mouth
They may be technically better, but I think the presentation wasn’t as good. Maybe it’s intentional, and they are going for a more casual style, but I think the trick works better when the dramatic flairs are there, like in this (low quality) clip.
Also
There’s no need for assistants to transfer the bullets. They kick them over the line. They may need them to attach it to their bullet proof vests, which are positioned in a way to let someone get behind them. But having assistants retrieve the bullets from the stands seems impossible, since no one else goes near them.
I take it back, they don’t kick it across the line, just behind the fake mattresses. Assistants take it from there. Kicking across the line (behind the metal thing) is in the “more dramatic” version of the trick I linked.
You know what, I’m not sure why we’re spoilering this, so I’ll talk out in the open. The other clip makes it sure look like they actually fire the bullets. But, if you pause the video, the reflection from the laser sights don’t match up with where the bullets are fired. I think the sites actually show that the gun is pointed well away from them, and they are firing some sort of fake bullet that is just strong enough to break the glass. The glass may be treated to be weak at just that one point, too.
“Trick glass” really isn’t really an explanation if we don’t know how it is tricked. And, in both versions, we definitely see something come out of the gun.
At what point (time stamp) in that youtube video are they kicking it?
I note that in an earlier episode, I believe that in discussing another magician’s trick, Penn made a comment that they worked with two or three other professional magicians to work out their own magic bullet trick, so there must be a significant amount of nuance and technical stuff involved in the trick that we may not even appreciate.
In your vintage video, it’s very noticable that after signing the bullets, P&T both reach for their pockets just before getting to the glass. They could have pocketed the bullet tips already at that point, but why not just palm them for the 10 seconds it took them to walk down to the stage? A bit odd. They also hold the rounds bullet-side-down (pretty much as soon as its signed) which is not the direction one would typically hold a bullet. After placing the glass, Penn even references the bullet (pointing to his fist) and the casing (pointing to the top) which again, seems awkward and backwards.
I haven’t quite figured out the guns themselves. In the vintage video more than the current one, they seem a little too cavalier about waving the guns around. When they first pick them up and go to show the audience, they tend to point them towards the audience at times. In the Fool Us video, Penn checks the gun barrel by pointing it at his face. He does later demo the gun for audience experts and makes a deliberate motion to aim the gun up-stage as he rotates from pointing up to pointed at the ground, but other times he is less deliberate.
Given they policy of no danger and given Penn literally just spoke the rules of firearms, I suspect the guns may not be capable of firing a bullet. They may be rigged in some way to fire some pyrotechnic sufficient to break the glass or perhaps as noted the glass is rigged with a squib of some sort…
Someone mentions that bullet just fired would be too hot to touch. Would there not be a risk that the two gun experts they call to confirm would know that and say “This isn’t hot, no it wasn’t just fired”?
I also find it a farce when they ask the “Experts” to confirm “this is real glass” or “this is a real bullet”. My response would be “it looks like a real bullet - I have no way of knowing just from looking at the outside whether it actually is or not”.
On one other trick, The iPad guy - I do wonder if those girls are plants. He did the trick on Ellen earlier in the year (perhaps where P&T saw it) and one of the girls looks like it could be the same girl as one of the ones on Fool Us (would explain how P&T were previously fooled but suddenly figured it out if they recognized the girls. I’m not sure if the fact that stripe-shirt guy wasn’t in the photo is relevant; the law angle he uses might not catch someone in the row right behind… But the girls seemed very prepared for a selfy and not too embarassed - they were very calm and didn’t get excited much at all or nervously giggle or anything. I suspect he had pre-shot a photo with them and printed it out. Most of the rest of his tricks appeared to be a pre-programmed video mixed with a lot of “behind the ipad” sleight of hand that was done okay. I’m not sure what the one poster was getting at who suggested the selfy was a composite… not sure how that would make the trick work…
On Handsome Jack, I’m not sure if he palms the torn bits at the end - when he hands the flyer to teller, he points to teller with both hands and it doesn’t appear that he has anything palmed in his hands.
One good act and a bunch of common performers again.
The dollar bill guy did a small amount of fairly simple stuff. He didn’t even have the guy pull out a dollar bill at random but had him take the top one! Very lazy.
The iPad guy was at least entertaining. The slight of hand and such was sort of usual stuff, but at least he combined it with the iPad to make it look new.
Some things I noticed: When he was pulling a picture from the front of the screen, there was a brief flash of blue across it. I think this was the cue to flip the picture out. Things he did like this require really fine timing and think he used cues like this to get that right.
As to the audience picture: The women are not posing the same when he takes the pic as the printed version. The woman in the black top had her arms apart, but one touches the other in the pic. The woman in the plaid shirt: the shirt was open wider in the pic than when the picture was taken. Another odd thing, when video on the screen was mirror image and fuzzy. I don’t think he wanted anyone to clearly see it.
I think someone took a pic of them earlier, the guy was 'shopped in, the pic printed and stuck in the trick frame.
The really annoying thing was the camera work. E.g., during the ball hanging down from the top of the screen bit, I think you can tell he’s reaching into his pocket to grab the real ball. But the camera doesn’t show that far down. Way too much of this goes on. It’s hard to tell how “smooth” the guy is in making moves.
Handsome Jack: Blyeah. Pretty standard stuff. Is this merely one of those cases where P&T didn’t know which one of several ways it was done? Certainly didn’t impress me.
The couple. Standard stage magic bit, and very little of it. There have been many acts involving the raised curtain, a quick escape/change, etc. Almost all of them have been much quicker than this. I was surprised by how long they took. Didn’t look very polished.
The Bullet Trick. Lot’s of not-all-that-sneaky palming and such of the bullets. Lots of chances for manipulation. I noticed in slo-mo that there was definitely something fired from each direction at the glass panes and they had debris spewing from them at the time of the shots. Not saying that those “shots” came from the handguns. Could have been fired from assistants behind the walls and at an angle so that nothing was being shot directly at P&T.
Note that Teller showed his bullet right away. But Penn, who had to yell the cue “ears”, took much longer to open his mouth and show the bullet. Obviously he took longer to move it into position.
I get the impression you would find Gandalf himself trite and amateurish.
From Gray to White?
Couldn’t change to a different color? Like one that is further down the color spectrum?
heh…rookie…
Agreed.
The delay was so she could pass through the “solid” rings. That’s what made it more than a curtain wave.
I’d guess blanks from the guns not aimed directly at each other, and squibs on the glass panes.
Shell casings are usually fairly warm. There’s a lot af heat, but not much time, but not much mass. So I don’t know.
When he does the double point, his fingers are curled around and closed hands. I would think he could palm a playbill folded up. But that’s apparently where he fooled P&T - Penn’s comment about being dirty.
I rewatched the old clip and noticed something I hadn’t seen before. The stand had one leg that goes behind the backdrop. So no kicking was required.
But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them kick it before. But maybe I’m misremembering, or they’ve updated the trick.
In addition, I’ve noticed that some people say they always tend to have camera men near the people, and they wonder if this sends a feed backstage to assistants who basically duplicate the markings on bullets that have already been fired. They smudge them enough so you won’t notice. So then Penn and Teller are just disposing of the bullet tips, not actually getting them to their devices.
I don’t agree, but only because I think there would be too much risk of someone noticing, since they tend to let the audience members take the bullets home. I just offer it as an alternative.
The bullet trick is really cool… I’d really like to know it’s done.
I did some frame by frame of the ‘firing’ of the guns themselves, which revealed something quite odd. Still frames are here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Frames 4 5 and 6 show… something in the air. I’m not sure if the one in frame 6 is the same as the ones in 4 and 5.
The one in frame 4 and 5 looks like it must come from behind the bullet catcher things, but I can’t imagine they could catch that in their mouths that quickly?
I have no idea where the one in frame 6 goes.
What do you guys think?