You can see how he does most of them, the one with where he writes a no. on paper then the public have to guess it is done with graphite under the fingernail...

It's simple. Prior to the actual trick he dabs ash on the lady's hand (you don't see the set up to any tricks on camera) and then he simply performs his little masquerade and voila, she is amazed.

The things written on cars and trees to do with the public, personal names etc. are pre organised, the prints on his chest are pre written then trick packs are used...
The coffee cup with coins is trick cup where you push the bottom up from underneath making the coins seem to rise above the coffe, while you drain the coffee out the bottom...

If you look you can see how they all work, bit disallusioning really...

"David Blaine had a strange hobby
Performing tricks..."

>"David Blaine had a strange hobby
>Performing tricks..."
>

Bet I can beat that...

?

You can see how he does nearly all of them generally, every movement he makes has a purpose behind it, he mostly waves about his other hand telling you to look at it or something to distract what his other hand is doing, and he hides stuff in his palm or in his jacket or whatever most of the time, it's all very simple stuff. Just because he's actually done a Chris Morris and gone out into the street to do the tricks rather than at a table like most people, he is hailed as some new fad magician who is 'cutting edge', Pen and Teller were much better, at least they had a great cynicism for the other magicians in their profession and outed all the crappy old stock tricks.

I wish I knew how he did that floating trick though, he just stands there and rises off the ground in the middle of the street, it looks very strange, I have no idea how he does that.

>I wish I knew how he did that floating trick though, he just stands there and rises off the ground in the middle of the street, it looks very strange, I have no idea how he does that.


It is a combination of oblique camera angles and genuine magic.

I *like* David Blaine. Even though most of his tricks are just sleight of hand, it's done with such speed and finesse that it's a marvel in itself. Not sure I buy the idea about all the tricks being set up off camera beforehand - what would be the point of that?

Well I know a similar trick, and you have to stand at a certain angle to the audience and you raise the foot nearest the audience in a certain way and sort of lift up the heel of the other foot and if done correctly it looks like both your feet are floating a few inches off the floor.

But the one David Blaine does is about 1 foot off the floor so it can't be that. The only way I can guess he does it, is he has pre thought out locations where he's going to do it, and arranges them so he's got wires or whatever shit he uses to do it, then waits for some hapless victims to walk by and magically just does it, because you never see the set-ups to that trick he just does it in front of surprised people. He doesn't tell them he is going to float either, he just tells them to watch, so they don't know what to look out for, and therefore don't pay as much attention to his feet or whatever so they are so surprised by his few seconds of floating they don't take it in. Most of the people he does it to are incredibly shocked and run away, then `ol Blaine says he has to go get a coffee because the trick 'drains him of energy', yeah right.

I believe in magic.



















Like I believe in justice.

And I believe in faries.


*clapclapclap*

hazeley told me that the levitating was made more convincing on Tv by using reaction shots of the public watching him doing the lift-one-foot-stand-at-the-right-angle levitate, then intercutting shots of him 1 foot off the ground on a wire.

I think a lot of the success of his TV magic is down to good editing, intended to give the TV audience the same "wow" as the street audience. He's distracting the public in the street with patter, he uses editing to distract the TV public.

Clever man.

the butler's right. he does a standard levitation (which anyone can do), called the balducci levitation (look it up on google) and films the punters' reactions - then cuts their reactions onto the end of shots showing him showing the punters how other magicians do it, ie on wires. so what you see is the wire levitation and the punters' reaction to the balducci. terrible when you know how, innit?

j xxx

ps. i once saw the patent application for the david copperfield flying rig. incredibly, it was available to anyone on the net for a while. christ, it's complicated. and yes, it's all wires. and it fits in six articulated lorries.

Yeah, I know about that Bladucci thing, I can't believe the reactions he got were from the Bladucci trick, because it looks so suspicious, and the people looked like they shit their pants, and grown men were just running away screaming at the sight of it.

I can't believe he just uses editing tricks for his magic, that is so pathetic. Anybody can bleeding do magic if they use editing tricks, what a talentless twat. He gets al this coverage, when properly talented and entertaining magicians like Pen and Teller haven't been on TV for years.

> and yes, it's all wires. and it fits in six articulated lorries.

No, it's "waehrs".

Tut tut, and you a Chris Morris fan too...

I am NOT on a wire. I'm bloody flyin'

(Graham Chapman)

you're on a bloody wire!

The biting coin one uses sleight of hand and two coins. My mate does this one at Chrimbo parties.

The ash on a lady's hand one was craftily edited so that you didn't see him dab his pre-ashed finger on the under side of the lady's hand, under the pretence of asking her to raise her hands slightly higher (he lifts her hands from underneath and that's when the application takes place).

The "try and *see* a card" thing that he does in those cinema ads is just a case of fixing the pack so that we see a specific card (you don't see any cards first time round, 'cos he does it too fast, and this makes you concentrate harder on the second flick of the pack). It's been explained to me before, but I can't remember exactly how it's done right now.

Cheerio

Steve

try-to-see-a-card is probably the cleverest thing blaine does. it's a terrific sleight of hand - fanning an entire pack and making one card (and one alone) stand out. it's done by means of (i think - i'm no expert at this) an "injog and break" or something like that and it's fantastically difficult. even mike4SOTCAA should appreciate this one.

j xxx

I saw Blaine do 'try-to-see-a-card' on telly. I was so amazed I watched the tape again on freeze frame and guess what? The pack contained several identical nine of clubs interspersed among the other cards. So when he riffles through the pack, thanks to the animator's friend, persistence of vision, the nine of clubs is the card that stands out. Not difficult at all. In fact, the easiest trick in the whole wide world.

How does the trick notepad work though? Because they still write their own personal message n'that.

And what about the more minimalist mind-reading he does, where he instantly names the card they were thinking of? Must be plants, or hypnotees. Or both. Or maybe he just goes around saying '3 of diamonds' to millions of people until he gets it right.

The flying dollar bill - isn't that magnets? Actually, no, that wouldn't work.

>How does the trick notepad work though? Because they still write their own personal message n'that.

(I'm working dfrom a similar show I've seen that explained allthese, so I may be wrong)

He rips up the first one she does, doesn't he?

Well, the way he rips it means he can see the message - he rips away the edges, hides the "middle" in his hand and drops the rest, makes her write it again and meanwhile... copies it down.

Obviously it helps to have a subject who won't change her mind.

Why not just let the magic live?

>Why not just let the magic live?

Oh! I know this one.... because I wanted to get to the other side?

Because it's not magic.

>Because it's not magic.

next you'll be telling us Santa Claus doesn't exist...

oh wait...

no, it must be magic - no one has a bathroom mirror large enough to pull off the disappearing Staue of Liberty...

of course, I could do that with 10lbs of C4 but you might see how that was done...

of course it isn't magic - everyone knows it isn't magic. But it is incredibly skilful, entertaining and exactly the sort of pared down, no-nonsense entertainment that is lacking from TV these days. I don't care how he does it, and ruminating on how he does it seems a little mean-spirited somehow.

And having loads of nine of clubs in the pack wouldn't make the flick the deck trick any easier - think about it. It's probably easier to have just the one to make the trick work.

We talked about this before on this forum and I dropped in the same opinion then...
I love the fact that David Blaine is just a street entertainer sleight-of-hand magician, no frills, no bollocks, no pseudo mysticism - just smart, smart tricks.
When I first saw him I threw my hands up in joy that someone was taking magic back to the find-the-lady level. Marvellous. He's just a very canny trickster.
Then he did that trick on his last TV special (can't remember the set up) that ended with him assuring a punter that her dead friend (whose name she'd just written down for Blaine to guess) "remembered her".
Balls, David. You're a bunco-booth trickster YOU ARE NOT A WIZARD. YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE DEAD - STOP KIDDING PEOPLE THAT YOU DO.
Plain abuse of his position and a weakening of his act, I thought.