The Indian Rope Trick

Something else: the shot of the rope going up has been reversed; it's actually a shot of the rope coming down.

Another piece of evidence to suggest that it was put on for the cameras.

"SliVe
December 26th, 2009 at 8:58 pm

My question is, how do they set up this rod in front of a live audience?
I mean, this pole can't appear out of nowhere..."

The people being filmed aren't the audience intended for playback... otherwise you wouldn't need so much editing and film reversing. The standing audience is in on it. The 'trick' is for those watching it in a movie house.

The trick is simple - the rope is a magic rope. That way, you don't need a pole or an audience of stooges or any other tricks to make it work.

The key is the origin of the rope. Why does this trick need an empty canister, or an excessive pile of rope at the center? Thinking about this led me to a possible solution:

The rope is interchangeable with a rope/pole combo positioned underground. An unseen individual watches/listens to the magician from a point underneath the bundle of rope/canister/something above him (and at the center of the trick). When the magician throws the rope into the air, the underground assistant pushes the pole/rope combo into the air, from a point underground (obviously rather deep, to accommodate the long pole/rope combo), while the magician quickly drops the not-attached-to-a-pole rope into the empty canister or whatever is at the trick's center.

I could be wrong, of course, but this seems to be the mechanism behind the trick.

This looks like it's being played backwards too. Just look at the stilted, unnatural movements. At least from the point that the rope is "thrown up" (i.e. falls down).