Misdirection

The majority of the special effects were executed in-camera. By avoiding the use of computer graphics, many of the effects hold up on screen as magic tricks themselves. For this reason, many of the effects were carried out in a single-shot so that editing could not break the illusion. The only shots that utilized computer graphics were the two involving the glowing orb of light and the shot of the falling cards (the cards themselves were shot at 1000fps with a Phantom camera falling against a blue-screen, the only computer enhancements were the removal of the blue and compositing of the different card drops to create one seamless image of all the cards falling). The titles were generated in AfterFX, but the fire in the opening was also real fire shot with a Phantom and ramped to different speeds with software.