The trick to magic is directing our attention wherever the magician wants to, and this is surely also one of the secrets of cinema. As a director, you must be capable of pushing and pulling the audience's attention in whatever direction the story demands. After all, the great pioneer of early cinema, George Méliès, was actually a magician before he became a filmmaker. As Jeff (Sheridan) said during his demonstration, the whole point of the magician is to destroy the logical and the rational. Film seems like reality but it is not reality at all, merely a complex illusion.

...I believe our audience (of Film School) understood that it is not the curriculum of a traditional film school that makes you a filmmaker, but wild fantasies and an agitation of mind over seemingly odd questions. As I said, the question about moving big boulders of stones in prehistoric times was more the starting point for Fitzcarraldo than anything else.

Werner Herzog
from Herzog on Herzog