SoldierHawk wrote:

pineapple wrote: Amazing regardless if it's fake or not. I'm with Pineapple. I'm betting that its probably an illusion or magic trick of some kind, but that doesn't make it any less cool, or make it take any less skill. It doesn't appear to be camera or editing trickery of any kind though. I'd love to see this done in person!

There was a lot of editing going on there. It wasn't a continous shot from when he turned the cup upside down and pulled the card out to where he twisted off the glass. The liquid water was obviously replaced by the just frozen water as Vald said.

The spinning vortex effect is created by the spinning layer of ice on the smooth surface causing the still liquid water inside to spin and twist as well. You can even see the super thin ice shards for just an instant when it collapses.

I love cool tricks like this but I always hate when people lie and are disingenous about it. I know the guy is probably a magician or something talking himself up, but don't encourage people to do it at home when you don't tell them the secret. They'll just make a huge mess of their kitchen wasting their time. Achieving the perfect thin layer of ice to create that vortex effect is cool enough without lying to make it seem supernatural.

Edit: I just checked the video on Youtube and a lot of commentors have spotted that he has a bunch of CGI project videos on his profile as well as other "suspect" videos. The general consensus there seems to be that he used CGI based on his use of CGI in other videos and trying to pass them off as "totally realz omg" as well.