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New David Blaine Special Tonight.. (1 Viewer)

biggamer3

biggamer3

Footballguy
For those who like his magic, he has a new special on ABC starting at 9:30 PM eastern.

I grew up with his magic like ten years ago, glad he has another "man on the street" style special. There are supposedly tons of celebrities in this special where he does tricks on them.

 
biggamer3 said:
For those who like his magic, he has a new special on ABC starting at 9:30 PM eastern.

I grew up with his magic like ten years ago, glad he has another "man on the street" style special. There are supposedly tons of celebrities in this special where he does tricks on them.
Click to expand...
Dead to me ever since his first special. Broke the 1 rule of magic on TV... "no visual effects editing". His first special included a levitation trick, which he performs regularly... it's the Balducci Lift. It's effective in person, but kind of crappy on TV. So when they shot the TV special, he just stood on a block and they blurred it out with cheap VFX. Not even very well, the sidewalk underneath him just went 'fuzzy'. And they had him surrounded actors who were pretending to be 'amazed' at the trick when he's just standing on a 12-inch box. So fake.

Dead. To. Me.

 
Best card trick I've ever seen was in a sushi restaurant in West Village circa 1997 or so. Been a fan ever since.

 
That Emmy Rossum chick was hot too, but LORD was her voice/accent annoying.

Can we go back to Olivia Wilde. I mean, wow.

 
This stuff is really impressive. I'd love to know how the hell he does it. Even Pickles is surprised and confused.

 
Sarnoff said:
biggamer3 said:
For those who like his magic, he has a new special on ABC starting at 9:30 PM eastern.

I grew up with his magic like ten years ago, glad he has another "man on the street" style special. There are supposedly tons of celebrities in this special where he does tricks on them.
Click to expand...
Dead to me ever since his first special. Broke the 1 rule of magic on TV... "no visual effects editing". His first special included a levitation trick, which he performs regularly... it's the Balducci Lift. It's effective in person, but kind of crappy on TV. So when they shot the TV special, he just stood on a block and they blurred it out with cheap VFX. Not even very well, the sidewalk underneath him just went 'fuzzy'. And they had him surrounded actors who were pretending to be 'amazed' at the trick when he's just standing on a 12-inch box. So fake.

Dead. To. Me.
Click to expand...
It's been a while, but that differs from what I remember. I think he was lifted from above (using a crane?), rather than stepping on a block. And I don't think the people reacting were actors. I think they were genuinely reacting to his performance of the Balducci levitation.

Here's a YouTube video of it. The first two times he levitates, he does the Balducci, and they show they crowd's reaction, but they don't show Blaine's feet. (If they did show his feet, it would have looked incredibly lame. The Balducci is very angle-sensitive, and has to be viewed from just the right spot -- i.e., where the crowd was.) The third time he levitates, the crowd is reacting to his Balducci, but when the camera shows his feet, they're splicing in a completely different levitation using a mechanical lift. That's not what the crowd saw; it's just edited in for the home viewers. The fourth levitation, for the Dallas Cowboys, is like the first two.

The fifth one is like the third. On the fifth one, when they show Blaine's feet, they also show the backside of one of the spectators. It's obviously a different take, though, because when Blaine looks over his shoulder and says "Watch," there's no camera right behind the spectator where it would need to be to capture the shot looking at his feet. In fact, I don't think the spectator is the same person in both shots. The sleeve on her shirt looks different. In any case, I believe that when we are looking past Blaine at the spectators' faces, we are seeing their reaction to his performance of the Balducci. When we see Blaine's feet come off the ground, we're seeing something that was filmed later on, after they'd set up the crane or whatever, and possibly after the original spectators had left.

You're right that what they showed the home viewer wasn't what a live audience would have seen, and I share your opinion that that's extremely lame. The rest of that special was pretty good, though.

 
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Maurile Tremblay said:
Sarnoff said:
biggamer3 said:
For those who like his magic, he has a new special on ABC starting at 9:30 PM eastern.

I grew up with his magic like ten years ago, glad he has another "man on the street" style special. There are supposedly tons of celebrities in this special where he does tricks on them.
Click to expand...
Dead to me ever since his first special. Broke the 1 rule of magic on TV... "no visual effects editing". His first special included a levitation trick, which he performs regularly... it's the Balducci Lift. It's effective in person, but kind of crappy on TV. So when they shot the TV special, he just stood on a block and they blurred it out with cheap VFX. Not even very well, the sidewalk underneath him just went 'fuzzy'. And they had him surrounded actors who were pretending to be 'amazed' at the trick when he's just standing on a 12-inch box. So fake.

Dead. To. Me.
Click to expand...
You're right that what they showed the home viewer wasn't what a live audience would have seen, and I share your opinion that that's extremely lame. The rest of that special was pretty good, though.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen it in broadcast quality, but there's definitely a shot of his feet where you can plainly see the blur effect of whatever's beneath him being removed via VFX. Hard to remember whether it was the shot at 1:30 or 3:30, and can't really tell on Youtube quality. But on regular TV it was plain as day.

It's utterly pointless to have magic on TV if there's visual effects involved. It's just stupid. Then it's just a dude with a creepy voice doing silly stuff and a bunch of graphics editors making it look interesting.

 
Otis said:
That iPhone trick at Will Smith's house was pretty cool. He has to be cheating right?
Click to expand...
That was one of the few tricks I thought was easy to figure out how it was done. Obviously incredibly difficult to execute but the "move" was one of the easier to spot. The suggestion part of the trick is a whole different deal. It be interesting to know how many times he's successful and what his back-up(s) are if his suggestion doesn't take.

 
I just cant get enough of those tricks even if they are all so similar. The reactions of the black folks are always priceless.

Is there even another magician who can even come close to executing tricks on this level?

 
biggamer3 said:
I just cant get enough of those tricks even if they are all so similar. The reactions of the black folks are always priceless.

Is there even another magician who can even come close to executing tricks on this level?
Click to expand...
I'd say there are hundreds of magicians who can do most of what he does. His gift is the way he looks and markets himself. And Han Solo isn't going to let local magician Jimmy Kozlowski into his house.

 
Dan Lambskin said:
Complete hack
Click to expand...
Besides for the awesome execution of street magic, this dude is a legitimate freak of mental will power with his endurance stunts.

Probably the only magician who is not a hack, sure some tricks are lame, but this dude practices for years on his stunts. I heard a speech he gave about how he did the endurance stunts such as being under water for a record amount of time and its insane how much preparation went into it. Also I totally believe the water pumping thing took a long time to learn and master, no hackery there.

 
JAMES! said:
Otis said:
That iPhone trick at Will Smith's house was pretty cool. He has to be cheating right?
Click to expand...
That was one of the few tricks I thought was easy to figure out how it was done. Obviously incredibly difficult to execute but the "move" was one of the easier to spot. The suggestion part of the trick is a whole different deal. It be interesting to know how many times he's successful and what his back-up(s) are if his suggestion doesn't take.
Click to expand...
:shrug:

Only thing I could think of is the stupid iCloud thing. If you share streams or accounts or something with someone, and they take a picture, it comes up on your stream. Because he said (1) just look at the most recent picture (and he was adamant about this) and (2) he took a little time waving his hand etc. after the person stated the card they were thinking of. Maybe just enough time for someone in the next room to add to a family member's feed a picture showing that particular card and DL it onto his phone.

That's all I got.

 
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Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.

 
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.

 
Otis said:
JAMES! said:
Otis said:
That iPhone trick at Will Smith's house was pretty cool. He has to be cheating right?
Click to expand...
That was one of the few tricks I thought was easy to figure out how it was done. Obviously incredibly difficult to execute but the "move" was one of the easier to spot. The suggestion part of the trick is a whole different deal. It be interesting to know how many times he's successful and what his back-up(s) are if his suggestion doesn't take.
Click to expand...
:shrug:

Only thing I could think of is the stupid iCloud thing. If you share streams or accounts or something with someone, and they take a picture, it comes up on your stream. Because he said (1) just look at the most recent picture (and he was adamant about this) and (2) he took a little time waving his hand etc. after the person stated the card they were thinking of. Maybe just enough time for someone in the next room to add to a family member's feed a picture showing that particular card and DL it onto his phone.

That's all I got.
Click to expand...
No. He's palming a deck to place in front of the original deck (that had the cards face up and face down). This palmed deck has the 3 of spades turned over. The picture is real. The tough part obviously is getting the person to pick the 3 of spades. There are techniques he uses to accomplish this. We don't know how successful he is in getting them to pick the card he wants them to because we only see the hits. I'm guessing he has a back up plan if they pick the wrong card but they won't use that for the TV special because it's not as impressive as the trick going correctly.

The Harrison Ford trick is only getting him to choose the 9 of hearts. I'm assuming he knows Ford is going to likely choose a certain range of cards and has those cards placed in different fruits. Then all he has to do is get Ford to choose the fruit he wants him to. Not easy to do but we don't know how many times he's tried that trick and what his success rate is with it. The TV audience only sees a 100% success rate.

 
bigbottom said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying he's a hack. Just the talk of "best ever" or saying nobody else can do what he does is a bit over the top.

 
bigbottom said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.
Click to expand...
which way did you react?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-ObINj-3k

 
JAMES! said:
bigbottom said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying he's a hack. Just the talk of "best ever" or saying nobody else can do what he does is a bit over the top.
Click to expand...
Oh sure. I wouldn't go that far either.

 
Fennis said:
bigbottom said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.
Click to expand...
which way did you react?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-ObINj-3k
Click to expand...
I was so blown away that I tore out my weave and set it on fire.

 
JAMES! said:
The Harrison Ford trick is only getting him to choose the 9 of hearts. I'm assuming he knows Ford is going to likely choose a certain range of cards and has those cards placed in different fruits. Then all he has to do is get Ford to choose the fruit he wants him to. Not easy to do but we don't know how many times he's tried that trick and what his success rate is with it. The TV audience only sees a 100% success rate.
Click to expand...
It's actually even simpler than that...

Once Ford chooses his card all someone in Blaine's crew needs to do is take from a pile of 52 oranges, each with a different card inside, and put the right one in the bowl of fruit.

 
Fennis said:
bigbottom said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
Blaine didn't get his start doing TV. He made his mark doing street magic and then celebrity parties in New York before breaking his first special in the late 90s. If he was a hack whose tricks went wrong all the time, he wouldn't have graduated from doing street magic for tips. He did a trick for me before his first tv special ever aired. It blew my mind. So he was one for one for me. Maybe I'm just lucky and he blew the next 51 tricks.
Click to expand...
which way did you react?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-ObINj-3k
Click to expand...
Guy who does the handstand always gets me.

 
cstu said:
JAMES! said:
The Harrison Ford trick is only getting him to choose the 9 of hearts. I'm assuming he knows Ford is going to likely choose a certain range of cards and has those cards placed in different fruits. Then all he has to do is get Ford to choose the fruit he wants him to. Not easy to do but we don't know how many times he's tried that trick and what his success rate is with it. The TV audience only sees a 100% success rate.
Click to expand...
It's actually even simpler than that...

Once Ford chooses his card all someone in Blaine's crew needs to do is take from a pile of 52 oranges, each with a different card inside, and put the right one in the bowl of fruit.
Click to expand...
I thought the fruit bowl was always in the shot but sure, that could be it.

 
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
I don't think Penn is too crazy about Blaine, but I believe Teller said Blaine's first special was the best magic special ever. It's true that it was filled with amateur tricks that can be picked up at a magic shop or on Ebay for less than $10, but his style and the way the show was put together really revolutionized the magic industry.

He's no Ricky Jay for sure, but he is talented, he revolutionized the persona of a "magician," and the "stooge" level in his specials isn't quite as bad as, say, Criss Angel.

 
Softballguy said:
JAMES! said:
Blaine doesn't do live shows, only TV. So his audience only sees perfection. How many times does he miss? How many times does a trick go wrong? I'm not saying Blaine does this but you could walk the streets with a deck of cards, ask someone to pick a card, put the card back in the deck, shuffle and correctly pick their card around 1 in 52 times. Edit the hits together and people will call you a master. Penn Jillette has railed against Blaine's card trick skill. Put Ricky J and Blaine side by side live doing card tricks and see who the technician is.
Click to expand...
I don't think Penn is too crazy about Blaine, but I believe Teller said Blaine's first special was the best magic special ever. It's true that it was filled with amateur tricks that can be picked up at a magic shop or on Ebay for less than $10, but his style and the way the show was put together really revolutionized the magic industry.

He's no Ricky Jay for sure, but he is talented, he revolutionized the persona of a "magician," and the "stooge" level in his specials isn't quite as bad as, say, Criss Angel.
Click to expand...
Totally agree.

 
Nobody touches Blaine as far as street magic goes. Insane slight of hand.

As far the ice pick thru the hand, I had a buddy back in the day who would Pierce almost any body part on command using a huge straightened safety pin. I've seen him stick it through his hands, forearms, thru the middle of his biceps, his eyelids, cheeks, thighs....almost everything but his junk (he had his limits).

Only saw a tiny amount of blood maybe once or twice. Almost never bled. We nicknamed him Pinhead. We used to go to bars and score rounds of drinks from skeptical bar patrons by him doing piercings on command and letting them name the body parts. Too bad it was in the days before camera phones or we'd have some insane footage

One time he had 8 pins through different body parts at the same time, hence the nickname

 
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