It is a video of a magic trick on a talent show.
Seems like a pretty trivial trick if Simon was in on it. I wouldn’t put it past him to see the business value in pretending to have something amazing happen on his show.
No, Simon Cowell wasn’t in on the trick. I know many magician friends of Jamie Raven and he is a first class magician and doesn’t need to use a stooge. This is genuine high class magic.
Watch and admire!
You can do it yourself after buying the deck
It’s all in the skill of the presentation.
But that hardly seems like the greatest magic trick in the world. I got the trick the first time I watched the video. The first trick is obviously sleight of hand when he swaps the fifty for the Britain’s Got Talent note. The second trick with the cards is more sleight of hand. The animated deck is clever stagecraft, but the only card that matters is the one on the bottom that clearly shows the card and suit that Simon picked. He was well-prepared, with concealed 52 cards that he could readily access in his pockets or wherever. When Simon called the 7 of hearts, he retrieved the right card and slid it onto the bottom of the animated deck as he flipped through them for his audience.
I’ll bet that if you handled that deck after he was done with it, you’d discover that the 7 of hearts card is duplicated as part of the animation and then as the final show card. With enough preparation, even that trivial indicator could be eliminated but he doesn’t need to bother because he doesn’t give the audience the cards to review when he’s done.
I’m not generally a big fan of magic. I’m basically playing a game with a magician who practices for months or years, sets the rules of the game, doesn’t tell me what they are, and then expects me to be astounded when he beats me. I’m less than impressed when the magician beats me; this guy couldn’t even win that game.
And Exapno Mapcase noted while I was posting, the trick isn’t even original.
Here’s a teenager explaining the trick if you want to have it ruined:
Magic to me is like the performance version of an optical illusion. It looks cool, and it’s fun to think about how it works. I don’t feel like I’m being duped and I certainly don’t expect anyone to think the magician actually has magic powers.
This is probably the best defense one can make for enjoying magicians. It makes sense that people would enjoy it on that basis, the way others enjoy good live jazz or ballet. I’m still not interested in magic but I can see why you would be.
He doesn’t have to have another deck.
The cards in his hand have the cartoon on the top as well as the bottom. no one was allowed to examine the deck. All 52 cards are represented. He only has to have the talent to know where each card is in the deck then move it to the bottom and flip it. Simple sleight of hand done very well.
And in fact, some such performers make no pretense that they are performing real “magic” and don’t call themselves “magicians”. Rather, they acknowledge up-front that they are entertainers, and call themselves “illusionists”. Example: Sigfried and Roy.
You’d think the magician in this case, when he’s on a show that could make or break his career, would have chosen to perform something other than a commercially available magic trick that isn’t spoilered on YouTube.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Although my favorite thing is close up magic and it doesn’t matter much about the originality. Most of the tricks use the same techniques. The stage craft is what makes it entertaining. At times Ricky Jay would tell the audience exactly what he was going to do and it was still impossible to see him do it.
The best illusions are the simplest. It’s all about execution. In this case he was brilliant, it didn’t make any difference if Cowell had selected a different card or not but it made the trick seem more difficult.
Yep. Even if he did the trick using the magic deck shown in the above youtube video, he still had to somehow find the correct card in the middle of the deck (eight of hearts), take it out and move it to the bottom all while on live TV with cameras on his hands, millions of people watching and four people right in front of him watching closely. And he had to do it flawlessly in about two seconds.
Sleight of hand always leaves me awestruck. And it’s not just the sleight of hand - the nerves he must have felt! Even if I could mechanically do the trick at home, I’m sure if I tried to do it on live TV I’d fluff it so enormously that all the cards would go flying in all directions.
I’d argue that most magicians don’t claim they are using real magic, either.
The one guy who bugs me is Darren Brown, who claims to be using things like subliminal messaging to cover up for often rather basic tricks. (Our resident board magician (ianzin) has called me out for saying they are all basic tricks–some aren’t, I guess. But he apparently doesn’t have enough of those to fill out his act, as most of what I’ve seen are rather basic tricks. You’d think he’d use his big stuff for his big television spots.)
Example 2: GOB Bluth
Derren Brown is an illusionist/magician, and he utilises any and all means to misdirect and confuse his audience. One of those means is the myth he fuels that his tricks are something to do with psychology and that his live audience members are unprimed members of the public.
Of course the magician rigs the game. What else can he do? Real magic?
Let’s not forget that magic is an ACT. It’s all just pretend and pretty much everyone over the age of about six automatically understands that. That’s the fun of it. You see something that on the face of it seems impossible. Of course the illusion can never stand up to real scrutiny, because it’s never real!
The magician isn’t trying to impress you or beat you at anything, he’s just trying to make you smile. It’s not a contest, it’s make-believe!
Arnold Schwarzenegger pretends to be a robot from the future and we play along for the fun of it. Same deal.
I hear you. Real magic would be cheating. That wouldn’t impress me at all. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Exactly the way most of us feel when a film uses cinematographic trickery to do ‘magic’.
Harry waves his magic wand, mumbles some dog latin and his enemy turns into a snake. Entertaining, yes - but we wonder why he didn’t do it sooner. A young ‘magician’ manipulates some cards and although we can guess how it was probably done, we admire his dexterity and his act.
This is only in my humble opinion but I think Cowell wouldn’t jeopardize a multi-million dollar business for a magic trick :rolleyes: