I like magic tricks, but I like even more knowing how they’re done, something that magicians are loath to reveal. Penn and Teller are an exception, and here they do a cool trick and then reprise it with transparent apparatus, exposing the ruse.
This takes good timing on the part of both magicians and substantial dexterity on the part of Teller. (I saw him at TAM, speaking just like a normal person!)
That is really cool
Once again, the execution is shown to be more important than the concept. It took a lot of hard work to work out all the kinks and to practice the timing and everything else. That’s what’s impressive about a good magic show, not the seeming impossibility of a disembodied actor getting hauled around the stage in little boxes.
It takes a hell of a lot of balls to do a stunt like this in such a transparent manner. Fortunately, Penn and Teller have great, big, huge brass ones and they’re not afraid to use them.
b&
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b&
Yeah that’s what’s so cool about it! They have to rehearse so much and make it come off without sweating it.
Almost without exception, the more effortless a performance seems, the greater the preparatory effort it took to make it seem that way.
If a musician appears to be working hard during a performance, then not enough work was done in the practice room.
b&
Nice!
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I prefer to see how a trick is done after I’ve had the time to think about it. Admittedly, this one is simple in concept. Upon the first viewing, I had a general gist of what was going on, although I thought he was hiding behind the stage rather than under the floor. As such, this is more one of timing, and showmanship, which is still pretty awesome.
But for me, mystery is only fascinating as a mid point. It’s fun to figure out, but to sit in indefinite ignorance isn’t what I like. If I watch a trick too many times and still don’t have any idea, I’m willing to just let them show me. And even when I do get an idea, the actual work behind it usually involves an extra layer of complexity I didn’t predict that makes the trick all the more interesting.
Measuring the marigolds only gives you more things to find beautiful about them.
Is that a reference to the movie “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds”?
No, this:
Shoot, that was just supposed to be a link, not drop in the entire video. Moderator, feel free to delete if necessary!
What’s the objection to embedding? I like it, when it’s a relevant, positive contribution like that.
“it makes the comments unwieldy,” says Jerry here.
I see no video… Inchworm?
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Yes – Danny Kaye.
Thanks! Now that I’m on my iMac rather than my iPad I can see that… so much for endpoint agnosticism.
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I’d forgotten it was from that movie.
Of course (ahem!), the inchworm is the caterpillar of geometer moths which are indigenous to North America — not Denmark!
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Ant:
“Are you tellin’ me marigolds migrate?”
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.
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“It’s a simple matter of weight ratios. A half-ounce moth could not hold a one pound marigold!”
African or European moth?
b&
I expect they’re signaling each other rather than relying purely on timing. Teller can certainly tell where Penn is from his footsteps and the sound of boxes being set down. And Penn takes his cues from Teller’s trapdoor activations and handwaves. So while they’re obviously well practiced at getting where they need to be on time, they’re also in constant communication to prevent screwups.
Erm…they’re performing to the soundtrack. In particular, Teller operates the trap doors as if puppet mouths in sync with the “trap door” honk-like singing.
It’s basically “merely” a choreographed dance, with the dancers moving in rhythm with the music.
b&
Fair enough. But in dance we don’t call that good timing, we call it musicality.
Hmm…musicality is more than just good timing / rhythm. Doing the right steps / playing the right notes at the right time is the point of origin, but it’s possible to have a good musical performance even with some missteps along the way. It has much more to do with the expressivity within the structure of the choreography / sheet music.
I’d definitely agree that Penn and Teller are very musical magicians — but that’s due in no small part because they’re way beyond worrying about which door to open at which point in time. That much is automatic to them, leaving them free to worry about the musical expressiveness of the act.
b&
Probably not in this case. The rhythmically simple and heavily pounding music is not there just for our listening pleasure. The whole trick is cleverly timed to the music, as in a dance routine. No extra communication is necessary.
Oops, that was a reply to Gregory #6. Seems that Ben beat me to it.
When I saw them do this at the Air Force Academy about 20 years ago, Penn made the pounding idiot soundtrack part of the humor. It was so obvious in his facial expressions and gyrations that he was doing a musician’s shorthand for “this is blatant serious cheese”.
In the interim before they presented the transparent boxes, Penn started screaming at the audience for applauding such cheesy crap… it was really quite funny.
Almost as funny as their next-to-final trick, which involved getting a small Christian boy up on stage, and setting up the whole trick inside blood-red pentagrams with candles and doing all kinds of satanic mutterings and such. Did I mention this show was at the Air Force Academy?
But some Christians think that “magicians” are calling on demons to do their tricks:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/07/19/delzell-magicians-are-demonic/
The first time I saw Penn and Teller expose some tricks was back in the days before DVDs. I think it was on a public television program before P & T became well known. In one, they instructed the viewers to perform a simple card force then pretend to have failed on the rest of the trick. After a pretend lame apology and in an fake attempt to change the subject, the magician/viewer turns on the TV in the middle of a fake news show previously cued up on the VCR. The news anchor (Penn) is passed a note and interrupts the show to hold up a large playing card and ask, “Is this your card?” before going back to the news.
It is, of course, the forced card.
I was able to successfully pull it off several times. I’ve been a fan ever since.
Other versions of the forced card trick (they always used the 3 of clubs), was to do the “failed” trick at a pizza place, only to have the pizza come out with pepperonis and cheese laid out in a 3 of clubs pattern. (you work with the restaurant staff and tip them nicely to get that done).
An extreme version is done at a dive resort (like Capt Don’s in Bonaire, with reef off the back pier), and you do a dive earlier in the day or the day before, setting up a three of clubs in a sandy patch, and making sure you can navigate to it later, right after the “failed” card trick.
Beware, though, he has a nasty streak.
Just don’t dare offer him criticism regarding his faulty scepticism. He’ll crush you with foul mouthed abuse.
I’m afraid this has taken the polish off him for me. I really can’t be bothered anymore with a big ugly guy with a big ugly mouth.
As for “big,” Penn still has a large frame, but he appears to have slimmed down quite a bit.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
That was so cool! Thanks!
Great fun to watch!
Must say, though, I found this one pretty simple to figure out even before the transparent reveal. That they have to use an elevated stage in the first place is clue one. 😀
I saw this on Zite, my iPad app. Of course, I cannot see the video because of the whole Flash/Jobs thing. If there was a link to YouTube, I could see it.
That one I figured out ahead of time, more or less. The magic was lame, and that’s why Penn & Teller were happy to show it. The art was conceptual — showing the trick, with specially made-to-order transparent props. Brilliant.
Penn & Teller’s version of the cups and balls is always fun, along with the 7 principles of magic skit they do.
My favourite however remains this video of Teller giving a quick demonstration in a magic/neuroscience conference. He hits on a few ideas that are good to make use of if you’re ever planning to get into magic yourself, and he’s an incredibly charming speaker.
Oops, somehow didn’t spot this before I posted the same thing.
There’s a great video here (http://blog.ellusionist.com/teller-speaks/) where Teller gives a talk, all the time producing what looks like hundreds of coins.
I haven’t watched the video for some time, but IIRC his main two points are that if people see a trick twice, they assume it’s done in the same way both times and this is very useful in manipulating people’s expectations and attention. The other point was something along the lines of controlling the environment being important too. He puts a sponge ball in such a position that he is ‘forced’ to pick it up with his right hand in order to stay facing the audience and this gives him an excuse to pass it to his left hand, where it is needed for some other reason, but to secretly palm it in his right.
It’s a very good talk and his coin productions are amazing.
I actually just watched the Teller video. The second point is more subtle than I remembered. It is that we tend to navigate based on what we think other people’s intentions are. For example, if we’re walking down the street we are constantly assessing where other people are likely to be in the near future by figuring out where they’re trying to get to, clues from eye contact and so on. Teller is saying that this sort of thing can be exploited in magic. He picks up the ball with one hand and does a fake transfer to the other. If it weren’t a trick, he’d just have picked the ball up with his left, but of course he needs to start with the right so he can do the fake transfer to the left. So the next thing he does is pick up a wand. In order to pick up the wand, he has to transfer the ball to his other hand. He then uses the wand to vanish the ball.
The point is that he’s manipulating people’s understanding of his intention. They think his intention is to pick up the wand as a prop for vanishing the ball, but in fact the wand gives him the excuse he needs to pass the ball to his other hand.
In this video, they demonstrate slights of hands:
youtube.com/watch?v=n0JfSFqoga4
This video has an interesting cameo appearance in it.
Once you see how it’s done, it becomes pretty obvious in retrospect (like a lot of magic tricks). I prefer, for the most part, the smaller more intimate ones rather than the really large-scale illusions – card tricks, that sort of thing, that require tremendous skill and practice on the part of the magician, rather than major carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, etc.