Cool, and I would love to buy 2.0 if the price comes down to $25 or less.
These screen grabs from youtube should give a little more insight into how Shawn does the trick.
Yeah. You can see him fiddling with the box (which he’s pretending is a deck) even without looking at individual frames. The question is, how does he get the card into the right spot in the deck?
I’ll have to watch it again, but last time I looked I thought Penn may have pulled the card from a fresh deck instead of the one he shuffled. So Shawn just had to hold that spot to re-insert the card.
This makes perfect sense… it just has a bit of a risk factor in the event that the page the volunteer stops at has a particularly distinctive advertisement or something recognizable… A way around this may be not to let them see the back side of the stabbed page very well and they’d assume it was that one - the fact that he reads the page numbers in order might reveal that if the front page should be the right one, but most casual audience members not knowing where the trick is going might not think fast enough to notice.
I don’t know if they still say the premise of the show during the intros (I tune out or fastforward), but I believe the original UK show suggested they would go to Vegas to perform the same trick. I think they may have also shown some of the acts actually fulfilling this by doing the trick in vegas, but maybe I’m imagining that.
I was surprised that this show is shot at the P&T theater (which I assume is the theater they do their own vegas show). The audience shots don’t make the place look very large and I’d assume an act like P&T would have a fairly large theater (that said, I haven’t been to a Vegas show in a couple of decades so maybe the rooms are smaller than I think)
Yes, the original UK show said the successful acts would go to Vegas.
The Penn + Teller theatre is part of the Rio casino and seats 1,475 people.
I’ve been to two Penn and Teller shows on my visits to Vegas and they only had a couple of tricks in common. The theatre was very comfortable, the magic was stupendous and there was a Penn and Teller ‘meet + greet’ afterwards (yes, Teller will then talk to you!)
Edit: sorry for the long post. This episode got my mind running.
But I thought it might have been more specific that they would go to vegas to perform the same trick that fooled P&T. Maybe not.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the time the watch shows is 9:15, not 3:15 (which would be both hands pointed just about to the right).
The commercial is grossly misleading because at the end in the text it suggests the watch can be set to ANY time. If the hands are inked, this would appear to be BS - unless you do draw the hands on yourself and so you can (one time only) select whatever time you want the hands to be at.
But the fact that this guy argued if the gimmick is ink hands is such ridiculous BS. Penn basically said (after the guy pressed him) that this could not be done with any old watch and that spinning the dials did not set the time and that ink that sense, it was a gimmicked watch (i.e. not a retail normal watch. On what planet does this guy argue that watch with no functionality and drawn on hands that use disappearing ink is NOT a gimmicked watch?
There was a guy on America’s Got Talent that went viral with a video of him doing a card trick where the reveal is that the deck is actually a “flipbook” animation of a stick figure pulling a card from his top hat and the last card reveals the chosen card (as picked by the flipbook magician).
I subsequently discovered that this trick is a retail trick (as far as I know, the guy on the show was not the guy selling it). So a guy showed up on AGT with a storebought gimmick that practically makes the trick (similar to the watch guy) and that just pissed me off about as much as the Grappler which I posted about previously. This watch guy annoys me in the same way.
He indicated he was a resident magician at the magic castle, but he seemed very unpracticed in his presentation (all three of the other performers on the latest episode had wonderful stage presence and charismatic and smooth presentations. This guy seemed clunky and awkward and I’m surprised (without knowing that much about the magic castle) that he would be a regularly practicing magician with that weak a stage presence. Confidence is key to good presentation, in my view. Even coming down to little things like not having a nice way to demonstrate to Pegg how to hold his hands so that he has to correct Pegg to hold them vertically. It just screams of amateur. A polished magician would have some way to demonstrate how he wants the hands. The whole trick was terrible though, not just the use of a gimmick. The use of the manila envelope (a magic prop that just seems amateur to me no matter who uses it) and a photocopied paper watch face on which he drew really childish watch hands… the outfit which was cumbersome for no reason (at least not for this trick - no hidden props as far as I could tell), and the completely gimmicky satchel of that does nothing more than prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the time was a force (since the coins were clearly prepared in advance, and it would be pretty unlikely and boring for the guy to produce period coins totaling $12.36 if that time came up). His reveal of the coins was painfully slow too given that as soon as money came up, you know what it would total. I don’t like to be mean to someone who is clearly trying and who, I’m sure still has more skill than I would if I tried magic (I have terrible manual dexterity), but this one was bad on all levels. Kudos to the guy for his military service, but that doesn’t make him a good magician.
While I’m on the subject of presentation, confetti guy had a beautiful presentation. He needs to work on his manipulation thought, because every time he went into the hat (particularly the first time), it did seem pretty clear he was manipulating pockets or a bundle in some way to access each colour of confetti (I agree with person here who posted that everything is preloaded into the hat into separate compartments - I don’t believe there is any load from his jacket when he grabs the wand). The “mistake”, as penn points out, allows him to dump all of the original mixed confetti so the hat will be empty at the end and it would be a lame trick for that reason if the presentation wasn’t wonderful.
If you don’t know, the original magic sand trick has water poured into a bowl that quickly turns black - sand of different colours are poured into the water and swished around and the magician then reaches in and pulls out handfuls of sand, each colour separated. This trick is a more mysterious effect as to how someone could separate grains of sand in a liquid compared to confetti in a hat. The original trick also does not require dumping the mixed sand - the trick is chemical and the sands basically stay separated in the black liquid (which conceals the sand).
If this guy was better at reaching in and cleanly grabbing each confetti pile as well as he grabs the green batch (the only colour left at that point), it would be a better illusion, but great presentation anyway. It’s a shame the “mistake” is needed because from the magic POV, it does take away from the impression that he really did sort the original confetti, and moves it more into the realm of his can just magically produce confetti from the hat, which has a bit less of the sense of wonder than if he actually does seem to sort the confetti in an instant - that’s what the original trick has in spades.
He wasn’t arguing that. He was saying that since it was obvious the watch was gimmicked in some way, merely saying the watch is gimmicked wasn’t enough to be unfooled. He probably thought he had some unique way of gimmicking the watch that could fool P&T but evidently, he didn’t.
NM
They still do the meet and greet? Wow. I met them twice in Philly when they did that (for The Refrigerator Tour and the tour with Mofo The Psychic Gorilla and, as you say, Teller does talk). I would have thought that they would have given that up once they became Vegas regulars. Meeting and greeting over a thousand people after every show day after day seems like a great trick by itself!
Was the original, mixed confetti going into the hat a mistake? I could see how he could have just pocketed it in his coat and pull out the different colors, so I wonder if he realized after the first color that he had accidentally thrown the original batch into the hat and covered for it with the magic wand. Penn said something about quick thinking when a mistake was made; I assume that was it.
I’d have to watch again, but I though ‘the mistake’ was forgetting to use the wand so the colors didn’t change, which was part of the routine. I think this was more of a mime act than magic since there’s nothing all that mysterious about the effect. He was pretty good, but seemed a little bit nervous, perhaps his biggest stage so far, and he seemed to have his ‘reactions’ timed instead of waiting to sync with the audience. It’s better magic for a kid’s show than some of the acts I’ve seen done for that purpose, and as a mime better than watching some robot moves or the tired old Marceau moves.
It’s a fake mistake. He “forgets” to use the magic wand, so the confetti doesn’t change color, which allows him to discard the real confetti. Thus Penn’s comment about getting rid of the evidence “with a mistake.” Of course, it’s a double misdirection. The audience knows it’s not really a mistake, because it’s actually a joke!
That does bring up an interesting question… what would happen if, during the filming, the performer just totally and completely flubbed the trick? Would they still broadcast it? Edit out entirely? Or give the performer a chance to try it again later?
Edit it out is my guess, however I don’t believe this has occurred since they show the producers before hand. If they are so bad as to mess it up on stage, they should not be there.
Kostya Kimalat did say, though, that it is very disorienting to be on stage when the trick begins. He, of course, had a card trick. Once he got it going, it went smoothly.
Right, which makes it more likely for me that they’d allow them a second shot, since they’ve presumably already proven that they have a great trick there.
As Shalmanese said, it’s about the specific gimmick. Look at John Archer - he had a gimmicked envelope. He made Penn guess at the specific gimmick, and Penn guessed wrong. Someone else won by the words “false shuffle”. I think is totally fair for him to push for more specifics than “gimmicked watch”.
For example, let’s consider a watch where the stem is disconnected and the face can be rotated and set the mechanical hands. That would be a very different gimmick that will allow setting any time, but then you need a different means for making the hands disappear.
Penn went vague and the judge decided that didn’t matter, the prop was a commercial item that they were familiar with, so don’t push the specific point.
But his deck was not the store-bought version, it was hand drawn. Copying someone else’s trick with your own prop and banter is common.
Yes, while it empties the hat, he could just as easily put them in one of the pouches. It removes a joke, but improves the illusion of the sorting. I think the reason he doesn’t is the orange. He would have to gather all the bits around that object in the way. Too easy to miss some.
No, the “mistake” was forgetting the wand so he could dump or the hat.
I think what he said was something about it was a nice way to cover that he doesn’t actually sort. He was masking his meaning.
Spesking of that, I like that he elaborated on the premise that they talk in code so people who just want to enjoy the performances without spoilers can do so.
There is that.
8/24/15 - Teller Plays With A Full Deck
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The “Dollar” Guy - Okay, the guy is clearly playing with a gimmicked buck. Even my untrained eyes saw that he gave the audience guy’s dollar bill right back to him. Like Penn said, he knew the move, but the stitches were smooth.
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The “Blindfold” Guy - Fooled the guys, although they definitely had four ideas how he could have done it (they just picked the wrong one). They mention a deck switch, but weren’t the cards always blank the whole time? They’re never shown face up until the very end. I get the feeling they knew what was going on, but picked up on the wrong thing. Perhaps just a technicality.
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The “Knot” Guy - This guy was a talker, which always throws me for a loop. I can’t keep up with what he’s saying and what’s going on at the same time. I think I saw at least one move where he undid the knot, so it’s basically just sleight of hand, like he says (and could have easily been guessed). Which really isn’t fair, he seems doomed from the start.
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The “Jesus” Guy - I liked this guy more as a comedian than a magician. He commanded the room and was genuinely funny. Penn mentions Tommy Wonder and his “Hold Up” trick. A quick google search, and it also seems to involve the watch, ring and wallet. Another “old” trick doomed from the get go.
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The “Teller” Guy - This routine went on a bit too long for me. It was obviously complex and had lots of moving parts, I just couldn’t focus on what Penn was saying and what Teller was doing at the same time. But it’s obviously a very skilled presentation from two seasoned professionals (although the camera angles give away some of Teller’s moves).
Anyone know if next week’s ep is the season finale? (That would make it 9 episodes, same as the first season.)