A Quick Note About David Blaine!

As mentioned above, David Blaine is
not the originator of this illusion. He has
made the illusion popular, once again,
with his recent television special,

"David Blaine: Street Magic." The
unfortunate reality is, however, that we
never really get to see Blaine
performing the Balducci Levitation. We
watch several times as Blaine performs
it for others, but we never get to see it
for ourselves.

For the television special, Blaine
performed the Balducci levitation in
front of several different groups of
people, and the camera was there to
catch their reaction. The method he used
for this is the Balducci method,
described below. While videotaping
these various 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.

What Blaine did was a camera trick -
known as a post-production edit. The
audience at home watched the second
(wire suspension) levitation
performance, with the audience reaction
of the real levitation edited in. It was
said, in the television special, that no
strings or wires were used to perform
Blaine's levitation. This is true, no wires
or strings are required. Unfortunately,
we never got to see Blaine's real
levitation:

WE SAW A WIRE-SUSPENSION !

:-(