Veronica Lake's magic
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fancy_joy — 19 years ago(May 15, 2006 04:46 AM)
I think for some parts they are camera tricks and some parts she really did magic tricks (especially the trick hiding 3 balls in a hand) But it looks so amazing for me how she did the magic tricks so convincing.
This is the most fun I've had without lubricant -
cptchaos-1 — 19 years ago(October 29, 2006 10:10 PM)
I just de-interlaced this scene from the DVD and went through it frame by frame, so I have about as clear a look at it as possible:
The 'balls' at the beginning are a combination of a ball and one or more half-ball shells. To increase the number of 'balls', she peels a half-shell off the ball, and holds it round-side-out between her fingers towards the camera so that it looks like another ball. Then to reduce the number of balls, she pushes the ball back into a half-shell. That actually must have taken a good deal of practice.
Later, when she reaches into the guy's coat and pulls 4 balls out, they're really balls, and that's obviously just done with an edit.
Then, when she grabs that guy's cigarette out of its holder and turns it into a cigar, she's actually just picking the cigar up from the table next to her, which is blocked by the guy's body from the camera (it looks like a rubber cigar, too.)
The water pitcher looks like a pitcher sealed within a pitcher, with water between the two layers, to make it look like water had just been poured into the glass full of confetti (again with the help of a strategically placed edit.)
When she's playing with the ace of hearts in front of Gates:- Hold your hand out in front of you, fingers together, palm down.
- Slide a card length-wise between your pinky and your ring finger.
- Bend the card over so the other edge is held between your index and middle finger.
- Turn your hand so your palm is up, and you can't see the card.
Now, she does this with one hand by bending her middle two fingers in towards her palm, holding the card between her middle two fingers' nails and her thumb, grabbing the edges of the card with the insides of her pinky and index finger, then flipping her middle two fingers back out, taking the card with them to the position behind her hand as in the 4 steps listed above (if that makes any sense.) That must have taken a good deal of practice, and who knows how many takes I see how she did it, but with my short, stubby fingers I can't even begin to duplicate it, so I guess she had long fingers and was very dexterous!
The 'disappearing' at the end is a processed matte shot, cross-faded to a shot of the feathers lying on the floor with her then standing behind the column.
And of course, it was actually Martha Mears' singing dubbed in later.
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cranialsi — 14 years ago(April 27, 2011 02:39 AM)
Shiny thigh high waders, wow I need to go out fishing more often if the women are dressed like her. I was trying to imagine a remake with say, Uma Thurman in the Veronica Lake part. Great scene with what was visually going on with the magic.