How did Atlas accomplish the 'rain magic' trick in Now You See Me 2?

How did Atlas accomplish the 'rain magic' trick in Now You See Me 2? - Stylish young woman showing focus with cards

In Now You See Me 2, Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) performs a trick - he makes the rain droplets stop mid-air. He then proceeds to make the rain drops go up (i.e. against gravity). Finally, he makes the droplets move in several different directions.

At the end of his act, he mentions that the trick was carried out using the strobe lights and rain machines installed nearby. Given this statement, is there a plausible explanation for how he accomplished the trick?



Best Answer

Somehow. It works small-scale in controlled environment, it is shown in the Macao trick shop. There it is a small box.

You need a controlled frequency of drops and a synchronised strobe. You don't see the same drop lit moving upwards but the next drop a bit above the last one so it seems that it moves upwards.

I doubt it is possible to recreate it large-scale as shown in the movie.




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How did Atlas accomplish the 'rain magic' trick in Now You See Me 2? - An Illusionist Holding a Burning Book
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How did Atlas accomplish the 'rain magic' trick in Now You See Me 2? - A Magician Holding Cards



How did Daniel Atlas make the rain stop?

One of the most spellbinding sequences in the film shows magician Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) stopping rain in mid-air, moving the droplets around with some deft hand movements before falling back into a puddle and disappearing into the water.

How the tricks are done in Now You See Me?

You have to think CGI was used to make the scene work (and a bit of CGI was indeed used to protect Ruffalo from the heavy handcuffs that might have hurt his wrists), but in reality the whole trick can be performed practically without any digital trickery or misleading editing.

How illusionists do their tricks?

Magicians create illusions by taking advantage of how we perceive stimuli and process information. For example, a dove fluttering from a hat can be used to draw an audience's attention away from the actual trick. (Image credit: Dreamstime.) NEW YORK \u2014 There is a place for magic in science.

What was the first magic trick?

Lota Bowl Trick The oldest magic trick is the lota bowl trick. While we have evidence to suggest that people were performing feats of strange magic or illusion for even longer, the lota bowl trick circa 3000 BCE is the earliest known instance of a magic trick in the modern sense.



Atlas: The Titan God of Endurance, Strength And Astronomy - (Greek Mythology Explained)




More answers regarding how did Atlas accomplish the 'rain magic' trick in Now You See Me 2?

Answer 2

The effect is called "Levitating Water". There are a lot of YouTube videos showing it in a smaller format. I'm actually pretty sure there's no way to do it like he did it in the movie, because as soon as you touch the water, the illusion breaks and you can see the water "falling".

Answer 3

I wanted to add an official answer of what the phenomenon is called. On the Today show, David Copperfield who served as a consultant for the movie actually explains what the reverse rain effect is based on. The trick is based on the Wagon-wheel effect or also referred to as the stroboscopic effect.

Essentially what happens is by playing around with lighting you can make it seem like something has a slower frame rate than it actually is. For rain, what you are seeing is the strobing lighting the rain in the correct intervals to make it seem like they are staying still, going up, etc. Atlast also reveals this at the very end where he shows there are UV lights lined up on the floor along with the rain machines that are producing the rain.

David Copperfield reveals the secret to ‘Now You See Me 2’ water illusion

In the movie, if you go to the to around 45 minutes in, after the twins Merritt and Chase are talking, you'll see Wilder stumbles upon the device which is known as a strobe fountain that illustrates the trick (and I guess this scene was also to foreshadow the magic and give an explanation for the inspiration).

Answer 4

A drink company performed this as an actual illusion for a recent television commercial. They drove a sofisticated drip machine with very large strobes and a camera on a robot arm. The field looks to be about 10 feet cubed.

drip machine Gatorade

They could not retain static drops inside the drop field, the falling distance seems much to far. The drops hit terminal velocity at slightly different heights from one frame to the next.

So I'm afraid it was all CG, with some actual wet actors.

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