I just saw the one where he passed through the "great wall" of steel containers. What he didn't explain was how Copperfield moved from one side of the real Great Wall to the other. Did the camera just not show it? He obviously wasn't wheeled around the back side in a set of stairs.
share[deleted]
ALL of those massive tricks like vanishing the Statue of Liberty, or making an elephant appear, or walking through the Great Wall, are accomplish with a full audience of PAID observers.
All of people agree to act amazed, and say nothing about what is going on outside the view of the camera.
Copperfield could have been shot out of a cannon from one side to the other, it doesn't really matter - the on site audience was in on it. Most likely they had a construction crane with a harness for him behind the camera, or something similar.
Actually, of all the tricks that involve a "paid" audience, the walk thru the Great Wall is one of the ones that does not involve that. It was actually done with the full intention of tricking both the live audience and the television audience.
shareI saw a video on how that was done. With bright lights blinding the audience, he sort of walked into the stand , whoich was taken to the other side for him to emerge.
May be you can google " great chinese wall trick video".
regards
tdh
The Great Wall actually has several gates that allow people to move from one side of the wall to the other. His trick was likely set-up near one of these gates, but carefully not shown. After he hides in the staircase, they would have been able to wheel it through the gate to the other side.
One thing I noticed that he didn't explain was that in the Copperfield act on the other side were two hands AND a face pushing through the cloth. In the Masked Magician's act it was only hands.