Tricks – Page 134 – MagicShow.Tips

Ball Trick…

One trick that I keep going back to over the years is the Three Ball Trick. It’s a great trick, and personally I really like the idea of these older tricks that are known, but not used as much as something like coins across, or linking rings. The slightly less common ground is good for … Continue reading “Ball Trick…”

There are a lot of variations of this, so it could be a “balls across” or “two in the hand, one in the pocket” type routine. Most routines end with everything vanishing. This for roving magic is good, it signals the end of the routine and doesn’t take up much pocket space. Some routines end with a production of a large item.

The version of this trick I’ve been playing with this week isn’t a close up trick, but for cabaret sized audiences. Unlike most versions of the trick that use a net held by two spectators to catch the balls, my version is just me onstage and no table.

Here’s the routine. Three balls go into the left fist, and one at a time they invisibly travel to the right hand. One is put into my pocket, then it travells back to my hand. All three are put into my pocket and three balls reappear in my hand, but these are large balls!

There’s not much to the routine, aside from the production of three large balls, where most routines only have a single production. I think Fernando Koeps has a routine with multiple large balls appearing. For me the fun of putting together a routine is having something unique, whether in method, or sequence. While I hate to call myself an artist, but that’s the artist in my that doesn’t really want to do someone else’s version of a trick.

Borrowed Item Production Before the Item Vanishes…

There’s a trick I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s never played how I want it to. The trick is object in ball of yarn. Over the years I’ve done it in various form, like coin or dollar bill. I know why it doesn’t play (for me) is that once the coin is gone, it’s … Continue reading “Borrowed Item Production Before the Item Vanishes…”

There’s a trick I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s never played how I want it to. The trick is object in ball of yarn. Over the years I’ve done it in various form, like coin or dollar bill. I know why it doesn’t play (for me) is that once the coin is gone, it’s not a surprise where it will reappear when the ball of yarn comes out.

About a year ago I thought, what if the ball of yarn is being unraveled before the dollar disappears? Would that make it more of a mystery when the dollar is on the end? I think it does.

One hurdle I’ve hit is a presentation one, why are they unraveling the yarn in the first place? I played with it being a race, if they could unravel the yarn before I completed a task, they got the dollar. This felt too manufactured.

Another hurdle is how to make the dollar disappear. I don’t use fire, so burning isn’t an option. I dislike the idea of a shredder because the item doesn’t disappear. Ideally the vanish would be subtle. Like the bill is folded up and dropped in a glass, then after the dollar reappears in the yarn, it’s gone from the glass.

I’m not sure the direction this will take, but I think it’s a great idea.

Newly Acquired Taste in Card Tricks

One of the books that I’m reading right now is Principia by Harapan Ong. It’s a card magic book, and while I’m only about 50 pages into it, I think it’s a really good, modern card magic book. One of the books selling points is that there is internet video of Harapan doing all of … Continue reading “Newly Acquired Taste in Card Tricks”

One of the books that I’m reading right now is Principia by Harapan Ong. It’s a card magic book, and while I’m only about 50 pages into it, I think it’s a really good, modern card magic book. One of the books selling points is that there is internet video of Harapan doing all of the material in the book. Unfortunately I’m in a position where I don’t have internet access fast enough to stream video, so I haven’t watched them.

One thing that surprised me was there was an “elevator” card trick that I actually liked. I think I was introduced to the elevator plot when I was a teenager reading the big Alex Elmsley books. I never really liked the plot simply because there always seemed to be either too much process or too much proving. The Michalevator routine in the book doesn’t have much process and doesn’t over prove…and I like it.

I don’t know if I’ll ever actually use Harapan’s elevator trick in an actual show or not, but it’s been fun to play with. I’ve said it before, but it’s important to still play with magic. That’s how we learn, through play.

10 Card Deal…

When I was a teenager I remember reading Bob Farmer’s column in Genii Magazine (I think it was Genii) on the 10 card poker deal. I would read about it and work through it, but never did it. I played with the 10 card deal again about a decade later when I was learning a memorized deck, as the Aronson Stack has one built into it, but never really did it.

For about the last year I’ve been fascinated with the 10 card poker deal. It’s really an amazing trick that’s built on a very simple method. I’ve ready a lot of the modern works on it, however it appears a lot of the best stuff is pretty old. Bob Farmer put out a book called the Bammo Ten Card Deal Dossier.

This book is full of the history of the deal and most of the published works on the 10 card poker deal. Within it there are tons of routines. I’ve put together a three deal routine using parts of other routines that make the whole thing feel super fair, and each step gets more fair.

My three phase routine is something that I don’t think would play for a huge group in a live setting for me. It’s really a head to head “competition” with someone. However I am working on a stage version of this trick, but I think it will feel different from most 10 card deal routines.

There are tricks that come in and out of your life, that you dabble in here or there. They just aren’t right for you, or you aren’t right for them a that time. Then one day at the right time, you rediscover it and the trick finally works for you (or you for it). I think this is why it’s important to constantly be learning things and revisiting old things.

Adding Texture to Predictions…

A friend of mine who is a mentalist from Ireland is in town and we had coffee yesterday. We were chatting about mentalism and the struggles to make it play big. One of the things he showed me was probably the coolest thing I’ve seen this year (more on this in a minute).

Part of the challenge of mentalism is you need normal-ish looking props. Once you know make a die 24 inches big, or use a calculator that’s build for bigfoot, you lose what makes mentalism great, which is the lack of propy props.

This is where what he showed me comes in. He showed me Phil Smith’s Quinta Force.

This is an amazing way to force one object out of five that feels very free and has some theatrical build up to it as well.

My idea is to borrow five different objects from people in the audience. You introduce a padded envelope that has your prediction in it. They give you a number, let’s say it is 28. You count to that number per the Quinta Force and let’s say we end up on a cellphone. You open the envelope and inside is a cellphone…then for the kicker on the back written in marker in giant numbers is 28!

I haven’t finished reading the book, so someone may have thought of this already.

That’s something that will play fairly large, I guess it could be done with paper prediction that unfolded into a large display. My thinking was to try to get away from a printed prediction as that’s fairly common way to reveal things and I wanted something that would add some texture to the show.

No Bad Ideas…

One of the things I try to do is act on most of my ideas. No matter how bad, impractical, or not my style it is. Just working them out is a good exercise for my brain. Most of these ideas will never make it into my show. Here’s an idea I’ve had in my … Continue reading “No Bad Ideas…”

Here’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a little while:

I’ve come up with several methods for it, all of which are very impractical. This one is probably the most usable version of the trick.

The downfall is that the trick isn’t how unpractical the method is, it’s that it’s a small trick. Visually it’s hard to see, and it’s got a very specific spot in a show that at can be. This trick has to be the opening of a card set, or when you introduce an additional deck of cards into a card set.

I’m glad I worked through the methods and got to work out my creativity muscles.

Magic From Non-Magicians…

There are tons of magicians that hate it when people show the magic tricks. Honestly I’m not sure why they’d dislike it. When you watch a trick you are encouraging someone that’s into magic on some level. You are also not being a jerk.

I understand that there’s a common magic trick that people show us and it’s a horrible trick and quite often the person fails to find the card because they don’t practice enough. However you never know when you are going to see something interesting.

Here’s a bartender that saw Chris Beason and I jamming magic tricks and offered to show us a trick:

While the trick was a math based trick, it was something I think I had read as a kid, but had never seen anyone do it. It was an interesting trick and while not the greatest trick in the world, it was worth watching 10 bad tricks to get to one that was fun!

The Shrinking Card…

When I was a teenager there was a trick that came out called Diminishing Returns by Mike Powers. This is a great trick where someone picks a card and the whole deck shrinks except for their card. Then the whole deck grows and their card shrinks. For the finale their card visually grows back to … Continue reading “The Shrinking Card…”

It’s a great trick and I did it for quite a while. Recently I was messing around with some cards and ended up playing with a similar gaff and here’s what I came up with:

This is a fun little sequence for the shrinking of a card. There’s not much to it, and I might write it up for Vanish Magazine in the future.

Make it Bigger!

One thing I’m trying to do is make things play larger, so it’s easier to see them from the back of the theater. I think this is something that’s really overlooked by many magicians. Sometimes you can’t make something larger, like when you are doing Miser’s dream, the coins size will max out to a point when they are no longer believable as a coin.

One trick that I love is the Coin in Bottle, however it does play fairly small. The nice thing is that the trick has an audio component to it. The audience can hear it rattling around inside the bottle. I really liked the idea of creating an impossible object that I could give away. My idea was to do a tennis ball in bottle:

The use of the topit worked great in a live setting, but not so well in a video. The other method I used a sponge tennis ball that I had cut in half and hallowed out. I would just smash the bottle onto it, collapsing it under the bottle as the other real tennis ball popped into view. Both methods had advantages and disadvantages.

I no longer do this trick in the show as I’m lazy and putting the tennis balls into the bottles was a pain in the butt and not worth the pay off. For me the thing is to keep thinking bigger and actually trying to make it play bigger!

Not So Close Up…

The tend in magic is the choreographed sleight of hand to music, like what Shin Lim did on America’s Got Talent. It’s style that’s been around for a long time, it’s just popular right now. I think of it as something that was a “magic convention act” in the past, and now is a mainstream act.

A couple of nights ago I was lucky enough to see Shawn Farquhar do his “shape of my heart” card routine at a show. It was really great. It hit all the musical beats, it had good visual magic, and overall it’s a great routine.

This kinda proves the theory that I’ve written about before that this style of close up when put on camera is the new stage manipulation act. I think audiences are getting better with watching a live show on a screen. Personally I’d rather watch it without the screen, however to the general public this is an acceptable way to view a show.

Over the last few months I’ve started to think about what I could do for this style of performing. It’s really not what I do, so I don’t know if I’ll ever come up with anything.