David Copperfield's Building Escape Magic Secret Revealed!

In this video I will reveal David Copperfield's exploding building escape trick. Here's a quick recap of what happened. David Copperfield begins the illusion by entering a building filled with explosives and introduces a safe that is just large enough for him to get inside. The feed shows a large platform where Copperfield will later appear. He gets into the safe and the police officers lock it. A live feed is displayed showing everything from the moment the safe is locked to the moment all the workers escape the building. Copperfield seems to struggle to escape in time and suddenly the bombs detonate inside the building. It collapses and the live feed shuts down. After a few seconds the cloth on the platform slowly rises to reveal that Copperfield has appeared underneath it. Now of course let's get one thing straight. The police officers and the people outside examining the platform are obviously part of the trick. The acting where they examine the platform hardly looks convincing at all. The fixed live camera footage shows the police officer's movement but it doesn't match what we see in the handheld camera. For example in the handheld camera you can see the officer's right hand moving away from his body but in the fixed camera his right hand appears close to the left side of his body. He's also leaning forward far more in the live feed compared to what we see in the footage. If you're still not convinced just look at the chain on the right. Its position is noticeably lower here. You can judge this by the distance from the locker knob. The most impressive part of the illusion is understanding how he appears on the platform where clearly no mirrors are being used. Some of you might disagree but I will show you why that is not possible. You can see a slight shadow at an angle here. If we had placed a mirror right here at an angle it would only reflect the supporting structure. Furthermore if a mirror had been used the slight yellowish misalignment from the parking lot marking would have been reflected on the opposite side as well which it is not. The thin shadow seen here would also have been mirrored on the other side but it is not. All of this confirms that mirrors were never involved. The secret behind his appearance and where he is actually hiding depends entirely on the camera work. Specifically on how the camera films the platform. From the moment the platform enters the frame the camera stays at a fixed height and never drops low enough to show what is underneath. The platform is never shown at eye level. It is always filmed from an angle that prevents us from looking under it. This is because Copperfield is positioned directly beneath it. From the angle we are shown you can't see Copperfield anywhere but when you bring the view down to eye level you can clearly see the bracket that is holding him in place. But if Copperfield has been lying below eye level how does the cloth rise? That's where the framing of the illusion comes into play because if we pan out and see what's actually going on it's a simple pulley system. There's one single wire attached through the cloth to a flexible metal skeleton stitched inside it that forms a cross shape. The cross isn't symmetrical on all sides. It resembles the shape of a head and during the second tug when the wire pulls it higher the structure slowly reveals what looks like a shoulder forming next to the head shape. On the third attempt when the wire pulls the structure upward one end of the cross is shorter than the other. Because of this the cloth doesn't lift evenly. Even though the pull is happening near the right side the shorter end of the cross carries less cloth weight so it tilts upward and lifts the cloth at an angle. Once the cloth rises to a significant height about half way through its movement the entire structure provides enough cover for Copperfield to move out of his blind spot, get under the cloth, raise his right arm and grab the short flexible end of the wire. You can clearly see the transition point where the wire stops pulling the structure because Copperfield's hand pushes it much higher than the pulley system ever did. The wire loses all tension at this moment and he uses that slack to move the cloth and reveal himself. Since the wire's flexible the lack of tension allows him to shape the cloth however he wants without exposing the hidden structure inside it. Behind this mask only the truth remains till we meet again.