Magician Reviews Sleight of Hand and Visual Tricks In Movies & TV (Part Three)

Is this a real magic trick?

[coin clattering]

[production laughing]

My name is Ben Seidman, I'm a magician.

This is my third Vanity Fair video breaking down magic

and sleight of hand in film and TV.

If I do a fourth video, I get a free smoothie.

[production chuckling]

So please share this video, I really want that smoothie.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

I'm Lucretius 'Lucky' Flickerman,

a man who needs no introduction.

You'll know me as your favorite weatherman

and amateur magician.

[coin ringing]

But guess where I am today?

Is this a real magic trick?

[coin tapping]

[bright upbeat music]

Some people would say that it isn't.

[production laughing]

So this was largely dependent on movie magic,

but it didn't have to be.

My job as a magician is to violate reality,

but I'm also constrained by the laws of physics.

That isn't the same in film and TV.

There are no laws in the film and TV business.

I mean, The Hunger Games

is about a bunch of children murdering each other,

and the target demo is children.

But that effect could have been done for real.

A core principle of magic deception

is that our brains fill in the gaps

whenever information is missing.

We think we see a triangle, but it's not there.

We see three circles.

So the existence of something is implied.

Take, for example, the simplicity of vanishing a coin.

[upbeat music continues]

At a certain point, the existence of the coin is implied.

If I wanted to perform a coin vanish

that matched one of the coin vanishes in The Hunger Games,

it might look something like this.

[coin ringing]

[upbeat music continues]

What really takes a midair coin vanish from a magic trick

to a miracle is that people swear that they see

the coin vanish in midair,

if you're watching it live, anyway.

So exactly how does that trick our brains?

The big fish principle.

I caught a fish and it was this big.

Five days later, Oh, I caught a fish,

it was this big.

You should have seen that fish.

And, you know, it just keeps getting bigger

and bigger and bigger.

An audience's memory can actually enhance

the impossibility of a magic trick.

People sometimes just misremember the details,

that's why eyewitness testimonial is so unreliable.

But a big magic secret,

and I shouldn't even be telling you this,

is that sometimes we plant the big fish principle

in the viewer's mind, subtly convincing a person

that what they're about to witness or witnessing

is completely wrong.

It's also known as the delusion of memory principle.

Outside of magic, it's called gaslighting.

Tobias Dostal is a brilliant magic consultant.

Jason Schwartzman, he's a fantastic actor and improviser.

I'm not mad at the result here,

I would've just loved to see more of the magic

that they developed leading up to this film,

because I know there was so much more.

[upbeat music continues]

[coin taps]

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

[suspenseful music]

This key?

The one you picked from that man's pocket?

It's worthless without this key.

[suspenseful music continues]

But together, they're worth 4 million

in cryptocurrency that man was carrying on a flash drive.

I can definitely say without a doubt

that this is a real sleight of hand

without any special apparatus.

The director, Christopher McQuarrie,

he wrote The Usual Suspects, so I'm venturing to say

that he already thinks like a magician.

They also had Ben Hart consulting,

and I think that the method he chose was perfect for this.

Magic consultants on a set have to be pragmatic.

You have to get everything right,

sometimes even on the first take.

Short answer, Tom did this for real.

In order of difficulty, it goes,

this trick is the most difficult,

then hanging off a plane in midair,

then running down the Burj Khalifa.

Driving a motorcycle off a cliff is, like, tied.

Tom practiced this until it was invisible.

Bravo, Tom.

If that's the one magic trick that you can do,

you're welcome at my magic jam anytime.

I bet Tom could do this trick with his eyes closed

or his eyes wide shut.

This is real sleight of hand,

it's risky business, you know?

The director, the consultant, the prop master,

a few good men, thus making Tom the top gun.

Please stop me, someone stop me.

I will just keep going until someone stops me.

Now You See Me 2.

Who are you? What are you doing in my-

It's actually a funny story.

How did you get into my apartment?

I like this song.

It's not, it's not like funny ha ha.

Or you might not think that it's funny ha ha.

I think it's funny, you know,

I guess that's all kind of relevant.

I was actually gonna...

No, that's not...

I made myself in the neighborhood and now I'm here,

maybe you all can...

[guillotine thuds]

♪ Magic moment ♪

Okay.

Chopping people's heads off,

it's been a lovely tradition for both magicians

and for psychopaths.

Have you ever read a history book? They're terrifying.

In 1594, a guy named Reginald Scott writes this book

called The Discovery of Witchcraft.

This is the first magic book that we know of

that has an English translation that early.

In that book are all sorts of methods

that were being used at the time.

You see, in the 1500s,

it was not a good time to be a magician.

Doing magic tricks would get you burnt at the stake

or as the kids would say, Getting lit.

[production laughing] [bright upbeat music]

So Reginald Scott writes this book,

which is basically a book on critical thinking.

Like, Hey, stop murdering these people,

they're just doing magic tricks.

Now, the guillotine in this movie could have been CGI,

but I think it actually might have been a practical effect.

What's interesting to me is that she is talking

right up until the point that the blade comes down.

That's called a convincer.

But in a live performance,

convincers are meant to support the illusion.

This right here is fun, but it's not that deceptive.

If I wanted to add a convincer,

I might put a ring on my finger.

[finger pops]

[upbeat music continues]

Removing body parts certainly exists

as a plot in old school magic.

In fact, I flew back to my parents' house in Wisconsin

to bring these miniature guillotines

and arm and finger choppers back from my parents' house.

If you don't think these were worth

all of my allowance money, you're right.

[upbeat music continues]

If you put carrots in these holes,

someone's arm here, the carrots will shatter

as you bring the blade down.

Now the carrots are acting as the convincers.

Okay, Nicole, this is a very weird contraption here.

I'm gonna have you put your hand in there,

which I know sounds weird.

I can't believe you're trusting me with this, this is great.

And then right there, I'm just gonna close these up,

that's to make sure that you don't change your mind.

And then we have a couple of carrots here,

this is very, very serious stuff right here.

And you can see that the carrot

is stopping the blade, right?

Yes. That's going to prevent you

from being harmed in any way.

But keep your hand right there,

take a deep breath and relax.

And on the count of three.

One, three.

[guillotine thuds]

[Nicole laughing]

You okay? Keep your hand there.

Yes. Keep your hand there.

Make sure that the blade is actually underneath your arm.

And it is, you can take it out.

And I'm glad you're okay.

You're all right?

Yes. Physically fine,

emotionally scarred?

As a side note, one of the producers asked me

how this plot in magic relates to sawing a woman in half.

That story is mind blowing.

British magician, P. T. Selbit was the first

to saw a woman in half, and he did this only three years

after the woman's suffrage movement took hold in the UK.

It's reasonable to speculate that cutting a woman in half

was a big, Screw you to women's rights.

A lot of versions of this trick

didn't even have the woman getting put back together,

and the all male audiences liked it.

As a man, I would vote that we all stop doing that trick.

[production laughing]

By the way, P. T. Selbit's wife got half in the divorce.

The Illusionist.

[audience gasping]

[Spectator] Is that her?

Who is that? Look at her face.

[suspenseful music]

[Spectator 2] Is it her?

[suspenseful music continues]

[audience gasping]

[audience chattering]

When The Illusionist first came out,

I assumed that Ed Norton's character

was based on the French conjurer, Robert-Houdin,

who famously took advantage

of modern scientific discoveries of the time,

electromagnetism, his mechanical knowledge of clock making,

and also what has become known as Pepper's ghost.

Here's the mind blowing thing.

The effect of ghosts walking around on stage

was actually witnessed live in the 1800s.

I'm gonna show you how to make your own ghost.

But to understand how this is possible,

we have to go back in time for a segment I like to call

The very fast history lesson that you didn't ask for.

In 1558, Neapolitan Scientist Giambattista della Porta

describe the basic technology that predates Pepper's ghost

as an optical curiosity.

Fast forward 300 years, the French painter Peter Gauguin,

filed a patent for a children's toy called a Polyscope

based on this technology.

It was not very popular, it just did not take off.

But the real leap forward

came from a British civil engineer named Henry Dirks,

who was the first person to suggest

putting the idea on stage and making it big.

Enter Victorian science superstar John Henry Pepper,

who realized that changing the design

and angling the glass allows two images

to be seen at the same time in a more efficient manner.

So what's their connection to the French conjurer,

Robert-Houdin, a.k.a. Ed Norton?

Well, in 1863, Houdin reaches out to both Dirks and Pepper

about using the ghost technology.

And five years later, Houdin consults on a stage play,

whose name I have no interest in mispronouncing,

and he creates an elaborate scene

where ghostly images resist the blows of swords.

Does that sound familiar?

I mean, it could just be a coincidence.

This has been The very fast history lesson

that you did not ask for.

[audience applauding]

Thank you.

To make your own Pepper's ghost,

you need something to contain it.

Probably the easiest thing to use is a glass bowl.

You want something that's totally see through.

Next, you want some plastic that you can also see through.

What works great is actually the packaging

that you find on anything at the store,

I got these paintbrushes at the dollar store.

And you want to cut a section

that's shaped approximately like this, like a half circle.

You might have to adjust it several times,

but this goes inside at an angle

and now you need something to reflect.

They called this the oven back when this was first created.

In that case, it was actors

who were below the stage in a trap.

The oven has to have a lot of light.

That's actually where the term limelight came from

because of the green light that they used.

But what works great for this,

if you're gonna fake making a Pepper's ghost,

is a phone or a tablet.

So if you have an image with a black background

that is also pretty lit up, you can set your design on top,

and if you line it up perfectly, you're gonna get a ghost.

It might require a little bit of tweaking,

but you'll get it.

What's interesting to me

is that this version is pretty similar

to what we saw in pop culture

that has been called holograms.

If you remember seeing the Gorillaz performing with Madonna

or Tupac performing live with Snoop,

these are examples of things that are derivative

from Pepper's ghost.

But actually those are 2D images being projected,

much like what we're creating here with the tablet.

If you think about it, the version in the 1800s

was actually more technologically advanced

in some ways because it was a 3D image.

Once you have your ghost created,

it should look something like this.

[bright upbeat music]

So here we have a ghost hummingbird.

Isn't that cool?

I love magic so much,

and getting a chance to look back at these clips

was so much fun.

All magicians build on a foundation of knowledge

from the greats before them.

So I want to pause and say thank you to my mentors

and my peers in the magic world.

Thank you for watching.

[bright upbeat music]