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davidhorman
7th November 2004, 04:06 AM
Did anyone catch Magic on BBC2 last night (UK)?

It was all about disappearances. The culmination was Franz Harary making London's Tower Bridge disappear. I don't know whether I should how he did it (and I'm 99.999% sure I'm right), but I would class it as "cheating". Similar to David Blaine's "amazing" street levitations, what the live audience saw wasn't we saw on screen.

There was a lot of preamble involving lasers, surveying equipment, a brief glimpse of an accurate scale model of Tower Bridge, and some large mirros, all of which may or may not have been involved with the live illusion, but since I'm pretty sure we didn't see any of that in use, it was a bit meaningless. I know magic's all about misdirection but some things just aren't cricket.

Anyone else see it or have any thoughts about it?

In case you don't know, Franz Harary is the guy who made (among other things) a space shuttle and the Taj Mahal disappear. Both of those illusions were shown briefly on last night's program, with the space shuttle looking a lot more convincing than the Taj Mahal.

David

Azrael 5
11th November 2004, 04:58 PM
Smoke and mirrors.Ignore all the preamble about lasers and such,and yes its difficult to say what it loked like to the spectators;it looked good-but too impossible really!

epepke
12th November 2004, 11:38 PM
Originally posted by davidhorman
Did anyone catch Magic on BBC2 last night (UK)?

It was all about disappearances. The culmination was Franz Harary making London's Tower Bridge disappear. I don't know whether I should how he did it (and I'm 99.999% sure I'm right), but I would class it as "cheating". Similar to David Blaine's "amazing" street levitations, what the live audience saw wasn't we saw on screen.

A few months ago I got told on this forum that no self-respecting magician would do this kind of cheesy crap. But it seems that magicians are still doing this kind of cheesy crap.

davidhorman
13th November 2004, 08:46 AM
Originally posted by epepke
A few months ago I got told on this forum that no self-respecting magician would do this kind of cheesy crap. But it seems that magicians are still doing this kind of cheesy crap.

Here's the cheesy crap in question. The blur on frame 2 is from a flock of highly-trained pigeons who had been briefed to obscure the bridge for two frames while it disappeared ;)

http://horman.net/bridge.jpg

David

epepke
14th November 2004, 11:33 AM
Oh, man! I thought this was going to suck like David Copperfield's vanishing trick on the Statue of Liberty sucked. But this sucks much harder. Even Copperfield's illusion allowed for copter-mounted cameras and searchlights.