levitation ... huh

[Egaladeist]

Anybody remember when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear...it's all misdirection and optical illusion with maybe a little of Krezkin's ability to cause mass hallucination/hypnosis...he could make a whole audience believe they were outside on the beach or being chased by bears.

Eg

[The Duck]

That reminds me of the time I saw someone make the sphinx disapear on television, though I can't remember the magicians name .

[Cache]

Originally posted here by Spyder32
Cache: Are you sure they do that? I highly doubt it.. there have been live people see David Blaine do it LIVE in NYC and yeah.. Maybe with the TV Show Criss Angel dude.. but David Blaine has done it LIVE.

I am very certain it was David Blaine and that is what they said he did. The reactions are towards the "foot trick" that HTRegz had mentioned and then they put clips of him being completely lifted. I'm not saying people didn't think he was levitating, I'm just saying I doubt it was that high above the ground.

[hesperus]

I found what Cache refers to. Seems alot of magicians resent Blaine for this kind of this. This is what one of them says :

For the television special, Blaine performed the Balducci levitation in front of several hundred different groups of people, and the camera was angled only to catch their reactions. The method he used for this is the Balducci method, described above. While taping all the hundreds of performances, the producers keyed in on the audience members with the most visual reaction. After the Balducci levitation, the producers of the show had these same people stand by for another taping of the illusion, this time the camera would shoot from behind the audience members to get a
clear view of Blaine in action. The audience members were told that this second performance was to show them how magicians could use wires to levitate. And this is exactly what happened. A small harness and rig (just out of camera view) was set up and Blaine performed a standard wire-suspension.

It was said, in the television special, that no strings or wires were used to perform Blaine's levitation and there are no camera tricks. This is a lie, his show is basically based on camera tricks, editing and production. DAVID BLAIN IS A LUCKY, AMATEUR MAGICIAN THAT WAS IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME! Nothing more, mabey less.

http://www.magiclearn.50megs.com/photo2.html

The rest of the site is about how the trick is done.

[Cache]

Thanks hesperus. You helped by showing people I wasn't crazy

[©opy®ight]

I still think your crazy

CRAZY, CRAZY i sayy....

where u from in Ohio anyways ? I'm in a suburb near Cleveland called Mentor....

[Kthln01]

if you notice in all of Blains shows, the people stand behind him at an angle, as has been said before.

I have done it several times, and I assure you, as an overweight female, I have NO special powers. It is merely an optical illusion, and a very good one at that!

It has pretty much been explained. If you find someone who can do it and is willing to show you from all angles, then you will understand.

Some of Blains levitations are done using camera tricks and wires, though. With those levitations, he can rise up to a foot off the ground. The other trick only gives you 4-6 inches.

[Noia]

Google this:
Balducci Levitation

Thats how he does it apparently.

EDIT:
Or, I can just give you the answer: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=28391