criss angel botched "illusion" now exposed as a ph

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Postby Happy Toad » Oct 4th, '05, 23:43



I'm with you Bannafish, saw the thread didn't agree so didn't post. I wonder why the original poster has a handle that starts snipe?
I've never seen Chris Angel perform but I hate to see the guy's that are out there making it work getting knocked by unknown people that are not making it work.

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Postby Mahoney » Oct 7th, '05, 18:50

When I first read this thread I thought it was hilarious and a bit rubbish how he's using stooges. But on second thoughts, what makes this different than using an assistant to achive an effect on stage? Ok i guess the use of blocking the cameras is pretty poor but you see what I mean?

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Postby Gordo » Oct 8th, '05, 11:43

Take a pill, sniper. You didn't "bust" Angel, dude! There are a dozen other explanations for what you saw. Cameraman's shadow, boom mike, etc. But even if by some miracle you're right.. then so what?

Does the use of "stooges' enable one to walk up a building? Hang from fish hooks while suspended from a helicopter? Or any of the other cool illusions and stunts Criss Angel does? No, it doesn't!

On a recent "Mind Freak" TV show, I saw a taxi drive up to Criss, and then he lifted the front end right up off the ground. Of course, you'd say that this was accomplished because the taxi driver was "a paid stooge"! :roll:

People with that attitude bother me, because we should be trying to appreciate the illusion rather than trying to figure it out. We should allow ourselves to be mesmorized by the performance, and thereby be entertained, instead of being some sort of "magic geek" that goes around pointing a finger and shouting "I know how he did that!" like you had just discovered Plutonium, or something.

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Postby dionysus » Oct 8th, '05, 22:03

Good catch. Personally? I don't tune in anymore and it's not just the overdone goth schtick replete with the cheezy 80's hair, the pseudo-religious imagery, the blond bimbo side-kicks and annoying stoned-out lisp. What's irritating to me is the claim to originality, the intensive editing, the gaping bystanders singing his praises prior to the act and the salivating hangers-on calling him the greatest magician ever. He may put a different spin on his tricks and perform them quite smoothly at times but it's simply nothing out of the ordinary...

And that levitation? Air-brushed wires, paid audiences, camera angles, elaborate machines...they all do wonders...

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Postby greyhare » Oct 11th, '05, 03:59

Just a curious game my wife and I have started playing during his show is to spot the number of people in locations we know to be crowded with tourists (living close to Las Vegas) AND counting the number of spectators with cameras. You will find that both of these numbers are to low to be real, so yes he is setting up the perfect performing situations.

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Postby Renato » Oct 11th, '05, 17:08

Thing is though, magic is all about wonderment and amazement. We as magicians may get annoyed about the fact that some guys don't use sleight of hand and rely on camera trickery, but does that mean that they're not a magician? Perhaps not in a technical sense, but surely they're astonishing audiences and amazing them which is what magic is about? I can understand it when people get annoyed as he's only amazing them with camera tricks and not skill, it's all fake, but so long as the audience don't realise that then the effect still retains the wonder.

HOWEVER

I did not see the show in question but if I have understood the effect right then I can't see many people not thinking it was stooges - it's absolutely impossible to magically transport someone from one place to another without people realising it (except maybe through hypnosis), so the logical conclusion must be that stooges were used.

I understand both sides of the argument, and it really is just a case of whether we look at it from an audiences' view or from a magicians' view.

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Postby Mandrake » Oct 11th, '05, 17:18

IMHO, using camera trickery is roughly on the same level as a singer merely miming to a record - it looks similar to the real thing, but it's not.

(Just my fourpenn'orth! :D)

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Postby Demitri » Oct 11th, '05, 18:31

dionysus - I'm just curious. You are bashing Angel for using rigs and "machines" to perform his levitations. Is this because you think every OTHER magician just floats off the ground? Newsflash - They're all using SOMETHING. People can't float....

I won't go back into the hallway illusion (though many of you still haven't realized the effect was for the TV audience, not the people in the hallway), but I don't believe that every single person on camera during his shows is a paid stooge/actor.

Thousands of amateur magicians perform convincing levitations all over the world and astonish people. They do it for free, with no TV cameras. For a reasonable price, anyone in the world can learn how to perform multiple variations of a levitation effect. What makes you think Angel just said "forget about that, I'll just pay them to pretend and fix it all in post-production"? To think on this level is just stupid.

If people are going to continue with this line of thinking, then I suggest we begin calling other people frauds for the very same reasons.

David Blaine is a fraud! In his own levitation, the camera only shows a few angles - it doesn't show him in full 360! FRAUD!!

Copperfield is a fraud! We never actually SAW him walk through the great wall! He had that screen up and the camera just cut away to the other side! CAMERA TRICKS!!! FRAUD!!! And the people in the front row of that Statue of Liberty vanish - Their clapping wasn't very convincing. I think they were paid actors. I'm also not fully convinced that David didn't slip old Lady Liberty a 20 to "go along" with the trick.

Every single agreement to the "fraud" line is almost always followed by reasons the person hates Criss Angel. That's cool. Stop watching his stuff if you don't like him. If his persona doesn't work for you, fine - but just because he looks like a reject from a Whitesnake video, doesn't mean he's not a skilled and talented illusionist/magician. Your opinion of the person does not dictate their level of skill.

I think David Blaine is the most boring magician in the world - the sound of his voice makes me wish I could jab small shards of glass into his face - but I still think he's an excellent magician.

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Postby MagicIain » Oct 11th, '05, 18:37

D'you know I'm really glad I went 'against the grain' as it were, in this post. It's turned out to be quite an informative lesson on magician's perception vs magician's performance.

Brilliant.

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Postby dionysus » Oct 11th, '05, 23:58

I'm just curious. You are bashing Angel for using rigs and "machines" to perform his levitations. Is this because you think every OTHER magician just floats off the ground? Newsflash - They're all using SOMETHING. People can't float....


Try telling his groupies these are just tricks...have you seen some of those nuts in his forum? Yikes...

The reason why Angel is accused of 'Fraud' is because he either tacitly or explicitly suggests his illusions are paranormal which they obviously aren't...[/quote]

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Postby Demitri » Oct 12th, '05, 04:35

Groupies are groupies, man. Try telling young girls Britney Spears has no talent - they'll still love them. Again - the nature of the fans hardly speaks to the proficiency of the performer.

Yes, Angel has a persona that conveys the concept of modern day shaman - but how is he different from any performer? He's selling himself as paranormal? OH NO!!!

Did Houdini come out and tell everyone "Hey, this might look like magic, but I really have a big mirror" or "Don't worry folks - I have the key to these padlocks in my mouth, I'm perfectly safe"

Of course not! We don't come out and ANNOUNCE that what we're doing isn't real. Anyone older than 6 already knows that - but anyone with an interest or taste for magic and illusion will suspend that belief and enjoy the show. I say again - calling Criss Angel a fraud for selling himself as something he's not, would IMMEDIATELY mean that everyone else who practices magic or illusion is a fraud.

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Postby rumburak » Oct 13th, '05, 13:42

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic in other boards as well. It is really a subject where opinions widely differ.

Did Houdini come out and tell everyone "Hey, this might look like magic, but I really have a big mirror" or "Don't worry folks - I have the key to these padlocks in my mouth, I'm perfectly safe"

Of course not! We don't come out and ANNOUNCE that what we're doing isn't real. Anyone older than 6 already knows that - but anyone with an interest or taste for magic and illusion will suspend that belief and enjoy the show. I say again - calling Criss Angel a fraud for selling himself as something he's not, would IMMEDIATELY mean that everyone else who practices magic or illusion is a fraud.


Actually, Houdini DID claim exactly that later in his career and he DID expose how he achieved his feats. Did this decrease his audience's admiration? No, actually the opposite - people admired the skill he actually possessed. They did appreciate that he did not stoop to use gimmicked tools and shills to tie him up.

Remember, magic is not about trickery or fooling people - it is an art of creation. The art of creating amazement and wonder (my favorite quote from R. Osterlind). Sometimes, it involves doing exactly what you claim to do.

There is an important difference between a magician who achieves his results with genuine "skill" - misdirection and showmanship included - and somebody who uses stooges, gaffed props and camera tricks.

Imagine a Mentalist stepping up to a stranger and telling him the name of his first love (this actually happened in a German TV show). Does this convince laymen that a Mentalist can do this every time? Or do they rather believe that it was stooged like all the rest of the show?

Well, there are two kinds of people: a) Those who do believe that a decent Mentalist can do this sort of thing and that anybody who doesn't do things exactly as seen on TV must be no good, and b) Those that believe that the entire stuff is just a huge scam since this effect is absolutely impossible and cannot be reproduced outside of a TV production.

Hence, the fake mind reading is harmful not only to the show where it is presented, but also to people doing similar effects. It may not have involved a shill at all - there are many ways to gain the information. But if the audience starts to think "stooge", the impression of the entire show is destroyed. To make matters worth, the spectator might be debriefed later by his friends. And once they learn that e.g. he wrote the information down to help him focussing, they will yell "Ah, that's how it's done" even before he has a chance to explain that the paper was ripped up immediately afterwards before anybody had the chance to read it.

All of this could have been avoided if the entire presentation was shown on TV without omissions.

So, on the other hand, if a performer is videotaped when doing an actual show. Only those actions are cut out that the audience does not see due to misdirection. The show can be reproduced in a close-up setting. And any performer who does so will receive full credits for his skills and the fact that his show is so good that is was worth being shown on TV.

Is this not a better show after all?

I think many people in this thread made the mistake to believe that the viewers are stupid. In my experience, audiences are not stupid and they can spot if a performance could not possibly be reproduced close-up or on stage. They know that they miss "something". Regardless of what that "something" is, it will diminish their appreciation of the show and even of magicians in general.

They won't believe you could do an ID routine without a stooge or learn secret names from somebody who is not a shill. You cannot float objects unless the wires are cut out in post-production. Unless you get a chance to prove them wrong. And guess what? You cannot prove them wrong since you genuinely cannot do what was shown on TV!

No performer (including Derren Brown himself!) can step up to random people on the streets and do "what Derren Brown did on TV" since there will inevitably be skeptics around that saw the TV show and will yell "But he didn't do XXX on TV!" Yeah, right!

So is all TV magic bad nowadays? Probably not, Gandalf fighting the Balrog is still captivating although people know that the "work" happened in a post-production studio and the battle cannot be reproduced on stage. But the point is that it doesn't have to be! It is the entire story that matters. Watch the scene in separation, and the effect evaporates. Watch it as part of the movie, following the flight from the orks in the impressive mountain halls, and it is as mesmerizing as magic can possibly hope to be!

But many TV productions are claiming to show "magicians" and then show actors, cutting and post-productions, instead. Excessive orgies of preshow-work, shills, and cuts. Rather than "magicians". Are current magicians and their effects so bad that they are not worth being shown on TV without post-production?

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Postby Happy Toad » Oct 13th, '05, 14:36

Thought this might be an appropiate place to put this link

http://www.filecabi.net/v/file/chrissangelglass/wmv

"Hodge scored for Forest after 22 seconds - totally against the run of
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Postby dorian » Oct 13th, '05, 15:42

Sorry to go off post for a minute but nice link Mr Toad as I had not really seen that much of his work before but I enjoyed the clip and as long as he is bringing magic into peoples lives that's good enough for me.


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Postby moodini » Oct 13th, '05, 20:05

Hey Happy Toad......

Like he said in the video at least it is "one continuous shot, with not cutaways...." accept to take my shoes off I guess!

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