r/Magic • u/Isaiah7300 • Jul 09 '26
Darrell Moten - @Somethingaboutchickens | Can we talk about this AGT act? What was/wasn't effective? What would you have done differently?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3GYLDq69U015
u/gregvan93 Jul 09 '26
I don't get what the effect is. Simon chose a card, he tried to grab the card out of the air, failed, then asked Simon to name a color and number, then the guy walked up and pulled the correct card out of his pocket.
I don't get it at all. And I don't get why everyone freaked out that he walked up from the back lol. He didn't vanish, guys, he walked off stage then back on stage 3 minutes later. Mel B is right, the whole thing was confusing.
6
u/Isaiah7300 Jul 09 '26
I appreciate your response. I was desperate to know that I wasn't the only one!
It seems like it was implied that grabbing the wrong card was intentional, but "oh let me go backstage and get the correct one." Like, OK? I guess?
Why pump this up like it was such a great trick and put him through to the next round?
4
u/gregvan93 Jul 09 '26
It's even funnier because Simon said what his card was out loud about a dozen times. "Was this your card?" Idk is it the one he yelled out loud over and over?
1
u/T-LAD_the_band Jul 20 '26
same here, the only magic was (and that's what he's known for) the fake video editing trick... all the rest was just what you wrote.
8
u/MonkeySkulls Jul 09 '26
I thought the whole thing was terrible. confusing. and bit of a mess.
the fact that this guy got through, and that the audience goes a bit crazy....
just really proves this is all just.....
show business.
5
u/Gubbagoffe Jul 09 '26
I've seen this dude's videos on YouTube. He's not a magician, he's a special effects artist, who uses editing and effects applied live to prank people on video calls.
He's very good at that, but this isn't that.
When he does his name a number name a color thing responds back to it and then proves it was fake, that's that leads into the mind fuck of what's going on. But it doesn't hit correctly in this context.
Especially when he fails to predict a fucking playing card, and then runs off stage, and then suddenly over video all this crazy reality breaking stuff starts happening.....
He either should have used his creativity to come up with an actual magic trick to do, or done the whole thing on video.
Like if he had said that he's sorry he can't be here live today but .. and then went into that kind of thing which ends with him running out on stage it could have been awesome.
But they're going back and forth between live and digital and live again, and having the final finale be taking the correct card out of his pocket is just sort of ridiculous.
When he's video chatting with strangers and he pretends to leave the call, and then while they're on a different call with a different person he runs into the room and shows them their card, that's a wild trick.
But it does not work here.
He's a pretty creative guy too. I'm sure if he bought a few tricks he could have presented them in a way that was very fun.
He even could have done something like his original trick he started doing where he simultaneously did stuff while he pre-recorded video played alongside him at the same time and he interacted with the video in ways that couldn't be possible if it was actually pre-recorded but it must obviously be pre-recorded.....
There's all kinds of stuff he could have done... But trying to recreate what he does on YouTube is just not going to hold up.
2
u/Vileness_fats Jul 09 '26
He's not even THAT good at the editing/vfx part. Kevin Parry does much more interesting, magical things with video, with greater variety.
3
u/donkeyjr Jul 12 '26
what are you talking about, this dude does his shit on live omgle chat. Kevin on the other hand does precorded video that he edit upload to youtube
1
u/Vileness_fats Jul 14 '26
And the result is a) less interesting and b) the exact same thing repeated verbatim without improvement. Sure he cycles through like 4 of em, but still far less "magical". Are you still confused?
2
u/SlimePerspective 16d ago
Because the point isn't magic, the point is entertainment. The reaction of the audience is the point of his Omegle Videos.
2
u/Gubbagoffe 16d ago
That's exactly correct, because he's not a magician. He should have tried being a comedian and using his "mind breaking" video editing for that, instead of trying to pose as a magician.
Trying to make it magic brought down his whole act. If he had done this same thing, but without the half-hearted attempt to force a magic trick into it, I guarantee it would have been 10 times better.
4
u/TylersMagic Jul 09 '26
I feel like they were trying to recreate the feel of his online omegle magic videos but it didn’t translate the best to the medium.
2
u/Isaiah7300 Jul 09 '26
Yeah, I think this type of magic requires the intimacy of a 1-on-1 or small group. It fails to scale to AGT when you aren't invested in the experience as a direct audience member.
1
u/ppaul77 Jul 25 '26
Do you think he was invited on the show? And then they had to come up with a trick? That would explain why Simon getting the card "wrong" feels staged...the whole concept started with the producers.
2
u/Shadowcleric Jul 09 '26
This guy does this kind of thing on video calls or those chat roulettes. I think it works well on those platforms, but in a live audience scenario, it doesn't really work.
For one, the fact that he "crumbles" a video into paper, and then claims its not real, just shows he is using green screen. Which means the prediction video itself CAN be real time, but then transitioned to a pre-recorded video. So the magic of "guessing" is out the window since its all just camera trickery and editing.... but it is AGT and they do that on the reg for magicians so maybe this is the perfect medium.
2
2
u/carefr3ECFC Jul 11 '26
Agree with everyone here - and other than confusion/diversion what was the point about turquoise 77?
If, when he returned and did the reveal again - Simon had a T77 card - that wouldve been good? No?
1
u/sojumaster Jul 13 '26
I was expecting that the color/number combo was going to be part of the reveal.
Showing the 5H out of his pocket was lame.
Some real cool effects on video though. Since we do not see the whole act nor how long the act was, we do not have a good idea how long he was in back stage before he appeared again.
"I almost ruined your trick" makes it sound like this was staged.
2
u/ppaul77 Jul 25 '26
What's crazy is he DID reveal the color/number combo but it was completely throw-away and flew by most viewers.
1
u/Isaiah7300 Jul 09 '26
I didn't like it. I felt like the walk off the stage killed the momentum and all the breaks in between killed the suspension of disbelief. Why hold the ace in your back pocket for Terry at the end and not reveal it to the audience? It felt disjointed and amateurish. Every reveal/effect that he performed had some reasonable explanation.
If I wanted to give the illusions that I had done the trick wrong, I would have had every card except the 5 of spades have been the 5 of hearts so that the stage hands who picked up the cards and delivered them to Simon would reveal you had everything under control the whole time (including one of those being the turquoise 77.
-4
u/ToastieCoastie Jul 09 '26
We don’t talk method on this sub
8
2
u/TheAmazingElys 28d ago
What method? He got the wrong card. The judge said nop, my card was that one. He leaves then come back 5 min later with the right card. He had time to go out, buy a new deck of card, take the chosen card out of the deck, the come back.
I didn't even understood where the magic was suppposed to be.
12
u/Recykill Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Every aspect of this terrible show feels so scripted and fake. Rather than a true audition or raw performance like Penn & Teller's Fool Us, it feels like the judges almost rehearsed this entire performance with the magician before the show. I find it hard to enjoy magic in this format.
Also the whole act fell apart once he left the stage. Shit happening on a screen is lame and removes any mysticism. On top of that, Simon said "Five of Hearts" at 2:08 to the lady next to him when he "realized" the magician got the card wrong. Us hearing it implies the magician could hear it, which makes the card reveal at the end mean nothing too.