The Rocket Card Fountain

I’m still working on my Rising Card routine. At the end of it I’m doing a bit where I push the out jogged card back into the deck and it rises up again. I do that several times, but the bit is lacking an ending. It’s the same joke over and over again.

I’m thinking that maybe after it gets pushed down and pops up a few times, I set the glass into my case, THEN all the cards come shooting out of the glass.

I started playing with it in the green room at the fair a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t really try it at any shows at the fair as I don’t want to deal with the clean up of cards everywhere at the stage I’m at.

Here’s what the ideas will look like:

I’m using The Rocket card fountain. I really like this, it’s pretty quiet and so far is very reliable. I can’t wait to actually try it in the show!

-Louie

Working on the Rising Card

The rising card routine, that I’m working on right now is missing something. What is missing is time. The routine is really bare bones and is very short, I think without any bits it’s maybe two minutes. Since the routine involves bringing someone onto the stage, I need to get at least three minutes out of it. Ideally if someone is coming out of the audience, it needs to be closer to about five minutes.

One of the ideas that I had was to have a kid do the most “epic” card trick. I have the kid show me their epic, hero face and walk. That didn’t hit the time I tried it, but the kid was younger.

The next time I used an older kid which played better and framed it a little bit different. I had said that they are in show biz now and had them show the audience their show biz smile and walk. That played a lot better than the doing an epic trick with a younger kid. I’m not sure if that’s the route that I want to take, but it’s a step in the right direction!

The other thing that the trick is lacking is music and a punctuation when the card rises out of the deck.

-Louie

UnPlanned Rising Card Routine

A long time ago I had an idea for a rising card routine.  Most of the rising card routines that I have seen have either a singular rise, which is the whole routine, or it’s multiple rises. The thing I have against multiple rises is that it’s essentially the same trick over and over, you just may add conditions each time to make it more impossible.  I understand it gives it a sense of build, but why wouldn’t you just do it the “hardest” way the first time if you could, the previous ones were wasting the audience’s time? 

In the idea for my rising card routine, three cards are selected and the deck is put in a glass.  An interesting point is that the cards never leave the glass after they are put in.  This is one of the interesting parts of this trick, the hands off nature of the trick.  I do touch the cards, but only the top card to show it’s not a selected card.  So the deck is in the glass, and first two cards appear one at a time to the front of the pack. Then for the finale the final card rises up from the middle of the pack.

It’s a good one, two, three set of reveals.  It’s also done with me solo onstage, so no one physically has to come up on stage and it ends with a nice applause pose.

There are some challenges with the original routine.  The placements of the gimmick in the deck and best way to hide the lock that I built into my rising card gimmick are some of the more major challenges. I took my props for this routine to the green room of the fair I’m working at and was showing it to Mickey O’Connor and Bri Crabtree for their thoughts.  While messing around with a different idea, I came up with a way to use a someone from the audience as a way to “lock” the rising card in the down position.  It was a real “break through” for the routine…also it marked a complete change of the routine.  It’s now a two card revelation with someone onstage, and that person does the magic.  It is a better routine after the changes, and this is a great example of how bouncing around ideas with other people can make a huge difference!

-Louie

More Jumping Torn and Restored Card…

Last week I did a blog post about a torn card trick (read it here) and I had a chance to do some work on it and try to improve it. I eliminated the use of the Intersessor gimmick, as it made the trick more complex because I had to ditch it, and it’s not easy to palm.

Here’s the second version:

I think this is a better way to do it, and it got a good reaction.

I’ve been working on my technique for making the card jump out and it’s getting better. I’m consistently getting bigger jumps of the card from the deck. What’s missing is the effect. Right not it’s now clear what’s going on. I also need to figure out a better way to vanish the torn pieces.

Hopefully I’ll have a version 3 soon-ish

Torn Corner…

Personally I dislike using a torn corner to identify a card or bill. It’s very clunky compared to having is signed and you lose the punch of the item reappearing and having it immediately identifiable.

Ok, that’s out of the way, now I’m doing to explain why I’m playing with a trick with a torn corner.

A long time ago when Gaeton Bloom’s Intersessor trick came out, I thought it would lend itself to a trick in Tarbell where a card jumps out of the deck when the end is riffled. I never did it because $50 to play with an idea that I would probably never use was a bit steep. Recently I found a super deal on a used Intersessor gimmick and bought it.

Here’s me trying out the idea before my show and my comments on it:

I think I’m going to switch it up and use a corner switch or a scored duplicate card instead of the Intersessor gimmick. That will solve having to ditch the gimmick. With scored card or corner switch, it will allow me to use a bigger tear which will let me do a bigger tear and get a bigger jump of the card.