I don’t think Simon Pegg was the reason they chose that act. Maybe they were scraping the bottom of the barrel (for something other than a card trick or big illusion) and the watch thing was the best they had, so they added Simon Pegg to try to spice it up.
Yeah, it wasn’t really like Jonathan really just spontaneously decided to bring Simon Pegg up to the stage - or that Pegg really just by happenstance was sitting in the 10th row on the aisle.
There have been several really hack performers on this season. The Shocker, with his one-ahead obvious yet sloppy routine was another example.
On the watch trick – we do see the watch with hands at one point, and then with none later on, and P&T’s hints didn’t seem to address that part at all. So maybe that was what the magician was basing his ‘you didn’t get it’ denial on?
That was a ridiculously simple part of it. The guy started arguing as soon as they mentioned that the watch was rigged, so there was no need to bring it up, he wasn’t being honest with them.
I don’t know why they are having such a hard time. There has to be more quality magicians in that area than what they are finding.
I don’t think so. I think they thought he’d be better.
How did he remove the hands from the watch? They did mention it and he said it was a gag watch. But how does that part work?
I have a stupid question. I was actually super impressed with the violin magician. I assume he forced the three specific cards on the individuals in the crowd. No biggie there. How does he make the cards rise, especially when he is not near the deck at all?
Rising card tricks generally use what’s called invisible thread. (It’s not literally invisible but it is very hard to see.)
My take on the disappearing hands of the watch is ink that disappears when it gets warmed up. The watch hands are black until you hold them between your hands in a stupid weird way for 3 minutes then voila, now they are “gone” (or, clear.)
It’s more likely a thin false face with the hands on it that drops into the magicians hand leaving behind the real, and hand-less, face that was underneath it.
Not in the case of the guy with the violin. It’s a special deck. There’s a thread, but it doesn’t have to be invisible because it’s not exposed.
Perhaps they’re only getting the ones who aren’t working. The known quality acts they may have travel money for, but the others would be Vegas magicians who aren’t working, and maybe people willing to cover their own expenses.
It depends on where the thread is when the cards are pushed into the deck. If it’s through a hole in the middle of the deck then maybe it wouldn’t have to be invisible, although it still would have to be relatively unnoticeable because it has to extend outside the box, unless I’m wrong about how it works.
It does extend out from the middle of the deck, but only through one side so you keep it in the back away from the audience, or in this case inside the box.
I was thinking this too. I found this video - ad really - for the watch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=juI8w9ts8pU
First, it’s even worse that the hack on the tv show just bought the gimmicked watch trick from someone. However, in this ad, he gives the impression of showing multiple different times on the watch face prior to the person adjusting the watch, and he gives the impression of changing it in sight of the person. That’s a crucial element that the guy on the show failed to do.
However, in the ad, he doesn’t show the different times very well, and they all seem to be the same time, despite what he is saying.
The clasped hands bit is the same, so I’m leaning towards the warmth explanation.
Okay, I agree that Kostya Kimlat was the only one that was really interesting, and it was amazing to watch it play out right in front of Penn and Teller - especially Teller. That they didn’t see the shuffle (and it has to be the roadrunner cull, thanks for finding that), is impressive. Maybe why he needed them close, to control their viewing angle?
All the shuffling was distraction. He didn’t do any card manipulation until the last pass while putting the cards back. He even kept the same card order. Okay, I couldn’t tell on Teller’s, but on Penn’s I was able to see the next several face up cards (3 or 4), and in the face up spread they were the same. I guess that’s because that one was already opposite that string. And come to think of it, there was another card missing just in front of Penn’s card - the 9 was face up, there was a face down then Penn’s, then the 5, etc. On the reveal, the card between the 9 and Penn’s was missing. That roadrunner shuffle totally explains it. Well done.
I also agree this is the best way to fool them - straight up manipulation that wows them.
I don’t think it works that way. He didn’t do any manipulation until the final pass - everything else was straightforward, setting up possible tricks with the shuffles, but then busting them with the next shuffle. It’s all in the handling in the last pass, where he culls the face downs and flips them under the deck at the end.
The fact that Teller didn’t know or think of that technique is impressive.
I think that was an exaggeration for comedic effect. A number of them do fool him but not Teller - at least he says so during his explanations. But not as many as 2/3.
I don’t believe he was being mean, I think he was trying to give praise to Simon Pegg. But it could come off that way - “nothing about your magic was as interesting as the accidental guest”.
Good observation on the last bit, but the rest matches what I’ve already said.
It appears he used some thermal disappearing ink to draw on the hands and then the watch doesn’t have any actual hands. Ergo, Simon has to hold the watch between his palms tightly to activate the color change.
He had a little slip with the cloth over the disappearing box, but otherwise I didn’t think the handling was that clumsy, unless you just mean obvious. He used a force by some mechanism of splitting the deck at a known spot (short card, hand split), flipped the top as a distraction but the next three cards were the chosen cards. Since he knew them, the box and card reveal was cued. Knew something was up with the oversized box for the violin under the drape. Ho hum.
I think he had pockets in the hat for the colored confetti. As Penn stated, the “mistake” was to dump the mixed colors. He could have just as easily stuffed them into one of the pockets. The surprise was the actual orange, but watching again, it is small enough to sit in the collapsed hat against the bottle at the beginning. Entertaining in a certain way, but not fooling at all.
Well, he was arguing that they didn’t actually state the exact nature of the trick watch. Saying a rigged watch isn’t exactly illuminating. It could be rigged in a way that the hands don’t move without being rigged by not having hands at all. I was pleased the judge didn’t give in to silly wording games with what Penn said, and agreed they weren’t fooled. I think Penn could have clarified a bit more if pressed by mentioning something about heat sensitivity or even outright mentioned painted hands. But it didn’t come to that.
I think it was a case of an immature magician who thought he had a technicality on Penn, kinda like one of the rounds that said “false shuffle” and got declared a Fooler.
Regarding Shawn Farquar, those are really nice disappearances, but I think you nailed the techniques. Basically, he changes the technique for each video to counter claims from other videos, on the idea that he’s using the same technique every time, but he’s not. He’s changing the technique to produce the same effect. Still, beautiful until you point out the obvious - his friends are other magicians in his magician circle. :smack:
Clearly not in any acting circles hehe
I only saw them by following the links posted in this thread so I saw them outside of the context of what he was doing (countering claims about other videos) and it never crossed my mind that he was supposedly using the same technique. Maybe that’s why I was able to nail the techniques. Although I doubt I would have believed that they were all the same technique even if I saw them as he intended.
But he keeps saying in the videos about comments on other videos, so that’s what I’m going on.
I meant to address this. There was a lot of effort spent in putting some cards face up and some down and shuffling so they were thoroughly and randomly mixed. This means the result is going to be a magic ordering of the deck. So what could be a magical order? All facing the same direction. Except he has each select a card. So what would be the most obvious reveal for their selected cards? Reversing those two, and only those two, cards. It’s a result that’s obvious from the moment he splits the cards and starts the shuffle. They’re looking for ways each shuffle could be beat, and he keeps increasing the shuffle difficulty, less handling and less control, to the fall on the table. Then in one pass he fixes the order right under their noses, no room for deck swaps or cheats.
And they can check the cards and see no missing corners or short cards or other gimmicks. It’s all pure handling and smooth to the point that from the top angle everything was masked. It was only from watching from the front when he’s starting the fan for Teller that I can see any funny business with his fingers, and it’s really minor. From the top side it’s completely masked. Thus, as was pointed out, likely the reason he was facing Penn for the latter half of the trick - better masking from Teller, and good masking to Penn.
That’s a possibility, but I think the key is in how he makes Simon hold the watch between his palms in a funny grip, and do so for a lengthy time. That says to me there’s something important about putting hands tight against the face. Temperature changing ink. And then I did a slomo and pause on the close up of the face and the hands don’t look quite right.
Now seeing the commercial for the watch, it does appear that the face of the watch can be rotated to set “different” times, and of course that would be independent from the stem. You have to practice rotating the stem and the face, preferrably in a way that they can’t really see the hands not turning. I did spot that while he shows different times, the angle between the hands stays the same, it’s just placement that makes the times different. Have to be careful on that, probably a strategy for picking times that work.
Yeah, showing different times would help the trick. Man, that’s extra amateur.
I just took those comments as patter or maybe casual references to comments on past videos. I didn’t know that he was deliberately posting them in some order with each one supposedly being the same technique and debunking explanations of each of the previous videos.
The order in which they were posted in this thread (and the order in which I viewed them) doesn’t seem to be the order in which they were intended to be viewed.
I don’t know that he is, it just comes across that way to me. I haven’t seen a list or a blog or anything, just the links you provided.