Yeah, this was cool. Does anyone know what songs were used?

Love stuff like this. He's got some really nice little bits in there, bit's I've not seen before. Like Penn said there were some bits I caught, but some bit's that were extremely well done. All this needs is a little refinement and it'll be amazing.


For reference I have high standards when it come to magic (by which I mean I'm not easily fooled). My little brother is a professional magician who designs tricks for TV shows, I'm used to seeing very good magic done very well and this guy is up there.

I hate magic tricks unless they are explained.
I don't like being left in the dark.
There's no "magic". It's all tricks. So I want to know how they are done.

That was a downright beautiful routine.

Lucky for you some one asked him on YT "Will you be teaching the whole act?" and he replied "Yep ".

Well, i don't watch to be taught the act, I have no interest in performing these tricks. I just want to know how they are done.

*Promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, July 15th, 2015 10:34pm PDT - promote requested by Mordhaus.

*quality slight of hand there. I also caught a few of his moves, but was flummoxed at others. I absolutely LOVED his use of smoke. Now that's how you do it.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by newtboy.

To a certain extent, but I would contend that flawlessly pulling off complex sleight of hand in front of multiple cameras, 2 professional magicians/tricksters and an entire studio audience is, imo, a form of magic.

That was fun and entertaining and what else can you ask of card tricks?
My other old favorite was Ricky Jay and his 52 assistants routine...

Well, you'd better avoid 99% of videos of magic tricks then.

Try and figure it out. For me that's part of the fun. How did he do that? How is it possible? If I can't figure it out then he's done a great job. Why can't you just take pleasure in being amazed?

I do avoid 99% of videos of magic tricks then.
As for the rest, see http://videosift.com/video/Magician-Shin-Lim-Fools-Penn-and-Teller#comment-1886445

Amazing. First thing I thought was he looks sort of like Joseph Prince the televangelist.

The point is someone thought they would let you know that there was a way to see how the trick was done which you seemed to be interested in. Being 'taught' the trick is as good as being shown how it was done. You then had to reply with some douchey comment to someone who was just letting you know there was a way to get what you asked for. Not very cool on your part. At least that's how it reads to me.

I'm not interested in being taught how to do it. It's a bit different than just showing how it was done.
When you teach a trick, you show and explain a lot more nuance in how each move is performed, something that is somewhat irrelevant when just explaining it.

Not at all so.
The nuance IS how the 'trick' is done, so if you aren't interested in the nuance of each move, distraction, slight of hand, hidden chemical smoke generator, card/pen pocketing, flourish, etc., then you really don't want to know how he did it.

When I watch "how it's made" segment on helicopters, it doesn't mean I want to know every single detail so that I can build my own.

Building a helicopter is not the same as 'magic', where the important part IS all the little things you do to make it look magic.

Or do you just want an explanation like "he does it with slight of hand"?... because that is how he did it in a nut shell.

Thank you for posting this. I watched and rewatched the routine a few times on my DVR and am still blown away by it.

I cannot imagine how he could possibly have done some of the things he's done, like making two cards switch hands at a distance in full view. Or making a functional stack of cards swap hands with a single, signed card... *WTF?!

Anyone have any reasonable explanations for how this could at all be feasible?

Just as good is the magician who fooled Penn & Teller by getting Penn's signed card in new-deck order inside a wrapped box of playing cards, while his hands were in full view the whole time.

Mind = blown.

Adding video to channels (Wtf) - requested by lucky760.

Sounded like the Inception soundtrack to me (by Hans Zimmer).

I saw him slip some cards inside his vest and drop some under the table. I also noticed he never actually put the card in the plastic bag but behind it.

Other than that I have no clue what was going on. Very cool.

There were a lot of different tricks in there. A part of me really wonders if the mat on the table is a "printer/scanner" and that "marker" is extremely important. There may be a time-released chemical that helps all of this go down (meanwhile he may actually have a small printer on his body somewhere). When the smoke appears that is when the "card" is doing it's chemical thing (as you could smother one card with this chemical making it fully black, but then the printer could change the chemical pattern again as it is scanned and therefore reset the card with the other signature...).

The truth is, I have no idea how it was done, but I think what he is wearing (and possibly what is underneath--not to mention the pockets that are very hard to determine their location or size), possible chemical reactions used in a few different ways, a slim printer, and a slim scanner. Plus all of the sleight of hand tricks you did or did not catch...

If true, he used some fairly complicated technological prowess, besides his agility to get this done. But, for ages untold the creations made and used by magicians are just as important sometimes as the act.

This would also be THE perfect trick to give Penn & Teller the slip, as they may have never ran across anything like this (I've run into tech that could easily do lots of this--scanner through things, etc; it just depends on what is in that pen exactly...think of it kind of like invisible ink, but it need not stay that way and it more than likely can be made to "dissolve" as some sort of inert gas).

Everything was done here flawlessly, even the music feed into the act making it harder to catch.

Phew, that is long enough and I may only have 50% or so right on this one.

The magic is in the vest...which is where the marker clearly goes at 00:01:56. So how were P&T impressed by that fact.

Yeah, no..

They definitely mean the second marker vanish @~3:25

Two options for that one, either also into the vest, but obscured from view by his left forearm, or it is behind his right hand and he dropped it into his pants. I decree that magicians should only be filmed in 60 frames a second.

That's the obvious one, there's no way Penn and Teller didn't know how that's done (it's behind his right hand then he drops it into a pocket in his trousers).

Also, in all of this remember that Penn and Teller are showmen. How would the show look if they just sat there and said 'yeah, well, we know how all that's done' every time?

This is awesome

Magicians will go to amazing lengths to get a trick to work. However, the key part to just about all tricks is distraction. Not just to make you look away when a clever switch is made, but a well designed trick is a distraction in itself. It'll make you think that the amazing thing happening is one thing when in fact the amazing thing already happened when you didn't know amazing things were happening and now it's making the faux amazing thing look even more amazing!

Your idea with the ink disappearing on the card is a great example. You're trying to work out how the card ends up blank when he put the signed card on the table when the signed card was never put on the table. The card on the table is blank simply because he put a blank card on the table. The switch had already been made and you're looking for a solution to something that was never a problem

Magicians prey on you assumptions, and they're brazen, and a lot more skilled than you'd think. You won't work a lot of the stuff out because you'll think the way it's done is impossible, that no one could actually do what the magician is doing. Fan some cards out in front of someone and ask them to pick one at random. A good card magician can force you to pick a certain card and you'd never suspect it. I'm given to believe that Paul Daniels can do this behind his back. It's not easy to do and most people don't believe it's possible, so if you can do it you're performing the miracle at the very start. Everything after that seems incredible. You're looking for a trick that's already happened.

I love magic. I love being fooled. I enjoy the challenge of working out how things are done and wish I had the time to learn to do it properly.

I was providing a more "technology tailored" way to fool us and how it might create a great magic trick. I also love magic tricks that make use of self-created "magical" devices (his vest counts towards what I'm talking about).

As I mentioned there are probably quite a few ways to do this trick and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the most likely way the majority of this was done was via misdirection and cues. As it is true with almost everything, the simplest answer usually is the truth.

I however, became interested with he kept moving his hands (and the "cards") to the same spots or moving them, repeating, the same movement over and over again right before the "change" or flip occurred (with other things as well like the smoke--and yes, I know it was more than likely misdirection--but, sometimes smoke is just smoke ).

That is what made me think of a scanner (mostly because I'm a computer/engineering/physics hippie and I have seen scanners that can be made to look exactly like that mat; but I also have learned a bit of magic, with that instead of becoming an amateur magician I instead learned about magic and it's history instead). But, like you said and I also said above in my comment, this all can/could be done through many various schemes. Using differing ways of that same scheme/idea, the same mechanics and/or devices, with sleight of hand and a lot of misdirection (very well done too, simply because there was so very much of it needed--which Penn & Teller commended him on in their own way).

His jacket for example is obviously HIS engineered creation. It has a lot of hidden and secret functionality; in fact it may have been the underlying foundation that allowed the whole trick to work so well (you never know just what exactly is the magician's biggest helper in many tricks). That is what I love, personally, about magic is the engineering and love--the workmanship--that can go into it. Every great magician definitely has that engineering facet to their personality; they all know how to create a device that gives them just what they need. I've seen so many magical devices and how they were used and how they're made as well and I must say, it is a terribly interesting thing to learn about and see done. Sometimes you have devices made just to perform one extremely small function, just to add that little bit of "panache" to a trick...

Every magician--good and average--however do have or need one thing in common no matter what, and this refers to what you talk about (and this magician may be leagues ahead of others, making all tricks completed in that same manner seem simple and mundane compared to what he can accomplish with the exact same, extremely fundamental, aspect to magic; pulling off tricks that almost all magicians would believe to be impossible using such a standard fare of abilities and methods): agility and sleight of hand. With this comes the uses for that "god-like" speed and manipulation. Use that with engineered tools (not necessarily what I mentioned--the scanner, printer, and ink method--but, things easier to craft and more likely to be used like his vest) and it can suddenly make any of the simplest tasks (or even tricks that other magicians perform) we do everyday, extraordinary if not miraculous.

I thought I'd add my idea, because I like to figure these tricks out as well; as I'm sure many of you are as well.

Overall, if I was Penn and Teller, I'd be most impressed with his ability to keep his showmanship intact while obviously needing great concentration on the trick at the same time--not to mention he keeps showing superb sleight of hand the whole time.

So many magicians are just amazing to watch. The tools they create (which can be so complicated that you'd never believe that someone would create such a thing or something fairly complicated to complete one very easy task) sometimes never let their presence be known--if done right. But in other cases you know there is "something" helping the magician, but you can't begin to imagine what exactly he has created or what exactly it is accomplishing for him.

I do wish they'd give us a general idea how these tricks are performed, without destroying the "magic" involved. Just tell us general things, like "misdirection and a magical device", etc... They don't need to explain it into it's minutiae.

I'll always love magic and the amazing use of the mind and the body to create illusions grand and small (or "magic" that just tests the limits OF the mind or the body; feats, as it were).

When the body and mind work together in perfect unison to create such wonderful uses of sleight of hand, feats, and "magical" devices...these are the type of people that will continue--hopefully for as long as humans exist--to create magic as real as it can get. Waking up the child inside us all!

/length

Like I said in my first post above my little brother is a professional magician who designs a lot of these tricks and devices for TV shows. All I can say is you'd be amazed the lengths a magician will go to just to make a simple looking trick work. I think you'd be fascinated by it all.

The Magic Circle is a good organisation to join if you have an interest in magic. You need to be able to perform magic and be interested in learning how to do more, but that's all part of the fun.

An interesting aside about magical devices, they are never patented, as patent applications have to be made public. This means the devices themselves tend to be pretty expensive as the inventor may have only a short period of time in which to sell his idea before others start joining in. Simple magical effects (just the method for a trick printed on a piece of paper) can sometimes sell for hundreds of pounds. Everything about the magical world is strange and different. If you've got a keen mind and the technical know-how there may be gold in them thar hills for you

I've watched much of the clip at 1/4 speed and learned a little. SPOILER ALERT.

The marker vanishes are now definitely obvious. The first time he slips it into his vest. The second time he flips it to the back of his fingers then drops his hand behind him and discards it.





So, the vest definitely does come into play a lot. He also pushed a card into the lower opening in his vest at about 3:45 while misdirecting by spinning a card in his other hand.



That's all good and fine, but other things are not simple sleight of hand.

At 5:10 with his back turned he shows us the signed card with the hand behind his back. Then in full view he simply turns the card against his back. Then his other hand raises up from the other side of his body to reveal the "same" signed card. (The one that was in view, btw, he tucks up into his vest at this point, keeping in hand the blank that was paired with it.) The only possible explanation for the same card being in two places at once is there must be multiple copies of each signed card, which means he has stooges who sign the exact same way every time or he has a technological advantage like others have mentioned (tiny scanner and printer).

The other thing that confounds is how he has a signed card in one hand and a stack of cards in the other. Then in full view the tall stack shrinks down to (approximately) one card and the single card grows into a stack instantaneously. I guess there must be some kind of technological solution to this as well, but I don't know how a functional stack of cards (and not just the appears of a stack of cards) could collapse and appear... unless they aren't functional and it's a trick deck that can easily expand or shrink to look like a deck or single card.

At 6:00 when he just shakes the bag and the signed card inside changes to the other signed card, I think he just flips the bag around with his shake motion and that the single card is printed on the front with one signature card and the other signature card on the back.

That's the only thing that makes sense... which again requires a special scanner and printer setup... I guess.

This might interest you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y3jUoNBreE&feature=youtu.be

The harsh reality is that this is TV, and you only have the word of Penn and Teller that it's all honest and as it seems. Penn and Teller are famous for making people believe things that aren't true...

I remember a VHS tape my father owned, made by Penn & Teller to allow you to perform magic tricks with your friends. It was made way back in the early 90's and when they were doing things on Showtime, I believe. It required you to do the same thing you've just mentioned to successfully pull off the trick.

Anyway, as I just mentioned, the tricks on that VHS tape were done the same as what you described. You "must" take the word of whomever you're listening to as "the truth". Because if they do lie, about certain elements, a trick can be performed by them and you may never be able to figure out how the trick is done. Unless you realize that someone you off-handedly let tell you a "fact" and you automatically allowed this "fact" to be the truth without any scrutiny, is finally re-looked at to see if it's validity still holds up.

Penn & Teller have you perform this same "trick" or psychological manipulation in their VHS tape magic trick to use on others and as you mentioned we are assuming that Penn & Teller are indeed on the up & up when another person on their show performs a magic trick... If they lie to us, as you mentioned, a trick can automatically be accomplished since we've given Penn & Teller a "free pass" to tell us whatever they want.

As you mentioned Penn & Teller do in fact use this methodology to perform some of their tricks and as I mentioned they even sold "magic tricks" that used this very same idea to create a magic trick or an illusion. So I wouldn't put it past them that they may indeed use this same thing on their own TV show...

We just have to hope they won't.

I thought I'd make another post for those that don't realize what @robbersdog49 has posted. Since I don't mention it in my other post really.

If you wish to know how this particular magic trick was performed, watch the video @robbersdog49 provided--remember, "spoilers"! It will show you, essentially how this trick was performed. It sadly seems this trick was pulled off far easier (and in a more standard way) then we originally realized or thought.