@Chrispydelic 490195 wrote:

The “police” are all pre-arranged and know exactly where to stop to pick up the performer.

even doing that isn’t as trivial as it seems, real cops, coastguard, environment ministry and similar agencies (quite understandably) really do not like folk doing this without following proper authorisation which isn’t trivial (not for bad reasons either, but you wouldn’t want someome on a boat on the same watercourse getting into difficulties and thinking the “cops” off the film set are real ones and could help them).

As I spent a large part of the 90s and early 2000s keeping out of the way of feds whilst working in the broadcast industry I soon learned the very subtle ways they allow folk to make authentic drama shows whilst not causing dangerous confusion (especially for scenes where CID/undercover units or large stunts are filmed) but a lot of folk are surprisingly easily fooled (for instance Trigger Happy TV makes a lot of use of the fact that older generations particularly on seeing a man in a peaked hat and uniform tend to obey him, no matter how ridiculous the orders may be).

BTW magick (the actuall full on stuff new age folk do which I am open minded about but I have more cynicism about any kind of organised faith/religion) is certainly a different thing altogether to conjuring tricks, and large scale practical jokes (such as what the late Jeremy Beadle used to pull off) which since the 70s/80s are increasingly interlinked but even these aren’t trivial and need a lot of preparation. I’m sure Beadle also did some conjuring tricks during the 70s/80s, perhaps on the obscure kids TV shows he would turn up on in that era.

Even more so in todays climate where people are actively told to report anything “hidden/out of place” to real authorities lest it might be a IED, CBRN device or something similarly less pleasant than a SFX gadget intended for light entertainment.