talkmagic.co.uk

Hey guys. Just quickly, in your wealths of knowledge, what is the best way to vanish someone from a body bag, on a stretcher/something similar, after the body has twitched inside?

I'd like to hear variations etc
Cheers

Try tying bricks to the body bag and dropping it in the River Humber. The body won't disappear, but it will be unrecognisable by the time it comes out.

Stick a stamp on it. Royal Mail are quite adept at making things vanish never to be seen again.

I dread to think why you are asking the question phrased like that!!

If you want tips on removing blood and viscera from carpets, PM me...

easy. Dont put the body inside the bag to start off with. put it under the bag, and have it roll off the back.

Prove the body has completely disappeared by thrusting sharp swords through the body bag in time to a catchy upbeat tune.

Yeah, I kinda realised the error of phrasing after I posted. Basically the last trick of the act will be something along the lines of a Chinese Water Torture Cell, or bullet catch. That goes wrong. I've been advised that you can't actually fake your death on stage, so am thinking of a way to make my supposed 'body' vanish whilse on stage.

ted1992 wrote:I've been advised that you can't actually fake your death on stage,

The end of Romeo & Juliet would take a different twist.

Ted--You are thinking wrong! Totally wrongly!

IF you managed to perform an illusion like the Water Torture Cell or that most dangerous of tricks, The Bullet Catch-- you TOTALLY NEGATE the effect of these dramatic illusions by having them go wrong!!!
It would be a waste of time, money & apparatus.

If the Act were in a play and the effect went wrong for dramatic purposes or at a Magician's Convention where you wanted to surprise or jolt the 'experts?', then there would be some point in performing this way.
But for a lay audience the Vanish would be a very disappointing ANTI climax to a couple of the most dramatic tricks in Magic.

Had a similar request recently from a young magician who wanted to perform the Sub Trunk but it goes wrong and all that happens is he would disappear from the Trunk & appear in the audience.

Allen Tipton

I'm not fully getting what you seem to wish to accomplish, but briefly; the real key as to what would work best centers on the setting and degree of control you will have in staging such a stunt.

When I did "Mind Blower" years ago, the gurney situation was nothing more than an asrah switch we did as the EMTs were covering my bloody corpse... I simply rolled out and under the drum kit stand with a folding Asrah gimmick set into place... when the EMTs "trip" and cause the vanish to happen, it really wasn't much more than flipping the thing around so the form hung on the back of the stretcher... very old thinking.

I can't help but think this same type of handling would be practical in the majority of cases but I would be amiss to not mention the old "fake assistant" method... one of the lads carrying the gurney is just a puppet (shell) into which the performer (to be vanished) simply steps into while the body is being covered...

I've used both and then some, but I think the moral of the story is, look up some of the older methods first, before you get too invested in physical gimmicks/tables, etc. Tarbell has a decent selection of ideas on this course.


In Addition to Alan's Points... I've done a few "surprise" bits with big escapes and effects, including the Water Cell, in which I not only employed the popular double-exchange ending, but we made the thing vanish... it was a one time only gig made possible by unique circumstances, in other words, it's not the sort of thing one can consider to be "practical"... to do it more than the one time removes the surprise factor -- the psychology such a bit demands.

Anyone that wants to do a big escape and place a magician's twist to it, doesn't understand what it means to be an escape artists. Escape work has little to nothing to do with MAGIC and being a "Magician". The psychology behind how it is presented, how one builds suspense, etc. is not even remotely close to what one finds in a Sub Trunk or even the Copperfield Death Saw type bit; both of which are ILLUSIONS.

If you invest the time and money to stage a decent escape bit, why ruin it by cheapening it and turning it into a magic trick? Why rob yourself of the media attention you will earn, when you do such bits on the legit basis and in a manner that does not smack of being a typical magician's PR gag?

It's really easy to make a great idea -- a stunt -- come off as cheap. The first trap being when we try to over-complicate it.

Craig Browning wrote:

but I would be amiss to not mention the old "fake assistant" method... one of the lads carrying the gurney is just a puppet (shell) into which the performer (to be vanished) simply steps into while the body is being covered...

Shell assistants?

Who says magic methods have to be boring?!?