mentalism – MagicShow.Tips

ProMystic 50/50

ProMystic just put out a new trick called 50/50 and it’s great! It’s basically a location of someone holding a stack of your money.

The base routine is someone out of a group holds some money of yours. You say you’re betting your money that you can find it. You then narrow down the group until you have one person left and they have your money.

What I like about the routine is that it really fills the stage with a few bills. It also has a feeling of a chance of failure and while the method isn’t 100% is is 99.9% surefire. There is a strange scenario that I can imagine where it could fail, but it’s very unlikely.

I’ve done this three times as preshow and it’s worked great! I need to do some writing and hopefully can move it into the show soon!

-Louie

ProMystic Color Match FTW!

About a week ago I was able to switch back to using the ProMystic Color Match and I’ve been using it with 100% success! I’m glad to be able to not Anverdi Color Match set where I was constantly getting a missed signal. That doesn’t mean that the Anverdi set is bad, it just doesn’t work for how I work.

The ProMystic set is the set I’ve used for years, and that may be why I prefer it. I know why it works, and when it doesn’t, I know why it’s not working. I feel like I definitely committed giving the Anverdi set a chance. I know tons of people that prefer the Anverdi set over the ProMystic. I think ultimately your performing style will dictate which works better for you.

-Louie

Clock Prediction

Recently I did my clock prediction at a virtual magic open mic. I stumbled on a couple of jokes and probably could have “listened” more, but I think it went well.

One thing I that wasn’t really possible due to me being in a hotel room was that I couldn’t have the clock displayed the whole time. I kinda had it balanced on a chair, but it kept falling off. The routine still has a bit to go, but I like it!

-Louie

Color Match – Figuring it out

After adding a second transmitter to the Anverdi Color Match pens, I’m not having any issues in the show with not getting a signal. This is something that I think that most magicians wouldn’t do because of the cost. It’s literally double what it should cost.

Somehow both sets of transmitters are signaling one receiver, I’m not sure how that’s happens, but it is. I independently tried the transmitter and they are all signaling the same receiver.

This is a good development, however I’d prefer that I have two complete systems running, and not one and half. With two independent systems, I have a backup if the receiver fails.

Hopefully this is the solution for me…

-Louie

Anverdi Color Match…UGH!

Well, I had the Anverdi Color Match fail at every show yesterday, and one show all five of the pens didn’t work! The show where they didn’t work, I got a constant 5 buzz on the receiver. I’m lucky that I have an out for this trick that I can use as the method and can instantly switch to my out as the main method in an instant.

That really saved my butt!!!

That also inspired me to actually put the second set of transmitters into one set of pens.

In my hotel room right now they are working at about the same time. As is, they don’t trigger at the exact same time, like a promystic set does, they’re a little bit off. I think I need to designate a primary receiver and if I’m not happy with what that is sending me or need to verify it, then I pay attention to the second one.

We’ll see how this works…

-Louie

Using Time Wisely!

When I’m out performing at fairs in the summer, I can have a lot of down time in between shows. I try to be productive during those times. Last week I bought a ton of clocks and spent some time between shows gimmicking them!

I ended up being a photo opp for all the other performers as it looked like I had a little sweat shop going!

Using that bonus time I have during the day frees me up later in the day to do other things!

-Louie

Getting Better With Anverdi Color Match

Well, it looks like a few things are starting to come together with using the Anverdi Color Match! The last few days I’ve had 100% success rate with all the pens giving me a signal.

One of the things that I have changed is what I tell the person from the audience to get them to exaggerate their initial motion with the pen. I tell the to, “Take a pen, hold it up and show it to the audience“. That seems to get them to make a larger motion that’s more reliably triggering the pen.

I do need to rewatch the instructional video, I seem to remember seeing something about the receiver being able to tell you if a pen is low on batteries. I could be remembering wrong, but hope that’s a feature that exists!

-Louie

Anverdi Success Rate…

The Anverdi Color Match set is something I’m still trying to make work. I’m still at about 70% failure rate, where at least one pen doesn’t send a signal. This isn’t the end of the world, as I can still figure out what they colored where, but definitely not the ideal situation.

There seems to be no consistency as to when color fails. If it was only one color failing, that’s not a huge deal as I can make an educated guess. Right now I can’t, as it seems pretty random.

In an attempt to make this work, I bought a second Anverdi Color Match set. The idea will be to put two sets of the gimmicks into each pen. I probably can’t use the pens that come with the set, however I bought a refill pen set to see if I can alter the ink cartridge a little bit to make room for a second gimmick.

Having some redundancy will give me some piece of mind…if it works!

-Louie

Anverdi Color Match – A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day for the Anverdi Color Match set. I did three shows without an issue. This is a good development and really helping with my confidence with this prop!

The challenge is figuring out why it’s not sending the signal when it doesn’t. The closest thing I can guess is that someone isn’t moving the pen enough, however it appear from reviewing video that the pens have plenty of movement. Unfortunately if not enough movement is the problem, I can’t think of a good solution to get the person to move the pen more. I can’t say, “pick up the pen and shake it like it’s 1987 and it’s a can of Aquanet“.

I did have the thought of buying a second set of the Anverdi color match and put two gimmicks into each pen. That would give me a redundant system and allow me to have two receivers.

I’m going to see how the success/fail rates play out over the next few weeks before I buy another set.

-Louie

Failure Rate With Anverdi Color Match

Well, it kinda sucks, but I’m currently having a at least one pen not signal with the Anverdi Color Match in 75% of my shows! It’s not consistently the same pen that’s not firing. Luckily I have a backup plan that will bail me out of when I don’t get a signal from the pen.

This is something I’ve always said about electronic “push button” magic, it’s some of the hardest stuff to do because when it fails, it fails HARD!

Essentially when I do a trick with this style of method, I run a second method at the same time to cover me in case the cleaner method (electronic) fails. It’s a pain in the butt to do, however it’s what has to be done to have it appear to the audience that you have a 100% success rate!

I still have a few more days at this gig, hopefully I can lower that failure rate!

-Louie