David Copperfield's Great Wall of China Magic Secret Revealed!

In this video, I will reveal the secrets behind David Copperfield's passing through the Great Wall of China illusion. Here's a quick recap of what happened in the performance. In this illusion, David Copperfield descends a staircase onto a platform with a backlight attached to one side near the top. A curtain drops from all three sides and the backlight creates a shadow, seemingly indicating that David Copperfield is still inside a closed compartment. He then removes his white towel and appears to melt straight into the Great Wall of China. The curtains are swiftly removed and David Copperfield has apparently vanished. Near one side of the wall, there is a person holding a heartbeat sensor to monitor David Copperfield's vital signs. Suddenly, on the other side of the wall, David Copperfield's hands and face press against a white curtain. The sound of his heartbeat disappears, creating tension about his survival. They lower the curtains with the backlight once more and David Copperfield's hands begin to emerge as if he is melting out of the wall. The curtain is removed, revealing that he is safe and sound, leaving everyone in awe of his incredible illusion. Well, how did he perform this trick? Let's figure this out together. I will give some hints. See if you can figure out this trick on your own before I get into the explanation. The first thing you'll notice is the back frame has a light source, which is at a very specific position. The light source is positioned at the very top of this frame, instead of positioning it near the center right over here. In a moment, you'll discover why positioning this light source near the top was very crucial to sell the illusion of David Copperfield walking right into the Great Wall of China. The second thing you'll notice is when David Copperfield has melted into the Great Wall of China and attempts to pass through the white cloth with his hands pushing against it. The assistants who are holding the cloth do not have one of their arms visible when David Copperfield apparently pushes against it. Well, if you haven't figured out how David Copperfield performed this famous magic trick of passing through the Great Wall of China, I will now explain in detail. In order to perform this trick, David Copperfield had to use a hidden assistant who was to remain hidden until the curtains were closed from all sides. This assistant had a body figure similar to David Copperfield and was wearing the exact same clothes. So who we see here in the shadow is not David Copperfield. In fact, it is the assistant who is dressed up like him. The purpose of wearing this white towel around his neck was to sell the illusion that it is the same David Copperfield. Otherwise, throughout this performance, you'll notice that this white towel served no purpose until the moment he went inside and passed it to his assistants who were outside of the compartment. Now, you may be wondering where was this assistant hiding since we only see three people other than David Copperfield at this moment in time and there is no person standing anywhere else. Well, if you observe the base of the platform, although it doesn't look that thick and suspicious, it is actually able to accommodate a full-sized human. You can see from the outside of this platform, in a similar illusion performed by the masked magician, the assistant was simply hiding inside the base of the platform that had a flap-like structure out of which he is able to enter and exit. The very moment the curtains were lowered down and David Copperfield entered into the basement, he hid in a blind spot inside the compartment. You may be wondering what do I mean by the term blind spot. Well, you may recall a specific observation I highlighted earlier regarding the light source that was at a very specific position on the back frame. Notice that this light source, when turned on, projects a beam of light that only lights up a portion of the space between the two frames. The portions that you see on the left and the right side, which are not in the path of the light, are called blind spots. This is because the shadow of the individual when hiding in this particular blind spot will not be visible on the screen if they hide on either the left or the right side of this light source. This explains why the light was positioned at the very top so that there is room underneath and around the light. After David Copperfield had successfully switched with his clone-dressed assistant, he himself did not hide inside the base of the platform, instead crawled into the staircase. You can see that the staircase is practically large enough to accommodate his entire body, as demonstrated by the masked magician in his particular performance. Staircases being used as a hiding spot, for magicians and assistants both, can be found in a lot of stage illusions. So, whenever you see staircases in stage magic, you can already consider it as a hint and an important prop to execute their illusion. Now, after David Copperfield had successfully exited the platform with the help of the staircase and the three white-dressed assistants, the David Copperfield clone assistant attempted to perform the shadow vanish in the compartment, and the execution is pretty straightforward. All he had to do was gradually walk into the left blind spot, away from the path of light, and crouch down on the back left side of the compartment. From there, he slowly lifted up the bottom lid and hid inside. After which, the curtains were removed to reveal that David Copperfield has apparently vanished. You may be wondering, how did David Copperfield, in such a short period of time, walk around the Great Wall of China, and hide himself in the second staircase on the other side of the wall? Well, first of all, he didn't need to walk around the Great Wall. This is because the Great Wall of China actually has secret passageways through which people can walk through. He first exited the staircase, then quickly walked through the secret passageway, and he hid himself in the second staircase, which was rolled toward the second platform by the assistants, when the camera was moving above the Great Wall of China, and from this second staircase, he crawled into the base of this second platform. Now, when the time came for him to apparently push through the Great Wall of China against the white cloth, it's pretty obvious that it was the assistants who were pushing against this cloth. As you can see in the exposed view, and from the top view, right before the curtains were removed, David Copperfield exited from the base and hid in the blind spot on the right, and from there gradually moved his arms into the path of the light, to make the illusion as if he was melting out from the wall onto the platform, after which the curtains were removed to reveal he had successfully passed through the Great Wall of China. Behind this mask, only the truth remains, till we meet again.