20 Hidden Movie Frames You Probably Missed In Famous Movies
13. The Subliminal Card Trick - Now You See Me
In Now You See Me's very first scene, street magician Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) is performing a card trick where he asks a woman to pick a card out of a pack which he briefly flips before her eyes.
Danny flips the pack once and then does it again a second, slower time, before correctly guessing that the woman had picked the seven of diamonds.
But director Louis Leterrier also employed an elegantly simple editing trick to try and have viewers think of the very same card.
When flipping through the pack the second time, the frames where the seven of diamonds appear are repeated, ensuring it stays on-screen fractionally longer than any other card.
The idea is that the card will then subconsciously enter the viewer's own mind, and you'll be left amazed and impressed when Danny picks that very card moments later.
It doesn't work for everyone, of course, but it's still an impressively simple trick and a neat feat of meta-fiction nevertheless.