Check me out tonight (5/15) tonight on Masters of Illusion on The CW! There are two back to back shows, the first at 8pm and the second at 8:30pm. I’ll be on the 8:30pm show.
You can check me out doing an original magic trick on the show tonight. Hope you enjoy it!
Oh man, we’re hitting the homestretch here! A few days ago I started writing about wanted to do Goshman’s Cards Thru Newpaper and how it has morphed into a completely new magic trick.
The final change to the physical props was to get rid of the jumbo card that the pictures reappeared under. I was texting my friend Terry Godfrey, who is a very smart magician and we came up with the idea of changing the jumbo card to an envelope that starts out holding the pictures.
I ended up making the envelope, so it’s not a standard size. It’s a little bit smaller than the jumbo card that I was using.
At this point I have an original magic trick. The next step is to clean up the handling a little bit.
The last couple of days I’ve been writing about doing Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper and how it morphed to Cards To Jumbo Card. Today we’re going to talk about the next leap it’s taking, and that’s starting to get rid of the cards. In place of the four regular cards, I’m using Polaroid pictures of my daughter and our pets.
The cool thing about these is that they are slightly smaller than playing cards, which makes a lot of the sleight of hand much easier! The nice thing about coming up with a method that doesn’t use a duplicate, they pictures could be of people from the audience, or of a company’s products, or whatever.
Once again, the video below wasn’t intended for people to watch other than me. It’s a “proof of concept” video that was for me to watch and see how well everything worked and also to remind me of what I was doing.
Things are starting to come together, but there’s still one thing I don’t like, and that’s the jumbo card. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how I got rid of that.
A magician friend of mine a few months ago performed Albert Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper for me. I remember reading it in Goshman’s book, however I remember reading it and working through it and it didn’t feel spectacular. I was also probably 17 years old at the time, so that might have affected my opinion of the trick.
If you haven’t seen the trick, here’s Goshman doing it:
Compared to a lot close up magic, it’s pretty slow. It’s still a good trick for non magicians and had a couple of good moments in it. I like it as a “formal” close up thing that could be done via video projection. However, I have to look at what I don’t like about it. The biggest thing I don’t like is the newspaper.
In the trick there are two newspapers, the one laying flat on the table and the one being used as a cover. The cover newspaper was easily replaced by a jumbo card.
Replacing the flat newspaper on the table made me have to rework the method of the trick. There’s a couple of moments in Goshman’s routine where you need that newspaper. I could replace it with something like a handkerchief, but decided to rework the routine.
What I ended up with is something complete different than Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper, and an original trick. Taking a trick as a starting point and then continually removing what you don’t like is one way to create original material.
Several months ago I hinted that I was putting together some material for a TV show. I always assume that I’ll have my bit cut and end up no being on the show. I recently got an email of the list of acts that will on the show, and I’m on the list!
I’m excited to be a part of the 7th season of Masters of Illusion on the CW network!
It was a lot of fun getting to work on a TV show and hanging out with all of the acts!
This morning a buddy of mine sent me a video of a magician doing a card trick and wanted to know my thoughts on it. The thing that stood out to me, and is something that I should have realized before is that most of us are doing card tricks for social media incorrectly.
Many videos of just the hands have them coming down from the top of the screen, or are from the spectators point of view showing more of the magician. If you are doing any card tricks that require you to spread the cards, the indexes are upside down.
If you are someone that frequently handles cards, it’s pretty easy to tell what is what. However, most people are not. If you asked someone to memorize a card and they saw it upside down there’s a great chance they will struggle with it. It’s also visually unappealing to look at. Here’s my suggestion, use a left handed deck of cards.
This cards spread this was a so much easier to identify for someone that’s not familiar with cards. If you don’t spread the cards, like in an ambitious card routine then it’s not really a issue.
In yesterday’s blog post, I mentioned it took a bit of work figuring out what to do with the penny in the trick where a penny changes into two silver dollars. The challenge was that the coin change happens immediately, however I need to keep the coin hidden for the whole routine. Based on the conditions I posted I can’t just ditch it as my hands need to remain in the frame. Adding to the problem is that I also have two coins finger palmed the entire routine (until the end).
The solution I came up with, which should have been pretty obvious was to attach attach a magnet to the penny as the silver dollars already have magnet in them. I took the penny shell from a Dime and Penny set and used teflon tape to hold the magnet.
I figured using a shell would allow the penny to sit flat on on the silver dollar. The flatter it sat, the less chance there would be for me to accidentally knock it off, and it won’t rattle as the coin moved.
The “penny solution” brings me back to something Nick Lewin always says, I love how elaborate this 30 second coin routine has become!
One trick that I’ve been interested in for a while is the Light and Heavy Box premise. This was originally done with a box that someone could lift, or couldn’t at the will of the magician. This is a trick that I’ve used in my stage show during a couple school assembly tours. It’s a great trick and gets good reactions.
About a dozen years ago I published a version that was close up that used a coin:
A couple of days ago I saw that Wayne Fox was offering a discount on a download of his Light / Heavy Project. This is an interesting idea, and it was a great purchase. Personally, I don’t think it will make it into my core close up set, however I do think it’s something that I’d do for a group that I’m really connecting with.
If you like the light and heavy premise this download is worth checking out!
If you read this blog or follow me on social media, you know I’m not the Three Shell Game. I’ve come up with several original takes on the classic trick, which is great for a routine that’s basically been unchanged decades. I just built an ending for the shell game that I think is pretty cool.
Before I tell you what I did, let me tell you the two types of tricks that I think are usually the most lazy ways of being creative with magic. They are items that are hollow and turn solid and items that turn into glass (or clear plastic). Yes, there are execptions, like when Jerry Andrus and Danny Korem first did the Omni Deck. If you take a marker an turn it clear…great, but unless you have a really original take on the switch, it’s just a color change and no different from turning the marker from red to black.
So now, let’s get back to the shell game. Personally I’ve never done the ending where the shells turn solid. Why? I don’t think it makes sense. It’s a kicker ending that’s not really logical and doesn’t really move the ending forward. It’s too different from what has happened the whole time. It’s a “what?” moment because it thinking of the audience has to shift a lot from what was happening the whole routine. It’s almost like it’s the beginning of a new routine.
How did I fix the solid shells? I took it a step further. I used it as the starting point for another effect. Here’s how the routine plays. You do a few shell sequences, then cover a shell and pea with a shot glass. They are mixed around and guess where the pea is. When they lift the shot glass, then the shell, they see no pea, and then they discover the shell is solid. Now it’s a mystery they just discovered. They will turn over the other two shells to check them, and they are solid as well. Having them discover the solid shell is soo much better than you revealing it.
Now for the new ending:
When they look at the shotglass that’s sitting on the table, they see the pea under it. When they pick up the shotglass, they realize the shotglass is solid! The pea is embedded in the solid shotglass!
This is a solid (pun intended) ending for the solid shell game. It takes the routine one step forward to an ending that’s more logical than just the solid shells.
A few nights ago I woke up with a idea for a gimmicked envelope at about 3:30am. I went back to bed without writing it down. Then an hour later I woke up with the same gimmicked envelope idea “fleshed” out a bit more in terms of a routine. I went back to bed without writing it down again. I got up once more about 90 mins later with a more fully formed routine for the trick and immediately went to the office to build the gimmick!
First of all, if you wake up with an idea, you should always write it down. Most of the time if you got back to sleep, the idea is gone. I’m lucky that I work up multiple times with the idea and it wasn’t lost. Here’s the gimmicked envelope with a jumbo card inside:
I’m not sure that an envelope has been gimmicked this way before. Basically what it does is allows something to be loaded into the envelope.
What I like about this is that in the picture above you can clearly see the gimmick. It’s hidden in plain sight, and that’s what makes it interesting for me. Tomorrow I’ll kind of write up the rough routine for it.
