Category: Tricks

Virtual Way To Force A Card…

One of the challenges we’re all having moving shows from physical shows to virtual shows are things like card forces. There are ways to do them, however you’ve got to get over things like “lag” in video and comments. There are plenty of people doing the visual riffle card force, but there’s some risk with that.

Here’s a force that I’ve been doing a long time that’s 100% sure fire:

How the force works is you fan a deck and run the joker along it, someone from the audience says stop and remembers the card next to the joker. That’s your force card. The advantage this force has is that it allows people to change their mind. That overcomes any lag issue. They can say stop, then have you move the joker if it’s not exactly where they wanted you to stop.

One of the things I like about this force is how direct it is. There’s really no procedure. They say stop, and that’s where you put the joker. Look into if you need a “virtual card force“.

Polaroids to Envelope

For the Polaroids to Envelope magic trick I’m working on, the last technical step is to clean up the handling. The initial handling had three Tenkai Vanishes, which is fine, but redundant. I also think that if you do the same false transfer over and over, you need a convincer to show both hands empty.

Here’s the tweaked handling:

One thing that I decided with showing both hands empty was that I didn’t want to make both hands being empty part of the vanish. I wanted to show both hands, just not show the dirty hand as a “moment” of the trick. In the video you’ll notice that I show both hands as I turn the envelope over.

The technical end is finished for now. The technical part is something that may evolve over time, and something that’s never completely done.

Pics to Envelope!

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.

Magic trick

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.

Card magic

At this point I have an original magic trick. The next step is to clean up the handling a little bit.

Pics to Jumbo Card.

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.

Magic trick

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.

Color Change

The other night while watching TV with the family I was fiddling with a deck fo cards and came up with a strange color change. There’s a lot wrong with it, and in its current state it’s not a good color change.

The main problem with it is that it’s not good for video. I can see the flash that happens when you palm the card being hidden in a live show, but not on video. Also there are better ways to do a color change.

It was fun to play with.

Cards Thru Newspaper

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.

Cards thru newspaper magic trick

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.

Original Magic!

I found the trailer for the upcoming season of Masters of Illusion and you get to see a trick I invented at the 27 second mark:

One of the great things about creating original material, not just presentations is that when you are pitching acts to a TV show you don’t have to worry if something has been done before. This applies to more than just TV, it’s a huge advantage for variety shows as well. You don’t need to fight over who gets to do what trick.

Original content is king!

Make It Easy To Watch!

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.

left handed 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.

Progressive Anagram Routine…

Recently, I’ve been writing a bit about progressive anagrams and their use in virtual shows over the internet. I’ve come up with a bit of a routine, here’s what my idea looks like:

You put display a coin envelope in your left hand and hold your empty right hand palm up.

“Imagine I have some coins here…nothing crazy, just a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar and a silver dollar. I want you to look at the coins and since you can’t actually grab one through the screen, pretend to take one.”

You can now lower your right hand.

“Look at it, on the back you’ll notice I wrote the name of the coin on the back. If it’s a quarter, I wrote quarter. On the half dollar I wrote half dollar. Look at the word I wrote, visualize it in your head”

Now we’re going to get into the progressive anagram. How it works is: If you say a letter you move down to the next letter. If that say no, you move to the right. If you get all “yes” answers you end up on the fifty cent piece.

E – Half Dollar
I – A (No: Penny Yes: Quarter)
C – A (No: Dime Yes: Silver Dollar )
F- Nickel
Fifty Cent Piece

You’ll notice in the script I didn’t give fifty cent piece as an option, but I’m trying to foresee someone not listening to me. I have the list above written out where the camera can’t see it. You now know the word, in this example they are thinking of the nickel and they don’t know you know it. Direct attention to the envelope.

“I’ve got a coin in this envelope”

Rip the top off the envelope. Oh, I forgot to mention you have an index of coins in thumb tips out of the camera’s view. For the quarter or larger coins you have folding coins in the thumb tips so that they fit. Once you know the coin, you put on the correct thumb tip. As you rip the top off, you load the thumb tip inside.

“I’m guessing you’re thinking of the nickel!”

They confirm this and then you dump the nickel out of the thumb tip that’s inside the envelope onto your palm and display it. You can now steal the thumb tip as your rip up the envelope to show there are no other coins and then get rid of the thumb tip as you throw way the envelope pieces.

There you go, an easy routine using a progressive anagram and with slight adjustments you could do it in a show with a live audience.