Was watching the "50 greatest magic tricks" the other day...one was David Blaine levitating in the street. He just walks up to 3 different groups of people and says (in his mumbling, dark way) "Hey...I can do this weird thing...just watch..." and then his body rises about 2 feet off the ground. The people watching are obviously completely fooled - it looks V. real. And it's not done in a studio, but in the middle of a street. How does he do it??

Thoughts?

hes the antichrist

It could be a possibility. It was well funny actually, cos two out of the 3 groups of people he demonstrated it to were like, "Oh my Gawd! He must be really...like, blessed...like, spiritually". American ofcourse.

very simple, ill explain in two parts: levitation and reaction. First to levitate he puts him self in an angle that his outside foot, ( the farthest from the viewer ) is parly blocked by his other foot. He puts his hells togheter and rises up on his toes of the foot that ius hidden from vieu. you dont have to be an anticrist to do that. As for the peoples reaction they are filmed separetly, once when he shows them the trick and then other people dressed the same way are put in first plan while ropes pull him like 10 cm from the ground... dont think that its a life broadcast!!! yall still belive in magitians and fairys?

how long will blues stay in the prem

one of my friends saw him on the flippin' street in SF and he rose like 8 inches. how do you explain that?

i know what you're talking about, that foot trick is in most boyscout handbooks.

The Masked Magician explained how he did it. Just like Kingerage said.

He is just putting one toe in front of the other and lifts himself up. No one is watching from the front. I have did it and it looks very real

Its not 2 feet its like 6 inches. not hard to do for a tall man with slightly large feet.

and he may have a special heel that give the optical elussion(sp) that the heels are lifting as well.


People cant levitate if they could they would be doing it all the time and floating around.

It might have just peen the photography of if but the one where he trows the card inside the glass is fucking amazing, though I still say we burn him while reciting the lords prayer loudly.

i enjoy watchin that dood. hes fuckin good. and i dont think that you guys have the way he does it. obviously, its an illusion, but i dont think that he got it from the friggin boy scout hand-book. some of his card and coin tricks are awesome as well.

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Originally posted by tr0g:
The Masked Magician explained how he did it. Just like Kingerage said.

He is just putting one toe in front of the other and lifts himself up. No one is watching from the front. I have did it and it looks very real

Its not 2 feet its like 6 inches. not hard to do for a tall man with slightly large feet.

and he may have a special heel that give the optical elussion(sp) that the heels are lifting as well.


People cant levitate if they could they would be doing it all the time and floating around.

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the part where he's two feet off the ground is filmed later and edited in for tv. people who see him on the street see the real trick, on tv they add the two feet thing for drama. in the real trick he only raises up a few inches. i wish i had never seen those "secrets of magic revealed" shows.

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Originally posted by kingenrage:
he puts him self in an angle that his outside foot, ( the farthest from the viewer ) is parly blocked by his other foot. He puts his hells togheter and rises up on his toes of the foot that ius hidden from view

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correct me if i'm not reading this correctly - are you saying that he would have to be standing side-on to the people watching? Cos he wasn't! He was standing with his back to them. You could see both damn feet! (did I understand what you were saying?)

yeah, so what if his levitation trick isn't real... He still knows how to make it look real, and that's friggin cool. and yes, empireblues, it showed it from behind and in front. I saw it, looked pretty real to me, especially since it was a ground shot, and you could see the womens feet through that little space of air between his feet and the ground...

I think it is possible to levitate (in real life) barely, but it requires a lot of thought/practice etc.
I think science comes into play, and it just very well may be real. Sure, it's a possibility that it's fake, but... who knows?

and all those other tricks... damn, they were good.

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Originally posted by Alan Smithee:
It might have just peen the photography of if but the one where he trows the card inside the glass is fucking amazing, though I still say we burn him while reciting the lords prayer loudly.

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Naw, I say stone him...


"Let he who without aim throw the first stone..."

New guy here. Just thought I'd post address to a site w/ Balducci Levitation trick (is one described above) Sorry 'bout the pop up ad but it's not my site...
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Stage/7308/balducci.html

Cheers
SHS

[This message has been edited by SimianHitSquad (edited 05-16-2002).]

Don't know if it's all true but this is from the above site as well. Addresses the both feet off the ground issue, etc...

"A Quick Note About David Blaine As mentioned above, David Blaine is not the originator of this illusion. He has made the illusion popular, once again, with his recent television special, "David Blaine: Street Magic." The unfortunate reality is, however, that we never really get to see Blaine performing the Balducci Levitation. We watch several times as Blaine performs it for others, but we never get to see it for ourselves.

For the television special, Blaine performed the Balducci levitation in front of several different groups of people, and the camera was there to catch their reaction. The method he used for this is the Balducci method, described below. While videotaping these various performances, the producers keyed in on the audience members with the most visual reaction. After the Balducci levitation, the producers of the show had these same people stand by for another taping of the illusion - this time the camera would shoot from behind the audience members to get a
clear view of Blaine in action. The audience members were told that this second performance was to show them how magicians could use wires to levitate. And this is exactly what happened. A small harness and rig (just out of camera view) was set up and Blaine performed a standard wire-suspension.

What Blaine did was a camera trick - known as a post-production edit. The audience at home watched the second (wire suspension) levitation performance, with the audience reaction of the real levitation edited in. It was said, in the television special, that no strings or wires were used to perform Blaine's levitation. This is true, no wires or strings are required. Unfortunately, we never got to see Blaine's real levitation - we saw a wire-suspension.

Other than a few camera edits, Blaine did a wonderful job with his first television special. This is one magic special worth owning on videotape."

I have a videoclip of Blaine doing a real Balducci Levitation, where he rises off the ground just a little, instead of one the regular big ones. It does look like he actually levitates but of course it's another trick.

Ah, i like 'Magic Tricks', but i perfer Magick.