The Salt-Shaker Sorcerer

[Big Booger]

http://www.jokaroo.com/extremevideos/stunningillusion.html

Lovely misdirection and slide of hand type illusions.

[puargs]

The coin trick wasn't tough to follow, but that shio, man... holy hell. How'd he do that?


(by the way, could his accent get any worse? haha)

[cynix]

The coin trick wasn't tough to follow, but that shio, man... holy hell. How'd he do that?

I don't even get the coin trick

(by the way, could his accent get any worse? haha)

Being a French-Japanese brought up in the US doesn't help

[puargs]

[cynix]

[puargs]

You know, I was pretty sure he was palming it and flipping it between his fingers when he flipped his hand back and forth, but now I don't know. He may be using some sort of magnets with his bracelet and his ring, or he may just be really really good at palming stuff.

Edit: I decided this was worth a looksie, it seems a bunch of people have already analyzed this to death.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/46818

[puargs]

Ok, halfway down that forum is a link to another forum where this fella named manbitesdog explains it.

This one was a bit more subtle, and my explanation only works if the girls in the room with him were in on the trick (which is often what tv magicians do, to make you more likely to buy the trick).

First thing, the salt and pepper shakers are clearly plants. He pretends to look around for a while, but you can tell he was always going for the shakers when he eventually does pick them. Also notice that the shaker is relatively narrow.

Notice that his sleeves are rolled up until ~1:59, at which point his left sleeve is magically down around his wrist again. Somewhere between then and 2:20 he puts another shaker up his sleeve, probably in some sort of brace.

What he does is pretend to put his hand through the table, but what he actually does is just bend his fingers under his hand. Then using another magnet, he takes control of the shaker.

At this point he has control of the shaker, so then he uses a trick of perspective to make it seem like it is rising up. All he does is change it's angle relative to the table and drag it towards himself, and cover up the end we can see with his hand to make it seem like it is passing through the table.

All he does next is continue to hide the shaker with his left hand, while he pulls out the dummy shaker which is hidden in his sleeve and hand (which is actually a clear rubber or flexible shaker, with a glass bottom). Once he has the shaker under the table sufficiently hidden between the camera and his arm ( note how he swings his arm around at ~3:38 to cover the original shaker), he pulls out the rest of the rubber shaker in one motion while dropping the real shaker in such a way that from the cameras perspective you can't see it fall.

The real clincher is when at the very end he drops the dummy shaker: it lands with the sharp noise you'd expect from dropping glass on glass, but wobbles slightly as it comes to rest

He's right. If you watch closely, the rubber shaker wobbles and makes no discernable noise when he drops it on the table at the end.

[cynix]

He's right. If you watch closely, the rubber shaker wobbles and makes no discernable noise when he drops it on the table at the end.

I don't think it's wobbling as a rubber shaker would... when you drop a light tall cylindrical object on a hard surface it's normal for it to spin a bit before settling down because the base didn't land flat on the surface. I think I can hear a faint noise too...

But I also hear a noise of something dropping after his arm bends around, the shaker almost completes the transition, just before he moves his left hand away.

(I'm watching a different video source, hope it doesn't make a difference. The one I'm watching is the complete TV show, which includes this bit in the restaurant.)

[puargs]

Hmm... well, rubber or not, there are some parts where he's pulling it out that it doesn't quite perfecly line up with the one under the table. I'm thinking this dude is right, though the exact specifics may not be.