Now you didn’t perform his magic trick scene in one shot [Exclusive]

This article contains spoilers for “Now you see me: now you don’t see me.”

“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the third installment in that franchise, is in theaters now, and you may find one particular sequence particularly striking: when the original Four Horsemen — J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) — and the group’s new Gen-Z members Charlie (Justice Smith), Bosco (Dominic Sessa), and June (Ariana Greenblatt) shows off all their card sleights. With the gang in a remote, seemingly abandoned French chateau that may or may not belong to their former mentor Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), director Ruben Fleischer pulls off a daring shot of each magician performing a trick, and /Film was able to speak to him exclusively about it.

When asked if it was easier or more difficult to perform practical magic tricks in one take, Fleischer clarified that it was the latter.

“It’s definitely harder. What was happening behind the scenes of this plan was pretty cool. […] But we used some visual effects to help our actors who aren’t real life-trained magicians. But the cool thing is if they had If I were real magicians who had trained all their lives, this could have been done without any use of visual effects. The only thing we did was maybe someone makes something disappear and it falls to the ground and we painted what happens. But if they had been real magicians, they could have hidden it and eventually revealed it. »

Let me back up a bit and explain the scene in question. Once Atlas, Henley, Merritt, Jack, Bosco, Charlie and June decide to team up to steal the Heart Diamond from wealthy tycoon and CEO Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), whose idiotic accent masks how deeply evil she is, they manage to trick Veronika and her security team and make off with the fist-sized jewel. At this castle in France, the gang solves a series of puzzles – it’s essentially an escape room for magicians – to reveal Thaddeus in a private room by a fire, giving the group a moment’s respite before continuing to evade the French police.

Using both humble playing cards and the diamond itself, the gang has a great time and, according to Ruben Fleischer, this was almost exclusively achieved in practice. When Sessa’s Bosco spins a playing card as part of a trick, Fleischer says they had “a guy off camera with a fishing line” on a broomstick to contribute to the effect. Then, when Bosco passes the card to Isla Fisher’s Henley, the trick continues. Fleischer continues:

“Then Isla grabs it and at that point it disconnects from the fishing line and she’s able to rip it and bend it or do whatever she does. So there were a ton of moving parts behind the camera from different people coming in and helping her. And actually, once she bends it, she pops the diamond. Someone then lifted the diamond in her hand just below the camera line and then it appears like magic. So there are all sorts of things happening behind the camera, but it was all practical.

“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is a fun installment in this franchise right off the bat. Not only is it nice to see the original cast back in action, but Dominic Sessa and Justice Smith settle into the dynamic well, even as Ariana Greenblatt struggles under the weight of awkward one-liners and a character that can politely be described as “the token girl.” There is nevertheless an argument that the sequence before, after and including Ruben Fleischer’s clever single take is the highlight of the film, which do it is true that you often get bogged down in your script. (It’s a testament to Lizzy Caplan’s incredible charisma as an actress that she manages to make her return as Lula Mae, whose lines largely amount to “remember how I was in the last movie?!”, engaging and funny.)

Atlas, Merritt, Jack, Henley, Bosco, June, and Charlie make their way through the house with no idea that everything in front of them is an interactive puzzle in one way or another, from the front door itself (which June solves easily) to a bookcase that only becomes a door if you know a specific code related to the history of witchcraft (Charlie, a self-proclaimed “magic nerd,” covers this one). As they continue to solve puzzles and work together as a team, it is satisfying to simply witness it; It’s obviously the team building exercise of the Four Horseman plus three, if you will, and it really works. Plus, it’s good to know, from Ruben Fleischer directly, that a lot of it was based on good old practical magic.

“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is in theaters now.