Shooting a TV special full of magicians is doubly difficult, because what they're trying to do is create twice the magic.
First, the magicians have to perform their brand of sorcery - repeatedly. And, second, the technical wizards of television have to capture those acts - and translate it into a special with its own brand of magic.And sometimes that isn't easy. For example, on this mid-April day at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, everyone involved in "The Hidden Secrets of Magic" is growing increasingly frustrated.
The setting for the special, which airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on NBC/Ch. 5, is spectacular. It's the brand-new Magical Empire at Caesar's - a new attraction that will be full of various magic acts when it opens next month. And the fact that they're putting the finishing touches on this new attraction plays a part in this afternoon's activities.
Bill Malone, a verifiable wizard at card tricks, is performing in the Secret Pagoda, a relatively small theater. The trick he's doing - Scarne's Aces - is all but impossible to believe. And as Malone performs before a small group of paid extras - as well as cameras and mikes and various technical equipment - he performs it flawlessly.
Just one problem. The fire marshal has chosen this particular day to test the new alarm system.
Over the next couple of hours, the alarms go off endlessly. So often that, rather quickly, it's impossible to keep track of how many times the it sounds. Dozens of times. Certainly more than 100.
"It's another challenge," says executive producer Gary Ouellet - mastering the art of understatement.
And, while card tricks would seem the simplest part of this special, Ouellet says that's not necessarily so.
"It's hard to shoot a card trick. In many ways, it's harder than the big effects," he says. "The camera has to show everything he's doing, and come in close enough while still getting the whole picture. And it's harder to set up for the different angles."
Of course, all that would be easier if those dang alarms would stop sounding.
Malone, a genuinely friendly and charming man, reacts with good humor at first, joking and laughing. Asked if he could do it again, he replies, "Oh, sure. We can do this all day."
But as the problem continues, Malone starts to sweat. Literally. He calls for more makeup, and begins to worry about his performance suffering.
Malone's wife, watching the monitors in the hall outside the theatre, is beginning to look a bit anxious herself. She's leaning forward on her metal chair, and winces each time she hears the alarm.
Nearby, director Alan Carter is bouncing a rubber ball with increasing frustration. Eventually, he starts bouncing the ball off the wall.
Various producers and production assistants are trying with varying degrees of urgency to get hold of someone who can shut the thing off.
(Not everyone is quite so worried. Down the hall a bit a crew member is leaning back in his chair, reading the sports page.)
But the problem continues. Eventually, they figure they've got enough from various takes to cut together into one seamless scene. The producers try to reassure Malone that it will turn out fine. Finally, it's 3 o'clock - time for the lunch break - and just about everyone heaves a sigh of relief.
"I'm going to go to the bar," says executive producer Bob Jaffe, with no small degree of irony.
But there's always one more problem to solve, question to answer.
"Are we feeding atmosphere?" one of the production assistants asks Jaffe. ("Atmosphere" is lingo for the extras who were hired to play audience members.)
Despite the problems, Malone does his best to remain upbeat. And he's excited about the opportunity of appearing on the special.
"It's great," he said. "You reach a much wider audience in one television appearance than in hundreds of (live) shows."
And this is not his first appearance on a magic special. Actually, it's not even his first with these producers.
"They really know what they're doing," Malone says. "This is kind of a pain right now, but we'll get through it."
Still, it's not just the card trick that he needs to keep doing in the same way for various takes, but he's got to remember his own patter - his lines, his presentation, his jokes. And that's being thrown off by the frequent interruptions.
"Nobody ever said being a magician would be easy," Malone says. "But who has more fun at their job than I do?"
The entire process of taping "Hidden Secrets of Magic" is sort of controlled chaos. Dozens of people are going about doing their jobs - although what exactly all of those jobs are isn't necessarily obvious to a visitor. Tons of technical equipment, complete with monitors and blinking lights and all sorts of doodads and geegaws. Multiple cables everywhere underfoot.
Just outside the theater where the card tricks are being taped, you can hear the sound of power saws and hammers down the hall. Carpenters are working on building a stage where magician Mark Kalin will be sawing a woman in half the next day.
As Ouellett predicted, taping this more elaborate illusion proves to be tougher than was Malone's card trick. Of course, the fact that the alarms have fallen silent helps.
Kalin goes through his act relatively flawlessly on several takes. On the first, a crew member is inadvertently in the shot, but that's about as tough as it gets.
It's an indication of how well things are going when, on one of the takes, Kalin has a bit of trouble pulling out the blades that have just "cut" his assistant (and wife) Jinger Leigh in half, the director and other members of the production team break out laughing.
Like the rest of the special, the hook here is that Kalin is performing a "classic illusion." As closely as possible, he's re-creating the original trick as it was first performed in the mid-19th century.
"That's part of the fun here - trying to do it the way it was done a hundred years ago," Kalin says. "It's great for me, and the audience still gets caught up in it."
Malone's card trick, Scarne's Aces, dates back to Prohibition. And the original illusionist, John Scarne, performed it for gangsters and mobsters.
"It's a little less dangerous for me. I don't have to worry about anyone dumping me in the river with cement overshoes if they don't like the trick," Malone quips.
Lance Burton, perhaps the most high-profile magician in the hourlong special, performs a trick that, we're told, even Houdini feared to try. He's "Buried Alive" - he's shackled, enclosed in a coffin and buried 6 feet deep in the rock and sand in the Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas.
(And, though taping in the heat and dust presents its own set of problems, at least the desert does not come equipped with fire alarms.)
Other illusions include the Hindu rope trick and the light and heavy chest - for which the secret will be revealed. There are amazing card tricks, automatons, and a look inside "the mysterious Blue Room," where people and objects morph into other things. There's also some archival footage of early magicians performing the illu-sions.
"What we're doing here just sort of proves how popular magic has always been," Jaffe says. "These aren't new illusions, but they're just as exciting now as they were when they were first performed.
"And everybody loves magic," adds Ouellett, "from kids to senior citizens. Adults know it's a trick, but it's fascinating nonetheless."
And, even up close and personal, these tricks are amazing. You can't quite figure out how they're done, even with repeated run-throughs.
Not that what you'll see on TV is exactly what happened at the taping. For the most part, the audiences were added afterward. The volunteers for Kalin's illusion are more paid extras, and when the magician is playing to the crowd its really a large room with only crew members, production staff (and a couple of TV reporters).
But the magic tricks themselves are not the product of any camera tricks. Now, we all know that these are illusions, but they're as convincing in person as they are on screen. Even watching the woman get sawed in half several times doesn't reveal the answer to everyone's question, voiced by a passing crew member - "How the heck do they do that?"
And, although the magicians and host Robert Urich appear to be talking directly to each other at times, chances are they may never have even seen each other. Urich works separately, doing the various introductions and interstitial material out of sequence and on a different day than most of the illusions.
But the illusions themselves are not electronically enhanced in any way.
"We'd just lose all credibility if we did something like that," Ouellet says. "I think audiences are sophisticated enough to know that what we're showing them is what they'd see if they were here."
"And, if this were some kind of camera trick, I'd be in trouble when I tried to perform it live, wouldn't I?" asks Malone.
Yes, even more trouble that those fire alarms have been causing.