I remember this going out as I was obsessed with TV cameras. It is still a great illusion and shows how talented Paul Daniels was; very much respected a master of grand illusion.
Daniel's makes this trick work very well. It puzzled people for years but is quite obvious really. Daniel's delays and controls the audience member and makes sure he doesn't look round the back at key times. All tricks where people go in boxes and disappear are done the same way. You can even see the join on the stairs that opens up to allow the camera to enter. Showmanship sells it which Danuels was a master at.
Still a great illusion - featuring BBC crew 7 with Ron Green, Peter Fox and Doug Watson. Always puzzled me how it was accomplished; there was only one pickup during the recording when Doug was slightly off getting the camera into the box, apart from that it was one take, and that's come from Doug himself. I suppose the camera was taken out the back of the crate, with the rear panel hinged down to provide an unloading ramp. Notice that as soon as we cut to Ron on camera 1, we cannot see behind the crate - camera 4 would be hidden from view by the crate. As soon as the forklift raises the crate, Ron's camera (on the Mole Richardson crane, the same as Peter on camera 2) cranes up to keep camera 4 hidden by the crate. Then when the forklift turns round, camera 4 is taken off screen right - notice also the crate doesn't turn round so far so that we could see that by this time, camera 4 has gone from the crate.
+Andy Onion I can't see how that's possible at all. Unless I've misunderstood what you're trying to say, at no point when it's lifted is any side of the crate off screen for anywhere near enough *time* for the cable to be unplugged and the Link 125 removed - look how long it took for Doug to put the camera into the crate. And in any case, minus a recording being played back (the image in the Quantel box is too similar to what we also see from the mole camera) or a miniature colour camera being used (such a camera didn't exist at all back then), how do you explain the image in the Quantel box in the corner still being present until Mr Daniels pulls the trigger if the camera is removed from the crate while the crate is lifted?
I was a TC Studio engineer when this was recorded. I could reveal all as our department had a mission on its collective hands but I'm open to being bribed or asked nicely. Not sure that I should though. The only thing I will spill is that you were NOT looking at a Link 125.
When you say "you were NOT looking at a Link 125" do you mean that the camera itself isn't a Link 125 (but a smaller camera with falsework to make it look bigger), or do you mean that the footage from 6:20 onwards isn't coming from a Link whereas the earlier footage around 4:40 is? There is a noticeable difference in the framing of the background relative to the edge of the "porthole" in the shed: in the later footage you can see a lot more of the background scenery, suggesting that the camera lens is closer to the window. Are we getting warmer with the theories about a hand-held camera that Doug hides in the ceiling in the brief interval between Paul Daniels' countdown and the shed falling to pieces?
@Darren Gregg OK! To Darren and Mortimer - I shall probably rot in hell for this but - hey it's 40+ years ago, so here goes.... A few things to notice first: In the few shots that you see of the cameraman operating Cam4 you will notice that he never lets go of the steering ring - there's a reason for that. Secondly, you will notice that the stage has a small raised dais on it approximately 7" at the first step. Right! Now the 'camera'.... The BBC's art department got the blueprints of the largest Link125 carcass they would allow us to see and they made a papier mache carcass just about strong enough to hold the weight of an Ikegame HL75 shoulder-mount ENG unit. The Ikegame was somehow held (probably tons of gaffer tape) inside the 'zoom lens' case of the paper carcass. OK! Now the camera pedestal: Normally a pedestal beefy enough to support a Link125 carcass + zoom lens assembly (takes 3 fully fit, muscular engineers to lift it without the zoom lens!) is gassed up to some unbelievably phenomenal gas pressure so that the camera can be raised and lowered with one pinky finger during normal operation - HOWEVER - this pedestal had to collapse fully in a very short amount of time - while PD + stooge walk around the box - so it had no gas in it but the 'carcass' only held an Ike HL75 plus a standard Link125 viewfinder - so it was reasonably easy for one man to support the whole lot with one arm. So, the entire programme is shot with 4 Links + 1 Ikegame that thinks its a Link! (Our part was to engineer an interface between the Link125 viewfinder, the Link125 zoom electronics and the - Japanese - HL75!) When the carefully set-up stooge joins PD on stage he, naturally, selects CAM4! It gets wheeled into the box and the box is closed. At about the same time as this programme was recorded, bullet cams had just about been invented - but they were only monochrome (see the 'shots' from the inside!) A bullet cam was procured and built into a concealed panel inside the box which could be revealed when the cameraman went in. The signal was piped to VAR via a radio link borrowed from the talkback circuits. So, while the box is on the ground and PD and stooge are walking round it, the cameraman has removed the Ikegame from the 'zoom lens', laid it on its side (approx 6.2" in thickness) and passed it through a panel in the dais to a waiting programme official. The carcass is crushed flat (paper don't forget!) and the bits passed through the same slot. The viewfinder is removed and slid through the slot (approx 6" thick). Finally the ped is collapsed fully and also passed through the same slot. A Link ped fully collapsed is about 6.8" high!!! - So not much room for error! Thus - when the box is raised, the 'camera' has already gone. The cameraman goes up with the box while the production team make sure that images from the bullet cam only shoot relatively monochrome background through the 'window' in the box so no-one notices the crap quality. The rest I'm sure you can fill in for yourselves... Now shoot me! PS: The guy in the comment below this has it smack on the nose! Read his comment.
@Darren Gregg If our department wasn't involved in the illusion I can't comment because I don't know. Sorry. In the camera trick we had to make the Ike drive from Link controls - so we had a hand in it. Try to find a surviving member of the production crew from that era. Good luck!
I can die happy now. No, seriously, this one has been bugging me since I first saw it broadcast. I get more enjoyment out of knowing how these things are done, than the trick itself. Thanks Ian.
Right, I've been through the video in detail, and I'm pretty sure I know how it's done. 0:41 - Andy is introduced from the audience. Almost certainly a real random audience member. The trick doesn't need an actor, and Daniels never went in for that sort of thing. If an actor, there is the likelihood of being found out, and this would be unbelievably good acting from 'Andy'. There are plenty of other clues to indicate that this is a random person. 1:29 - handle and string - handle triggers the box falling apart at the end. The string opens the roof compartment. 1:42 - Andy is shown round the box. There are no visible trap doors on the box, or other compartments not mentioned. The walls are made of solid planks 2:20 - Daniels goes on to show all of the cameras available and that they all are operating TV cameras with genuine cameramen. 2:40 - audience shown, so the trick is done in front of a live audience, and Andy was chosen from the audience. 3:20 - camera 4 is chosen - a genuinely random choice of a real BBC TV camera. Done to indicate that Daniel's couldn't have rigged up one of the cameras specially. 3:40 - the ramp is needed to push the camera into the box, but it is deliberately performed elaborately to make it all seem more difficult than it really is. 4:12 - real feed from camera 4 5:00 - box is closed, the cable goes through a hole at the front of the crate under the door in order not to damage it. There is padding now by Daniels whilst the TV camera is removed. The bar over the front is unnecessary, as is Debbie. The splinter is further delay. The TV camera is removed from the back. Most of the back hinges upwards from roof. 5:17 - as well as padding Andy is distracted to avoid looking at the back. He is made to look at the holes at the front. 5:24 - Daniels mentions that the floor is concrete and that there are no trap doors. That is correct, but the elevated part of the stage is part of the set and it does have a trap door. Crew are underneath the stage and from 5:00 have opened the trapdoor, opened the back of the crate, helped cameraman Doug and have wheeled the TV camera over lift under the floor. Camera 1 moves upwards to prepare for better shot of the forklift. Daniels does not keep his eyes off Andy, making sure Andy does not look behind the crate. Bangs on the floor with his feet for distraction as well as display. 5:32 - Daniels gets Andy to look at his 'splinter' - more delay, distraction, and humour. 5:35 - Daniels gets the signal that the camera is out, and the back of the crate and the stage trap door are closed or closing. Motions for the forklift to come on. 6:04 - Daniels tries to explain the balloons. The balloons clearly are there to hide something. The most likely thing is a transmission aerial. At this point cameraman Doug has opened the roof compartment and taken out a shoulder camera. In 1984 technology had just come in to allow cameras to be much smaller, which is probably what gave Daniels the idea. Although nowhere near as small as today, certainly small enough to be stored in the roof. A cable would go from the shoulder camera to the roof which had a transmitter. 6:20 - the view from the crate is from the shoulder camera. The picture is different to the TV camera 4, and for the trick to work it requires the skill of a cameraman to make it look like TV camera 4. Daniels checks with cameraman Doug to both convince the audience that nothing has happened and actually check that Doug is handling things ok 6:27 - Andy sees through the window. I think the one flaw in this trick is that Andy would have seen that it was now a shoulder camera, but Daniels was hoping to distract enough. Andy now goes to the back to ensure no trickery from there, a little late. 6:40 - A lot of comments have been made that the view from inside the crate was pre-recorded. No chance. It is simply too difficult and too risky to get everything to match up correctly (which it does exactly despite many of the comments). If things got even slightly out of sync they couldn't recover, and they couldn't live edit the recording to match what was happening in 1984. 6:58 - camera shakes more than the box, indicating the camera is sitting on Doug's shoulder and not on the floor of the crate. 7:05 - camera zooms in and out to simulate a TV camera, possibly to make up for the shake. The forklift driver is being as smooth as possible so that Doug can keep the camera steady. Daniels makes up a cover story about the expense of the cameras. 7:35 - Daniels cleverly generates an illusion of danger of the camera falling on people, thus creating the image in people's minds that the TV camera is still in the box 8:18 - At the yell of '3', the image from the shoulder camera is frozen. Doug starts storing the shoulder camera back in roof. 8:20 - gun shot, the studio puts on a picture imitating that the TV camera feed had just dropped out. 8:21 - Doug pulls the handle is pulled and the crate falls apart. Notice the roof lift a little. The planks fall slowly 8:22 - as the planks fall off it can be seen which planks on the back were involved in acting as a trapdoor earlier - the middle 8. 8:23 - Doug revealed. The ending is done in such a manner to make it look like there was less than a second from when the camera cut out to when Doug was seen, but in fact it was 5 seconds, and controlled by Doug. 8:34 - Daniels is beside himself with joy as to how well that went. Brilliantly performed by Daniels. Not only one of his most baffling tricks, but involving all of the elements of stage magic. Hours of work for 8 minutes of entertainment. A true genius.
I believe this was recorded at Television Centre, and the floors were solid. The elevated stage doesn't look high enough to hide a camera. I'm puzzled about the audience. Performances like this are usually recorded as if live, or in those days usually were live. Some of the audience must have seen the camera go out the back, and i'm sure there would be some laughter from them. Were they in on it? Unlikely. I watched this when it was broadcast, and it's the most memorable trick I have ever seen, because I just cant see how it was done.
3:40 - No, really those peds did not like anything other than a totally flat studio floor. And as indicated elsewhere, it took two attempts to get it up the ramp.
Once the compressed air is let out of the ped, it will collapse down to be quite small. Like an office chair mechanism that has failed. Doug will have had the viewfinder off the Link 125 and passed both it and the main camera through any gap easily. The genius of the trick is the camera setup looks bigger and bulkier than it actually is.
Comparing the shots from the real Camera 4 i.postimg.cc/KvFbfd0r/before-Cam4.png and the presumed handheld one i.postimg.cc/xjLYK031/after-handheld.png, it is obvious that the handheld one has a wider field of view, showing the top and the right of the scenery in the background which is not visible on the Link shot, probably because it is closer to the porthole. No amount of zooming in and out would change the position of the background relative to the edges of the porthole - and the shed hasn't been moved by the forklift yet, so that isn't the reason for the increased view of the background. That was quite a serious error by the cameraman: not matching the field of view of the handheld with the Link. I find it incredible that the back of the shed can be raised and the camera can be trundled out and stowed out of sight, only a couple of feet from Andy, without him being aware of bustle and noise. I wonder if the handheld camera had an oversize lens hood (collapsible) to make it look more like the Link at a cursory glance. The porthole is small so it probably won't let much light into the shed, so it's not too obvious. But it's the one weak point of the illusion which could have gone horribly wrong if Andy had noticed.
This brings back memories I was the forklift driver. I worked for Lansing at the time and. had to modify the truck by making an extra wide carriage to lift this box. I know how this trick was done and I’m not telling.It was great fun making this program and Paul vas very interested in the truck and wanted to know how it worked and how I would lift and turn the box
Looking closely the lense on camera 4 looks different to the others. I suspect camera 4 was built specially for the trick and contained a much a smaller handheld camera once removed from its casing.
5:12 - Paul begins the process to distracting the audience member, as the production team open the back of the box to get the camera out, all of that is happening at this point. Look at the "splinter" bit of chat from Paul, trying to give more time to the production team to remove the camera. Those steps behind are nice piece of studio set building to help the trick
@@user-zt1er1uj6i When you look at the trick, and watch it over and over again, you literally eliminate the impossible and whatever remains has to be the method used. (Slightly using Sherlock Holmes logic). I know a lot of magicians, who have all said my conclusion on how it was done is correct.
@@johnking5174 I knew a chap who was in Tech ops he died just recently (I won't give his full name.... (but he ran the tech ops history site UK) He knew how it was done but never told me. (Good for him) I have just found out how it was done. :D :D (From previous comment...... (Baffled me for years.) Some one here mentioned a fully lowered fulmar would be approx 6.8 inch... With pan and tilt head it would have been a fair bit more.... It is still amazing how the slipped it out without audience seeing..... If that was a mache Link 125... It's certainly WAAAAYY!! better than the EMI 2001 I used to make out of crisp boxes.. :D :D (Good on them!!)
I'm no further along than the rest of you, but a few observations: (1) at no point does the camera in the box point at the audience, so the view from camera 4 could be tape from a rehearsal (although we do see Paul & Andy through the porthole, seemingly live); (2) the view from camera 4 in motion on the forklift closely matches what we see in camera 1's shot, but it is all done slowly and carefully which could be deliberate for syncing... (3) ...and there is some random zooming in and out by camera 4 during the trick, which serves no purpose other than to disorient the viewer who is looking for correlation of motion between the shots; (4) the entire shot of the trick is from camera 1, which is elevated - ground level shots are a notable omission, as they would have made good TV; (5) the cable to camera 4, which starts off under the door, is shown at the end passing through a hole in the middle of the floor of the crate.
+John Slater As somebody else has pointed out the angle at 7.33 should surely have Daniels on it so I believe we are seeing a recording and the audience member must be involved. Therefore it is just a case of getting the camera out the back whilst he was filling with stuff about the splinter.
+Martin Watts On closer inspection I believe the top of PD's toupee is just visible at the bottom left of shot at 7:33. Could still be a recording though. I'm sure he knew exactly where to stand for this. He appears to make a deliberate move up 1 step just before this.
+John Slater It may be that Daniels couldn't be seen because the view was from higher and it may be correct that you spotted the top of his toupee. Another question is was there actually a live audience? The volunteer apparently came out of the audience but we did not see them. The live audience were apparently in danger but again we did not see them. The laughing/clapping can easily be added. If there was no audience it would have made getting the camera out a lot easier.
+John Slater I can't comment on the first two points but 3) would have been either the cameraman accidentally moving the zoom control on the pan handle, as it's cramped in there or he is checking the zoom mechanism plug inside hasn't come loose from its socket on a PCB inside - the zoom wouldn't operate otherwise. This was a particular weak point with the Link 125 (the camera seen here), the zoom mechanism was liable to come loose from its plug if the camera was jolted to the extent seen here. 4) The studio equipment seems to be off the right hand side of the image, rather than between the studio set and the audience seating, so this is likely to be where any cameras other than the crate camera and the one taking the main image are located. That said, I can't see any others when the crate camera shows that side of the studio, so it's likely the BBC realised what a risk lifting two great weights up inside a crate that has no support from tilting over other than the very "forks" of the forklift truck lifting it up was to other members of staff in the studio. There seem to be less staff on the floor than you'd usually expect for a production of this scale, so it seems that they put up with as few staff as technically possible in that studio for safety reasons. And the same said of the cameras - those things minus the cost of the pedestal (which could be many years older) cost about £300-400k - so damaging one camera and paying out in case of injury to one staff member is much better than risking many more thousands of pounds worth of equipment and paying out compensation to many more members of staff. 5) The cable doesn't disappear through a hole in the bottom of the crate - if you look very carefully immediately to the right of the forklift operator at 7:05, you can still see at that point that the camera cable is coming out of the gap between the crate doors, and if you then follow the bottom of the doors as the forklift truck spins it round, you can still see that it is poking through the gap in the doors at all times that we are able to see the doors. When the slats fall apart, as the cameraman reacts to the shock around him, I think in that instant we can just see the cable fall into the hole in the bottom centre of the crate from a space between one of the slats. What I think may have happened here is that as the crate was spinning round, a "cable basher" (whose responsibility is the constant tidiness of all cables in the studio) does his or her job and pulls any spare slack in the cable back so that the camera has enough - but not too much - slack in the cable. As they do so with the crate still being spun round, gravity (the cable is quite heavy) and the tension as the cable basher does their job pulling excess slack out of the cable pulls it from the gap at the bottom of the doors, through a gap inbetween two wooden slats and thence finally to the hole. This will have all been pre-planned, so the cable otherwise getting damaged as the crate is spun round was expected so the crate bottom was modified to put as little stress on the cable as possible, otherwise you would risk either damaging the cable (despite it being broadcast equipment, they are quite fragile), or damaging the plug on the end as it plugs into the camera, or even pulling the plug completely from the camera, ruining the trick. The gap inbetween those two slats would have been just wide enough - possibly wider than the other gaps - to allow the cable to fit through with as little tension as possible, though still just narrow enough for the slats to still have a little grip on the cable and for the viewer at home not to notice any difference in gaps between slats due to the distance of the crate from the main camera. I doubt that any editing tricks would have been used in this - remember Mr Daniels is a professional and famous magician, so he might feel insulted as to his professional capacity as one of the most famous magicians at least in the Western world if he was reduced to using editing techniques as opposed to performing a *proper* magic trick. After all, editing *isn't* magic in any sense of the word.
Very where very big and heavy cameras, the shot through the side hole was definitely real. At this time there where no tiny cameras available. Moving the camera thought the steps would have been noticed by the audience and the studio in question had a concrete floor. This programme was recorded at Television Centre in London. I'm now 37 I own a Link 125 camera (im really sad :-) ) and still can't work out how the hell he did it!!!!!
While he's chatting away the camera is fed through a hatch in the stairs behind the box. The audience member would be an actor. The feed from the camera inside would have to be a pre-recording so they would have to be careful with people's positions during the live show. The audience members you see on the feed would also be accomplices as there are only a few of them. After box is spun around the guy in the box waits for the shot then pulls the lever shown at the start to dismantle the box.
From when the camera and cameraman was shut into the wooden crate at 5.00, there were about 18 seconds when the camera angle we see does not move. The padding that Paul does is good, example putting a wooden beam across the front of the crate. Then pointing out to the audience member the holes in the crate at the bottom, his attention and indeed ours are made to draw away from the crate to the bottom. From around 5.18 then our angle moves, this has given plenty of time for them to take the camera out of the crate and sneak it back stage. 18 seconds may seem quick, but if you are a great planner and have a good team behind you, seconds is all you need, as if you take longer the audience starts to get suspicious. Even our view at 5.33 is clever, as with the correct angle you can make the viewer think nothing is going on. Having watched carefully from 6.17 you can see there is an actual live feed camera filming inside the crate, as the movements of Paul and the audience member are the same on screen so I would assume a mini-camera is built into the wood and transmitted a wireless signal or uses some other cable to get the signal back to the production gallery. I do not think the camera view is a recording, as Paul is seen in it from 6.17. Notice that Paul only let the audience member stand around the back of the crate at 6.30, a full one and a half minutes before the cameraman was shut into the crate. So just my thoughts on it, you have to remember this was made in 1984 so a fantastic trick ahead of its time.
You wouldn't have been able to get a miniature camera of suitable quality in 1984. I can't see how they got the camera out of the back unseen, and there are stairs too. Baffling.
+Stuart Johnson Hi again, was just having another look at the trick - They had to get the camera out somehow, the only logic way is from the back. So it must have been taken out of the back. The steps behind the wooden crate might be part of it, where the camera goes, as the steps and platform behind the crate are not concrete, only the area where the crate is standing is concrete. Technology back in 1984 must not be underestimated, remember this was the biggest show on Saturday nights on BBC One and a lot of money was in their budget. They could afford a small camera in there, why? It is the only explanation on how they get the "camera" shot of Paul and the audience member. Unless you really think the camera vanished by "magic"? I am sure you are not, logic deems that a small camera had to be used somehow. From 5:00 until 6:17 you notice the camera shot never cuts away, one shot, because during this time the production team were unloading the camera out of the back. I look at the evidence we have, and thus my conclusion is the camera was taken out of the back somehow in that 1 minute 17 second time frame. Paul's padding is useful, "look at that splinter" is used to get more time. Never trust a magician when he talks on and on, padding.
+John King To put the tin hat on this, colour cameras as small as what would have been needed simply did. not. exist. That's that. Such a small camera would have introduced a significant drop in image quality between when the crate was open and when the forklift was carrying the crate around like you see with those camera undercover reporters are wearing on programmes like Watchdog. Colour CCD and CMOS camera sensors didn't exist (monochrome ones did, but the image you see when the crate is being lifted up isn't black and white), and the Plumbicon tubes used in the Link 125 camera you see on here would have been about 10 times the size of camera that you would need in your theory. Camera pickup tubes like the Plumbicon variety were the only colour television camera sensors until about 1986/87 - but the Roman numeral datestamp on the very end of this clip proves that this was 1984. Sorry, but actual knowledge of the broadcast camera technology available in 1984 shoots down your theory. A valiant effort, though. Reference: a BEng in Broadcast Electronic Engineering and many years experience at ITV company Yorkshire Television.
John King I've been racking my brains and looking for any signs. What is obvious is that they got that camera out of there, but I hesitate to say at the moment Paul pulls the trigger, as I would like to think this was just *extremely* clever editing, but this was edited back in 1984 on 1" C-type videotape. Whilst the editing on this format was very sophisticated, it wasn't sophisticated enough to make the edit look absolutely seamless to my experienced eyes. And yet everything in this looks seamless. I'm also racking my brains over another disappearing trick that Mr Daniels did, on the 1984 Christmas Special of this series where he made a crate with £1million inside disappear from a guarded area, he set the alarms off, there was a large amount of tear gas pumped into the perspex box in which the crate was placed, enough to completely obscure the view of inside the box, but not enough to obscure the view of the stage and behind the perspex box. Once the tear gas cleared, the crate had disappeared from inside the perspex box. But the same crate with the exact same money (Paul took out a wad of cash from the blue wrapping and put it back in one of the elastic bands before all of this) was in a large safe across the studio. One that they had taken the crate out of earlier in that trick. So I'm stuck with two Paul Daniels-originated "how the f*** did he make that disappear?" conundrums in my head.
my uncle billpage has a cool idea what if the wodden crate box is the video camera? and use thos cool hollow opening stage steps like in movies and tv shows like the monsters with there pet dragon spot paul danilas is very smart illusionist magician to invemt this idea concept plus illusionist david copperfield uses same simluar idea but change idea methiod of vanish usining walter jeans idea mirror tunnel cool idea also
So, there are many components to this trick. Firstly, when Paul asks camera 4 to point at camera 1, we see a shot of camera 1......but we don't see that shot through the viewfinder of camera 4, so any camera could actually have offered the shot. That's important, because camera 4 is actually a prop camera on a real pedestal. The prop has been designed very well, but it isn't a real camera. Clearly, the trick involves the camera, or part of it, being smuggled out the back of the box. As others have noted, the camera shots from inside the box are not full broadcast quality, and look like early mini cam footage to me. Mini cams had just been invented at this time.....I was using them in 84/85. The studio floor is fully concrete with no trap door in it. Trap doors are a theatrical device built into a wooden stage. However, what they did here was create a centre section in the stairs directly behind the box, that could open and allow the pedestal at its lowest height to slide into it. Meanwhile, the cameraman in the box dismantled the prop camera which would have been designed to fold almost almost flat like the sides of a box, and then hide the dismantled prop in the roof of the box, which has a six inch lip for no reason, other than to hide the folded prop camera early into the trick, and to hide the mini camera as soon as the gun goes off.
It's very noticeable that the camera in the bottom corner, that they wave into, is not of the same broadcast-quality as the rest of the cameras used for the programme...
+Andrew Orton It is, it's just when you see a camera with a very wide angle lens (i.e. most studio cameras) in very close proximity to something like a hole in a wooden crate, this will introduce "curves" to something that is actually straight, because of a wide angle lens looking through something with a narrow width in respect to the angle of width the lens can accept. The technical quality of the image will have been reduced by the simple effect of early digital video processing, like the Quantel Paintbox they would have used on this to create the smaller image in the bottom left hand corner. The colour gamut on Paintboxes when doing electronic effects like this was especially poor, with things appearing whiter (sometimes with poor black level) and colours paler. A good example of this is on the TOTP performance of "Video Killed the Radio Star" from 1979, when the Quantel was brand spanking new. But in that the effect is not as obvious as here, most likely due to the cameras used in that (EMI 2001s) having much better colourimetry than the utter crap cameras as seen in the video above. Of course, this effect will have been accentuated by the fact that this is an internet upload of a yonks-old VHS copy of a recording originally made on 1" C-type videotape (a very "fuzzy" format), so it's been compressed to hell. There is something prophetic in your comment about the cameras and broadcast quality - Link 125s (the camera in the above video) do not have a good reputation amongst those unfortunate to have been subjected to them operationally or in maintenance.I see you're a Doctor Who fan, from your profile picture. So am I. So if you want to see just how bad these cameras were, watch the fuzzy, smeary and brown-tinted studio footage from Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light or Battlefield.
I remember watching this and being amazed - and I still am. I guess nowadays they could use a tiny pinhole camera to generate the image from inside the box while the real camera was removed through a trap door - but tiny cameras like that didn't exist in 1984....
@@iansaliba-curtis1041 Ah, so that was possible, and I guess the fact that the image was in a small box in the corner of the screen meant that the inevitably lower quality wasn't visible. But I was wrong with something else in my original comment - the camera could not have been removed through a "trap door" as the studios at Television Centre all had solid concrete floors....
@@jonnyhaw Yes, the studio floors were solid but a person lying prone behind the bottom step of the dais could remove a flap (which broke on the night and caused some 'concern') in the step and the cameraman removed a similar sized flap in the bottom of the crate. It needed a 'collector' to help the cameraman move the bits through the two open flaps quietly and thoroughly. There couldn't be any bits of smashed pappier mache left on the floor when the crate went up. You are also correct about the size of the monochrome insert in the corner of the picture. The bullet cam quality was grade 1 crap and it needed a grade 1 crap mix to 'justify' the crap quality. I can tell you that from an electronic engineering perspective that it was a total mission and a half getting the Link control units (focus, zoom ring, some of the viewfinder functions, output to a Link camera cable etc..) to talk to the Ikegami camera. The final assembly was unofficially referred to as 'The Linkegami'!
@@mikedhonau2874 Bullet cams had only just been invented. The initial insert was from the Ikegami shortly after it was wheeled in - thereafter, once the box was on its way up, the bullet cam was used. The effect is probably due to tinting. I remember the VM being given strict instructions to avoid all flesh-tones at all costs.
I supplied the forklift and driver to the show. I was a Rental Controller at the west London depot of Fork Truck Rentals Ltd and responded to a hire request like any other, without realising how high profile it was going to be! I was in serious trouble the day after it was shown because the marketing management of Lansing Linde said I should have involved them and used an official demo driver etc. However, fortunately for me, it went like a dream, the truck looked good, it was a good advert. I also know exactly how the illusion was done, but I think that would be best kept a secret!!
At 7' 11" the shot from inside the box tilts over to one side and we see the edge of the hole tilting. This would be impossible if the camera was still on its pedestal as the camera and hole would have to move together. Reinforces the theory that it's a hand-held camera by this time.
The camera went down a trap door in the floor or out the back of the box. The camera operator had time to rap his head set cord in a loop in his hand. I was a TV camera operator in the 80s and 90s here in the US. When i was finished a show i rapped my head set cord just like he had in his hand because then i put my head set in my work bag. We did not have the Link 125 camera here in the US. We had mostly Philips/Norelco PC 70, ikegami, Sony, RCA.
Has anyone excluded the use of mirrors to hide in the box. or Mirrow double reflection under the box as done in other disappearing objects in boxes by magicians. . Send me a reply
Copperfield ask Paul Daniels if he could use this video camera vanish illusions and Paul Daniels said yes but Paul Daniels said Copperfield used a different method of vanish
Hollow ps Copperfield and his illusion crew helpers used Walter Jeans pt Selbit improvement on the mirror tunnel for CBS videos camera vanish plus like i thought and a nother guy illusionists also that one of the lamp lights is now the videos camera video feed footage and Copperfield turning off and on videos camera built part of videos camera frame shape box illusion ideas concepts
Paul Daniels version of tv video camera vanish is way diffennt method and rutine and Copperfield Christian illusionist ask Paul Danials could he use it and Paul said yes ps you see Copperfield likes to change idea method ton diffennt methods if he's able to Copperfield used Walter jeans retangle mirror tunnel Howard thruston million dollar mystery pt selbit silver hat illusion
Jonia Spina Tony hassini Doug Henning Andre Kole Christian illusionist Christian illusionist the pendragons Lance Burton movie Billy topit now you see me movies 1 and 2 is co producer Christian illusionist David Seth Kotkin copperfield and like I thought in the works a now you see me 3
I remember this going out as I was obsessed with TV cameras. It is still a great illusion and shows how talented Paul Daniels was; very much respected a master of grand illusion.
Daniel's makes this trick work very well. It puzzled people for years but is quite obvious really. Daniel's delays and controls the audience member and makes sure he doesn't look round the back at key times. All tricks where people go in boxes and disappear are done the same way. You can even see the join on the stairs that opens up to allow the camera to enter. Showmanship sells it which Danuels was a master at.
That is probably the only credible explanation.
WAY TO RUIN THE TRICK FOR SOME OF US YOU ASS
Still a great illusion - featuring BBC crew 7 with Ron Green, Peter Fox and Doug Watson. Always puzzled me how it was accomplished; there was only one pickup during the recording when Doug was slightly off getting the camera into the box, apart from that it was one take, and that's come from Doug himself. I suppose the camera was taken out the back of the crate, with the rear panel hinged down to provide an unloading ramp. Notice that as soon as we cut to Ron on camera 1, we cannot see behind the crate - camera 4 would be hidden from view by the crate. As soon as the forklift raises the crate, Ron's camera (on the Mole Richardson crane, the same as Peter on camera 2) cranes up to keep camera 4 hidden by the crate. Then when the forklift turns round, camera 4 is taken off screen right - notice also the crate doesn't turn round so far so that we could see that by this time, camera 4 has gone from the crate.
+Andy Onion I can't see how that's possible at all. Unless I've misunderstood what you're trying to say, at no point when it's lifted is any side of the crate off screen for anywhere near enough *time* for the cable to be unplugged and the Link 125 removed - look how long it took for Doug to put the camera into the crate. And in any case, minus a recording being played back (the image in the Quantel box is too similar to what we also see from the mole camera) or a miniature colour camera being used (such a camera didn't exist at all back then), how do you explain the image in the Quantel box in the corner still being present until Mr Daniels pulls the trigger if the camera is removed from the crate while the crate is lifted?
NO F******G SPOILERS 🤬🤬
Ahh I saw the legend Ron Green on camera 1! :)
I was a TC Studio engineer when this was recorded. I could reveal all as our department had a mission on its collective hands but I'm open to being bribed or asked nicely. Not sure that I should though. The only thing I will spill is that you were NOT looking at a Link 125.
When you say "you were NOT looking at a Link 125" do you mean that the camera itself isn't a Link 125 (but a smaller camera with falsework to make it look bigger), or do you mean that the footage from 6:20 onwards isn't coming from a Link whereas the earlier footage around 4:40 is? There is a noticeable difference in the framing of the background relative to the edge of the "porthole" in the shed: in the later footage you can see a lot more of the background scenery, suggesting that the camera lens is closer to the window. Are we getting warmer with the theories about a hand-held camera that Doug hides in the ceiling in the brief interval between Paul Daniels' countdown and the shed falling to pieces?
@Darren Gregg OK! To Darren and Mortimer - I shall probably rot in hell for this but - hey it's 40+ years ago, so here goes....
A few things to notice first: In the few shots that you see of the cameraman operating Cam4 you will notice that he never lets go of the steering ring - there's a reason for that. Secondly, you will notice that the stage has a small raised dais on it approximately 7" at the first step. Right! Now the 'camera'....
The BBC's art department got the blueprints of the largest Link125 carcass they would allow us to see and they made a papier mache carcass just about strong enough to hold the weight of an Ikegame HL75 shoulder-mount ENG unit. The Ikegame was somehow held (probably tons of gaffer tape) inside the 'zoom lens' case of the paper carcass.
OK! Now the camera pedestal: Normally a pedestal beefy enough to support a Link125 carcass + zoom lens assembly (takes 3 fully fit, muscular engineers to lift it without the zoom lens!) is gassed up to some unbelievably phenomenal gas pressure so that the camera can be raised and lowered with one pinky finger during normal operation - HOWEVER - this pedestal had to collapse fully in a very short amount of time - while PD + stooge walk around the box - so it had no gas in it but the 'carcass' only held an Ike HL75 plus a standard Link125 viewfinder - so it was reasonably easy for one man to support the whole lot with one arm. So, the entire programme is shot with 4 Links + 1 Ikegame that thinks its a Link! (Our part was to engineer an interface between the Link125 viewfinder, the Link125 zoom electronics and the - Japanese - HL75!) When the carefully set-up stooge joins PD on stage he, naturally, selects CAM4! It gets wheeled into the box and the box is closed. At about the same time as this programme was recorded, bullet cams had just about been invented - but they were only monochrome (see the 'shots' from the inside!) A bullet cam was procured and built into a concealed panel inside the box which could be revealed when the cameraman went in. The signal was piped to VAR via a radio link borrowed from the talkback circuits. So, while the box is on the ground and PD and stooge are walking round it, the cameraman has removed the Ikegame from the 'zoom lens', laid it on its side (approx 6.2" in thickness) and passed it through a panel in the dais to a waiting programme official. The carcass is crushed flat (paper don't forget!) and the bits passed through the same slot. The viewfinder is removed and slid through the slot (approx 6" thick). Finally the ped is collapsed fully and also passed through the same slot. A Link ped fully collapsed is about 6.8" high!!! - So not much room for error! Thus - when the box is raised, the 'camera' has already gone. The cameraman goes up with the box while the production team make sure that images from the bullet cam only shoot relatively monochrome background through the 'window' in the box so no-one notices the crap quality. The rest I'm sure you can fill in for yourselves... Now shoot me!
PS: The guy in the comment below this has it smack on the nose! Read his comment.
@Darren Gregg Do I get my Curly-Wurly and Lovehearts now?
@Darren Gregg If our department wasn't involved in the illusion I can't comment because I don't know. Sorry. In the camera trick we had to make the Ike drive from Link controls - so we had a hand in it. Try to find a surviving member of the production crew from that era. Good luck!
I can die happy now. No, seriously, this one has been bugging me since I first saw it broadcast. I get more enjoyment out of knowing how these things are done, than the trick itself. Thanks Ian.
Right, I've been through the video in detail, and I'm pretty sure I know how it's done.
0:41 - Andy is introduced from the audience. Almost certainly a real random audience member. The trick doesn't need an actor, and Daniels never went in for that sort of thing. If an actor, there is the likelihood of being found out, and this would be unbelievably good acting from 'Andy'. There are plenty of other clues to indicate that this is a random person.
1:29 - handle and string - handle triggers the box falling apart at the end. The string opens the roof compartment.
1:42 - Andy is shown round the box. There are no visible trap doors on the box, or other compartments not mentioned. The walls are made of solid planks
2:20 - Daniels goes on to show all of the cameras available and that they all are operating TV cameras with genuine cameramen.
2:40 - audience shown, so the trick is done in front of a live audience, and Andy was chosen from the audience.
3:20 - camera 4 is chosen - a genuinely random choice of a real BBC TV camera. Done to indicate that Daniel's couldn't have rigged up one of the cameras specially.
3:40 - the ramp is needed to push the camera into the box, but it is deliberately performed elaborately to make it all seem more difficult than it really is.
4:12 - real feed from camera 4
5:00 - box is closed, the cable goes through a hole at the front of the crate under the door in order not to damage it. There is padding now by Daniels whilst the TV camera is removed. The bar over the front is unnecessary, as is Debbie. The splinter is further delay. The TV camera is removed from the back. Most of the back hinges upwards from roof.
5:17 - as well as padding Andy is distracted to avoid looking at the back. He is made to look at the holes at the front.
5:24 - Daniels mentions that the floor is concrete and that there are no trap doors. That is correct, but the elevated part of the stage is part of the set and it does have a trap door. Crew are underneath the stage and from 5:00 have opened the trapdoor, opened the back of the crate, helped cameraman Doug and have wheeled the TV camera over lift under the floor. Camera 1 moves upwards to prepare for better shot of the forklift. Daniels does not keep his eyes off Andy, making sure Andy does not look behind the crate. Bangs on the floor with his feet for distraction as well as display.
5:32 - Daniels gets Andy to look at his 'splinter' - more delay, distraction, and humour.
5:35 - Daniels gets the signal that the camera is out, and the back of the crate and the stage trap door are closed or closing. Motions for the forklift to come on.
6:04 - Daniels tries to explain the balloons. The balloons clearly are there to hide something. The most likely thing is a transmission aerial. At this point cameraman Doug has opened the roof compartment and taken out a shoulder camera. In 1984 technology had just come in to allow cameras to be much smaller, which is probably what gave Daniels the idea. Although nowhere near as small as today, certainly small enough to be stored in the roof. A cable would go from the shoulder camera to the roof which had a transmitter.
6:20 - the view from the crate is from the shoulder camera. The picture is different to the TV camera 4, and for the trick to work it requires the skill of a cameraman to make it look like TV camera 4. Daniels checks with cameraman Doug to both convince the audience that nothing has happened and actually check that Doug is handling things ok
6:27 - Andy sees through the window. I think the one flaw in this trick is that Andy would have seen that it was now a shoulder camera, but Daniels was hoping to distract enough. Andy now goes to the back to ensure no trickery from there, a little late.
6:40 - A lot of comments have been made that the view from inside the crate was pre-recorded. No chance. It is simply too difficult and too risky to get everything to match up correctly (which it does exactly despite many of the comments). If things got even slightly out of sync they couldn't recover, and they couldn't live edit the recording to match what was happening in 1984.
6:58 - camera shakes more than the box, indicating the camera is sitting on Doug's shoulder and not on the floor of the crate.
7:05 - camera zooms in and out to simulate a TV camera, possibly to make up for the shake. The forklift driver is being as smooth as possible so that Doug can keep the camera steady. Daniels makes up a cover story about the expense of the cameras.
7:35 - Daniels cleverly generates an illusion of danger of the camera falling on people, thus creating the image in people's minds that the TV camera is still in the box
8:18 - At the yell of '3', the image from the shoulder camera is frozen. Doug starts storing the shoulder camera back in roof.
8:20 - gun shot, the studio puts on a picture imitating that the TV camera feed had just dropped out.
8:21 - Doug pulls the handle is pulled and the crate falls apart. Notice the roof lift a little. The planks fall slowly
8:22 - as the planks fall off it can be seen which planks on the back were involved in acting as a trapdoor earlier - the middle 8.
8:23 - Doug revealed. The ending is done in such a manner to make it look like there was less than a second from when the camera cut out to when Doug was seen, but in fact it was 5 seconds, and controlled by Doug.
8:34 - Daniels is beside himself with joy as to how well that went.
Brilliantly performed by Daniels. Not only one of his most baffling tricks, but involving all of the elements of stage magic. Hours of work for 8 minutes of entertainment. A true genius.
I believe this was recorded at Television Centre, and the floors were solid. The elevated stage doesn't look high enough to hide a camera. I'm puzzled about the audience. Performances like this are usually recorded as if live, or in those days usually were live. Some of the audience must have seen the camera go out the back, and i'm sure there would be some laughter from them. Were they in on it? Unlikely.
I watched this when it was broadcast, and it's the most memorable trick I have ever seen, because I just cant see how it was done.
3:40 - No, really those peds did not like anything other than a totally flat studio floor. And as indicated elsewhere, it took two attempts to get it up the ramp.
Once the compressed air is let out of the ped, it will collapse down to be quite small. Like an office chair mechanism that has failed. Doug will have had the viewfinder off the Link 125 and passed both it and the main camera through any gap easily. The genius of the trick is the camera setup looks bigger and bulkier than it actually is.
Comparing the shots from the real Camera 4 i.postimg.cc/KvFbfd0r/before-Cam4.png and the presumed handheld one i.postimg.cc/xjLYK031/after-handheld.png, it is obvious that the handheld one has a wider field of view, showing the top and the right of the scenery in the background which is not visible on the Link shot, probably because it is closer to the porthole. No amount of zooming in and out would change the position of the background relative to the edges of the porthole - and the shed hasn't been moved by the forklift yet, so that isn't the reason for the increased view of the background. That was quite a serious error by the cameraman: not matching the field of view of the handheld with the Link.
I find it incredible that the back of the shed can be raised and the camera can be trundled out and stowed out of sight, only a couple of feet from Andy, without him being aware of bustle and noise.
I wonder if the handheld camera had an oversize lens hood (collapsible) to make it look more like the Link at a cursory glance. The porthole is small so it probably won't let much light into the shed, so it's not too obvious. But it's the one weak point of the illusion which could have gone horribly wrong if Andy had noticed.
Genius indeed. PD sold this illusion to David Copperfield.
This brings back memories I was the forklift driver. I worked for Lansing at the time and. had to modify the truck by making an extra wide carriage to lift this box. I know how this trick was done and I’m not telling.It was great fun making this program and Paul vas very interested in the truck and wanted to know how it worked and how I would lift and turn the box
Link 125s workhorse of TV centre in 80s
Looking closely the lense on camera 4 looks different to the others. I suspect camera 4 was built specially for the trick and contained a much a smaller handheld camera once removed from its casing.
5:12 - Paul begins the process to distracting the audience member, as the production team open the back of the box to get the camera out, all of that is happening at this point. Look at the "splinter" bit of chat from Paul, trying to give more time to the production team to remove the camera. Those steps behind are nice piece of studio set building to help the trick
You can also see Doug position the steering ring on the Fulmar Ped to crab right (away from the front doors.
@@user-zt1er1uj6i When you look at the trick, and watch it over and over again, you literally eliminate the impossible and whatever remains has to be the method used. (Slightly using Sherlock Holmes logic). I know a lot of magicians, who have all said my conclusion on how it was done is correct.
@@johnking5174 I knew a chap who was in Tech ops he died just recently (I won't give his full name.... (but he ran the tech ops history site UK) He knew how it was done but never told me. (Good for him) I have just found out how it was done. :D :D (From previous comment...... (Baffled me for years.) Some one here mentioned a fully lowered fulmar would be approx 6.8 inch... With pan and tilt head it would have been a fair bit more.... It is still amazing how the slipped it out without audience seeing..... If that was a mache Link 125... It's certainly WAAAAYY!! better than the EMI 2001 I used to make out of crisp boxes.. :D :D (Good on them!!)
I'm no further along than the rest of you, but a few observations:
(1) at no point does the camera in the box point at the audience, so the view from camera 4 could be tape from a rehearsal (although we do see Paul & Andy through the porthole, seemingly live);
(2) the view from camera 4 in motion on the forklift closely matches what we see in camera 1's shot, but it is all done slowly and carefully which could be deliberate for syncing...
(3) ...and there is some random zooming in and out by camera 4 during the trick, which serves no purpose other than to disorient the viewer who is looking for correlation of motion between the shots;
(4) the entire shot of the trick is from camera 1, which is elevated - ground level shots are a notable omission, as they would have made good TV;
(5) the cable to camera 4, which starts off under the door, is shown at the end passing through a hole in the middle of the floor of the crate.
+John Slater As somebody else has pointed out the angle at 7.33 should surely have Daniels on it so I believe we are seeing a recording and the audience member must be involved. Therefore it is just a case of getting the camera out the back whilst he was filling with stuff about the splinter.
+Martin Watts On closer inspection I believe the top of PD's toupee is just visible at the bottom left of shot at 7:33. Could still be a recording though. I'm sure he knew exactly where to stand for this. He appears to make a deliberate move up 1 step just before this.
+John Slater It may be that Daniels couldn't be seen because the view was from higher and it may be correct that you spotted the top of his toupee. Another question is was there actually a live audience? The volunteer apparently came out of the audience but we did not see them. The live audience were apparently in danger but again we did not see them. The laughing/clapping can easily be added. If there was no audience it would have made getting the camera out a lot easier.
+John Slater I can't comment on the first two points but 3) would have been either the cameraman accidentally moving the zoom control on the pan handle, as it's cramped in there or he is checking the zoom mechanism plug inside hasn't come loose from its socket on a PCB inside - the zoom wouldn't operate otherwise. This was a particular weak point with the Link 125 (the camera seen here), the zoom mechanism was liable to come loose from its plug if the camera was jolted to the extent seen here.
4) The studio equipment seems to be off the right hand side of the image, rather than between the studio set and the audience seating, so this is likely to be where any cameras other than the crate camera and the one taking the main image are located. That said, I can't see any others when the crate camera shows that side of the studio, so it's likely the BBC realised what a risk lifting two great weights up inside a crate that has no support from tilting over other than the very "forks" of the forklift truck lifting it up was to other members of staff in the studio. There seem to be less staff on the floor than you'd usually expect for a production of this scale, so it seems that they put up with as few staff as technically possible in that studio for safety reasons. And the same said of the cameras - those things minus the cost of the pedestal (which could be many years older) cost about £300-400k - so damaging one camera and paying out in case of injury to one staff member is much better than risking many more thousands of pounds worth of equipment and paying out compensation to many more members of staff.
5) The cable doesn't disappear through a hole in the bottom of the crate - if you look very carefully immediately to the right of the forklift operator at 7:05, you can still see at that point that the camera cable is coming out of the gap between the crate doors, and if you then follow the bottom of the doors as the forklift truck spins it round, you can still see that it is poking through the gap in the doors at all times that we are able to see the doors. When the slats fall apart, as the cameraman reacts to the shock around him, I think in that instant we can just see the cable fall into the hole in the bottom centre of the crate from a space between one of the slats. What I think may have happened here is that as the crate was spinning round, a "cable basher" (whose responsibility is the constant tidiness of all cables in the studio) does his or her job and pulls any spare slack in the cable back so that the camera has enough - but not too much - slack in the cable. As they do so with the crate still being spun round, gravity (the cable is quite heavy) and the tension as the cable basher does their job pulling excess slack out of the cable pulls it from the gap at the bottom of the doors, through a gap inbetween two wooden slats and thence finally to the hole. This will have all been pre-planned, so the cable otherwise getting damaged as the crate is spun round was expected so the crate bottom was modified to put as little stress on the cable as possible, otherwise you would risk either damaging the cable (despite it being broadcast equipment, they are quite fragile), or damaging the plug on the end as it plugs into the camera, or even pulling the plug completely from the camera, ruining the trick. The gap inbetween those two slats would have been just wide enough - possibly wider than the other gaps - to allow the cable to fit through with as little tension as possible, though still just narrow enough for the slats to still have a little grip on the cable and for the viewer at home not to notice any difference in gaps between slats due to the distance of the crate from the main camera.
I doubt that any editing tricks would have been used in this - remember Mr Daniels is a professional and famous magician, so he might feel insulted as to his professional capacity as one of the most famous magicians at least in the Western world if he was reduced to using editing techniques as opposed to performing a *proper* magic trick. After all, editing *isn't* magic in any sense of the word.
The audience are clearly shown,when the guy is asked to choose a camera.
Very where very big and heavy cameras, the shot through the side hole was definitely real. At this time there where no tiny cameras available. Moving the camera thought the steps would have been noticed by the audience and the studio in question had a concrete floor. This programme was recorded at Television Centre in London. I'm now 37 I own a Link 125 camera (im really sad :-) ) and still can't work out how the hell he did it!!!!!
I would LOVE to own a link, growing up I thought they were the most beautiful things.
Bullet cams had just been invented. See above.
WOW. RIP Paul Daniels.
While he's chatting away the camera is fed through a hatch in the stairs behind the box. The audience member would be an actor. The feed from the camera inside would have to be a pre-recording so they would have to be careful with people's positions during the live show. The audience members you see on the feed would also be accomplices as there are only a few of them. After box is spun around the guy in the box waits for the shot then pulls the lever shown at the start to dismantle the box.
You are correct except for the inside shots - they were in real time.
From when the camera and cameraman was shut into the wooden crate at 5.00, there were about 18 seconds when the camera angle we see does not move. The padding that Paul does is good, example putting a wooden beam across the front of the crate. Then pointing out to the audience member the holes in the crate at the bottom, his attention and indeed ours are made to draw away from the crate to the bottom. From around 5.18 then our angle moves, this has given plenty of time for them to take the camera out of the crate and sneak it back stage. 18 seconds may seem quick, but if you are a great planner and have a good team behind you, seconds is all you need, as if you take longer the audience starts to get suspicious. Even our view at 5.33 is clever, as with the correct angle you can make the viewer think nothing is going on. Having watched carefully from 6.17 you can see there is an actual live feed camera filming inside the crate, as the movements of Paul and the audience member are the same on screen so I would assume a mini-camera is built into the wood and transmitted a wireless signal or uses some other cable to get the signal back to the production gallery. I do not think the camera view is a recording, as Paul is seen in it from 6.17. Notice that Paul only let the audience member stand around the back of the crate at 6.30, a full one and a half minutes before the cameraman was shut into the crate. So just my thoughts on it, you have to remember this was made in 1984 so a fantastic trick ahead of its time.
You wouldn't have been able to get a miniature camera of suitable quality in 1984. I can't see how they got the camera out of the back unseen, and there are stairs too. Baffling.
+Stuart Johnson Hi again, was just having another look at the trick - They had to get the camera out somehow, the only logic way is from the back. So it must have been taken out of the back. The steps behind the wooden crate might be part of it, where the camera goes, as the steps and platform behind the crate are not concrete, only the area where the crate is standing is concrete. Technology back in 1984 must not be underestimated, remember this was the biggest show on Saturday nights on BBC One and a lot of money was in their budget. They could afford a small camera in there, why? It is the only explanation on how they get the "camera" shot of Paul and the audience member. Unless you really think the camera vanished by "magic"? I am sure you are not, logic deems that a small camera had to be used somehow. From 5:00 until 6:17 you notice the camera shot never cuts away, one shot, because during this time the production team were unloading the camera out of the back. I look at the evidence we have, and thus my conclusion is the camera was taken out of the back somehow in that 1 minute 17 second time frame. Paul's padding is useful, "look at that splinter" is used to get more time. Never trust a magician when he talks on and on, padding.
+John King To put the tin hat on this, colour cameras as small as what would have been needed simply did. not. exist. That's that. Such a small camera would have introduced a significant drop in image quality between when the crate was open and when the forklift was carrying the crate around like you see with those camera undercover reporters are wearing on programmes like Watchdog.
Colour CCD and CMOS camera sensors didn't exist (monochrome ones did, but the image you see when the crate is being lifted up isn't black and white), and the Plumbicon tubes used in the Link 125 camera you see on here would have been about 10 times the size of camera that you would need in your theory. Camera pickup tubes like the Plumbicon variety were the only colour television camera sensors until about 1986/87 - but the Roman numeral datestamp on the very end of this clip proves that this was 1984.
Sorry, but actual knowledge of the broadcast camera technology available in 1984 shoots down your theory. A valiant effort, though.
Reference: a BEng in Broadcast Electronic Engineering and many years experience at ITV company Yorkshire Television.
Fare play - any idea yourself then?
John King I've been racking my brains and looking for any signs. What is obvious is that they got that camera out of there, but I hesitate to say at the moment Paul pulls the trigger, as I would like to think this was just *extremely* clever editing, but this was edited back in 1984 on 1" C-type videotape. Whilst the editing on this format was very sophisticated, it wasn't sophisticated enough to make the edit look absolutely seamless to my experienced eyes. And yet everything in this looks seamless.
I'm also racking my brains over another disappearing trick that Mr Daniels did, on the 1984 Christmas Special of this series where he made a crate with £1million inside disappear from a guarded area, he set the alarms off, there was a large amount of tear gas pumped into the perspex box in which the crate was placed, enough to completely obscure the view of inside the box, but not enough to obscure the view of the stage and behind the perspex box. Once the tear gas cleared, the crate had disappeared from inside the perspex box.
But the same crate with the exact same money (Paul took out a wad of cash from the blue wrapping and put it back in one of the elastic bands before all of this) was in a large safe across the studio. One that they had taken the crate out of earlier in that trick.
So I'm stuck with two Paul Daniels-originated "how the f*** did he make that disappear?" conundrums in my head.
my uncle billpage has a cool idea what if the wodden crate box is the video camera? and use thos cool hollow opening stage steps like in movies and tv shows like the monsters with there pet dragon spot paul danilas is very smart illusionist magician to invemt this idea concept plus illusionist david copperfield uses same simluar idea but change idea methiod of vanish usining walter jeans idea mirror tunnel cool idea also
Like to see Penn & Teller explain this one.
I think they changed the camera because I noticed a quality change on the camera, but I don't know how they got it out though.
So, there are many components to this trick. Firstly, when Paul asks camera 4 to point at camera 1, we see a shot of camera 1......but we don't see that shot through the viewfinder of camera 4, so any camera could actually have offered the shot. That's important, because camera 4 is actually a prop camera on a real pedestal. The prop has been designed very well, but it isn't a real camera. Clearly, the trick involves the camera, or part of it, being smuggled out the back of the box. As others have noted, the camera shots from inside the box are not full broadcast quality, and look like early mini cam footage to me. Mini cams had just been invented at this time.....I was using them in 84/85. The studio floor is fully concrete with no trap door in it. Trap doors are a theatrical device built into a wooden stage. However, what they did here was create a centre section in the stairs directly behind the box, that could open and allow the pedestal at its lowest height to slide into it. Meanwhile, the cameraman in the box dismantled the prop camera which would have been designed to fold almost almost flat like the sides of a box, and then hide the dismantled prop in the roof of the box, which has a six inch lip for no reason, other than to hide the folded prop camera early into the trick, and to hide the mini camera as soon as the gun goes off.
Cam4 and Cam5 are right next to each other, so the shot of Cam1 probably came from 5
It's very noticeable that the camera in the bottom corner, that they wave into, is not of the same broadcast-quality as the rest of the cameras used for the programme...
+Andrew Orton It is, it's just when you see a camera with a very wide angle lens (i.e. most studio cameras) in very close proximity to something like a hole in a wooden crate, this will introduce "curves" to something that is actually straight, because of a wide angle lens looking through something with a narrow width in respect to the angle of width the lens can accept.
The technical quality of the image will have been reduced by the simple effect of early digital video processing, like the Quantel Paintbox they would have used on this to create the smaller image in the bottom left hand corner. The colour gamut on Paintboxes when doing electronic effects like this was especially poor, with things appearing whiter (sometimes with poor black level) and colours paler. A good example of this is on the TOTP performance of "Video Killed the Radio Star" from 1979, when the Quantel was brand spanking new. But in that the effect is not as obvious as here, most likely due to the cameras used in that (EMI 2001s) having much better colourimetry than the utter crap cameras as seen in the video above.
Of course, this effect will have been accentuated by the fact that this is an internet upload of a yonks-old VHS copy of a recording originally made on 1" C-type videotape (a very "fuzzy" format), so it's been compressed to hell.
There is something prophetic in your comment about the cameras and broadcast quality - Link 125s (the camera in the above video) do not have a good reputation amongst those unfortunate to have been subjected to them operationally or in maintenance.I see you're a Doctor Who fan, from your profile picture. So am I. So if you want to see just how bad these cameras were, watch the fuzzy, smeary and brown-tinted studio footage from Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light or Battlefield.
I remember watching this and being amazed - and I still am. I guess nowadays they could use a tiny pinhole camera to generate the image from inside the box while the real camera was removed through a trap door - but tiny cameras like that didn't exist in 1984....
Bullet cams had just been invented.
@@iansaliba-curtis1041 Ah, so that was possible, and I guess the fact that the image was in a small box in the corner of the screen meant that the inevitably lower quality wasn't visible. But I was wrong with something else in my original comment - the camera could not have been removed through a "trap door" as the studios at Television Centre all had solid concrete floors....
@@jonnyhaw Yes, the studio floors were solid but a person lying prone behind the bottom step of the dais could remove a flap (which broke on the night and caused some 'concern') in the step and the cameraman removed a similar sized flap in the bottom of the crate. It needed a 'collector' to help the cameraman move the bits through the two open flaps quietly and thoroughly. There couldn't be any bits of smashed pappier mache left on the floor when the crate went up. You are also correct about the size of the monochrome insert in the corner of the picture. The bullet cam quality was grade 1 crap and it needed a grade 1 crap mix to 'justify' the crap quality. I can tell you that from an electronic engineering perspective that it was a total mission and a half getting the Link control units (focus, zoom ring, some of the viewfinder functions, output to a Link camera cable etc..) to talk to the Ikegami camera. The final assembly was unofficially referred to as 'The Linkegami'!
@@iansaliba-curtis1041 That's fascinating. And you know what - even now knowing how it was done doesn't make it any less impressive!
@@mikedhonau2874 Bullet cams had only just been invented. The initial insert was from the Ikegami shortly after it was wheeled in - thereafter, once the box was on its way up, the bullet cam was used. The effect is probably due to tinting. I remember the VM being given strict instructions to avoid all flesh-tones at all costs.
I supplied the forklift and driver to the show. I was a Rental Controller at the west London depot of Fork Truck Rentals Ltd and responded to a hire request like any other, without realising how high profile it was going to be! I was in serious trouble the day after it was shown because the marketing management of Lansing Linde said I should have involved them and used an official demo driver etc. However, fortunately for me, it went like a dream, the truck looked good, it was a good advert. I also know exactly how the illusion was done, but I think that would be best kept a secret!!
Foffer Great story! Thanks! So one question... can you confirm that - at least - it wasn’t a real TV camera? 🤔
@@mikusguitarius Correct, but don't tell anyone!
Foffer haha thanks 🤔😜
I must know you I modified and drove the forktruck
I'm pretty good at figuring out tricks such as these but this one completely flummoxes me
See my reply to Darren and Mortimer.
Oops, camera 2's crane might be a Vinten Heron - not sure!
Ask Doug the cameraman, I bet he knows how it's done... 😉👍
At 7' 11" the shot from inside the box tilts over to one side and we see the edge of the hole tilting. This would be impossible if the camera was still on its pedestal as the camera and hole would have to move together. Reinforces the theory that it's a hand-held camera by this time.
Nope! See above.
@@iansaliba-curtis1041 Please explain then - I would prefer a simple explanation - thank you
@@johnking5174 See my post below these. I went into full detail of my department's role in the illusion.
The post below this starting " was a TC Studio engineer w...". It's my reply to Mortimer50145.
@@iansaliba-curtis1041 Sorry, I thought you meant you posted it above, got a bit confused. Thank you.
Is a record , look at 7:33 ... why Paul Daniels does not appear in the camera , even the head must appear... Sry for my bad english
Good trick :)
The camera went down a trap door in the floor or out the back of the box. The camera operator had time to rap his head set cord in a loop in his hand. I was a TV camera operator in the 80s and 90s here in the US. When i was finished a show i rapped my head set cord just like he had in his hand because then i put my head set in my work bag. We did not have the Link 125 camera here in the US. We had mostly Philips/Norelco PC 70, ikegami, Sony, RCA.
Cool
David Copperfield Trick :)
Has anyone excluded the use of mirrors to
hide in the box.
or
Mirrow double reflection under the box as done in
other disappearing objects in boxes by magicians.
.
Send me a reply
It's an actual camera trick disguised as not being a camera trick, with the use of a camera!
There is also room to put a videos camera inside the forklift holliw out like stairs extc
Copperfield ask Paul Daniels if he could use this video camera vanish illusions and Paul Daniels said yes but Paul Daniels said Copperfield used a different method of vanish
how you know that?
My guess is that it is a camera trick ( as well as a trick with a camera)
Im a walking magic book tv sets movies church rubiks cube puzzles time machine capsule and family tree photos videos fun
The explanation is video editing.
There is a live studio audience.
Hollow ps Copperfield and his illusion crew helpers used Walter Jeans pt Selbit improvement on the mirror tunnel for CBS videos camera vanish plus like i thought and a nother guy illusionists also that one of the lamp lights is now the videos camera video feed footage and Copperfield turning off and on videos camera built part of videos camera frame shape box illusion ideas concepts
Paul Daniels version of tv video camera vanish is way diffennt method and rutine and Copperfield Christian illusionist ask Paul Danials could he use it and Paul said yes ps you see Copperfield likes to change idea method ton diffennt methods if he's able to Copperfield used Walter jeans retangle mirror tunnel Howard thruston million dollar mystery pt selbit silver hat illusion
how you know that?
Who cares how the trick is done. Just enjoy it
Jonia Spina Tony hassini Doug Henning Andre Kole Christian illusionist Christian illusionist the pendragons Lance Burton movie Billy topit now you see me movies 1 and 2 is co producer Christian illusionist David Seth Kotkin copperfield and like I thought in the works a now you see me 3