mentalism – MagicShow.Tips

New School Assembly Show

Well, tomorrow is the first show of my new school assembly show and the first show day of this month long tour! The show is designed to set up and strike really quickly, in less than 15 minutes. The show will run 40-45 minutes in length and will have to play for 150-500 people per show.

Here’s the front of the case:

I have a screen on the front of the case for visuals if the school doesn’t read my requirements list and doesn’t provide me with a projector or TV. The visuals aren’t necessary, but they help make the show feel bigger.

Here’s the view of the back of the case:

The props in the case are laid out for the show. The only thing missing from the picture is my snake box, because it’s not in the case during the show. The snake box sits on a table (provided by the school) during the show.

I’m very excited to see how this plays. This show is 95% new to me. The 5% that’s old are a couple of jokes/gags that I’m recycling. Hopefully, I won’t have to change much. When I was writing the show, I was worried that it wouldn’t be long enough. Now that I’ve been practicing it, I’m worried it will be too long! Having too much material is a way better problem to have than not enough.

-Louie

Monopoly Magic !

I like the idea of the mentalism premise where you have a 5 objects that are all the same and one different one. People from the audience all hold one of the objects, and you find who is holding the odd one.

That premise is fun, and I have a few themes for it. The other day I thought of one using Monopoly game pieces.

The hotels and houses lend themselves to a presentation about finding your way home.

This set of houses and hotels was 3D printed and is gimmicked to work with Promystic’s Flux. One of the challenges of using an electronic gimmick is what do you do if it doesn’t work? What’s the out? For some things, I’ve decided the best way to do it is to have a second gimmick. Luckily, Flix isn’t too expensive, and running two gimmicks at the same time isn’t very complicated.

I look forward to trying this out!

-Louie

Do The Work…

I’m going to be a grumpy old magician today. I get super annoyed when I see posts like this:

The poster bought a trick, which is the easy part, but doesn’t want to do the hard work. People who ask for routines never say what work they’ve done (I’m assuming they haven’t done any). This is why many people don’t think of magic as an art, because magicians constantly demonstrate that they aren’t artists.

Here’s what that person should do to work on a routine for mental dice:

1: Examine the prop:
-What is it…duh it’s a die
-What can it be hidden it to make it look like something different

2: What can the prop do:
-Let’s you know which side of a cube is uppermost
-Since opposites sides of a die add up to 7, it also tells you the lowermost side. This could be applied to any decorated cube, you’ll just have to memorize pairs.
-Can be used as a random selection device (free choice)

With those two things above accomplished, you should have a little bit of a start.

Let’s say you put the die into an alphabet block that has a different letter on each side. That essentially is a die, but instead of numbers, you have letters. Also, each letter is colored, so now you have a choice of letters or colors. That gives you 12 things you can get information about instead of six.

A three-phase routine with the colored alphabet block could look like:
Phase 1: You reveal the uppermost color selected by someone
Phase 2: You reveal the uppermost letter selected by someone
Phase 3: Someone randomly rolls/shakes the block under a cup. They then selected a color from a stack of color swatches and a letter from alphabet cards. Those reveal the lowermost side of the block.

A little bit of work and you can have something unique. Not sure I’d call what I just thought of above as “art,” but it’s a step in that direction.

-Louie

Dice Force

For a show I’m doing in a couple of months, I needed a way to force a number (really a position in a row of things). I didn’t want to use the Hot Rod Force, and my normal default is the Quinta Force, but I wanted to try to figure out something new.

My idea was to put a die in a film can and have someone shake it, and that would force the number.

First of all, I didn’t want to use a die that’s missing a number, and you eliminate numbers as they’re rolled. I’ve seen too many shows where that method is used, and it takes forever to get the last item eliminated, as that number just doesn’t come up.

Other methods I didn’t want was to use a die that’s all the same number or a magnetic die. My goal was to try to come up with a NEW method before I resorted to old methods. Even if I don’t use the method I came up with, it’s fun to try.

Here’s what I came up with:

I think this method had potential. Is it a lot of work to accomplish what a magnetic die could do? Yep.
Is the method interesting? Yep!

-Louie

A New Routine with a Block

This is an idea I had a while ago, and 3d printed it:

This is a three phase mental magic type routine. I read someone’s mind, then they read my mind, then a magic trick happens. I took it to a magic meet up and here’s what the magicians think of it:

Billy McComb, in one of his books, mentions an easy way to create new routines is to combine two tricks. I think his example is a thumb tie and card to wallet. The block trick I came up with combines the Color Vision Block with a super old stage magic trick. I don’t think people are expecting the part that uses the old stage magic effect, and by the time that part is revealed, I’m way ahead of them. Also, people newer into magic may not recognize it as it’s not really used much anymore.

-Louie

Venmo Prediction

There’s not much to this idea; it’s a confabulation routine where you predict a Venmo transaction. The three things predicted are a name, an amount, and an emoji.

Method wise, my first idea was to use a no force mental epic. There are a couple of things I don’t like about that. The main one is that you don’t have much room to write. Also, the prop doesn’t look like something that I would use in my show.

When you think about it, you just need to force the three things. Ideally this would be a routine that could be done onstage, alone, without a spectator. That leads to a simple method, the Three Section SvenPad Picasso. This is a forcing pad that’s cut into three sections.

For the routine, I’m thinking it starts by tossing a paper ball into the audience. That person selects a name. It’s tossed to a second person who chooses an amount, and finally, a third person who picks an emoji. All of those selections are them saying stop as you riffle through a section of the pad. The paper ball is tossed back to the stage, and it’s opened to reveal all of the information

This is a packs small, plays big routine!

-Louie

Buying a Mentalism Show

I was chatting with a hypnotist friend of mine, who is also a good magician about the new wave of mentalists. These are people who see mentalism as way to “fame” or at least gigs. Many of them are from non-magic styles of performance (like burlesque, or actors) that think they can simply buy some props and do a mentalism show. The sad thing is that they pretty much can and will do fine…until something goes wrong. Their show is literally controlled by a computer chip

I’ve worked with a many of these acts and what they lack is that they’re not passionate about magic or mentalism. They’re not passionate about magic/mentalism, they just know the prop they bought. When that electronic prop doesn’t work, they’re screwed. They don’t have a back up plan.

Someone who loves magic/mentalism knows four different ways to get out of an electronic trick when the gimmick fails or has planned for failure with back up methods.

A good example of this is when I used to do the lottery prediction using Ceseral CUPP. My prediction was two phase, the first was a decent trick and the kicker was the lottery ticket. The reason it was two phase was that when doing the trick if the lottery ticket didn’t print or was a misprint, I simply stopped after the first phase. No one knew the lottery ticket was going to happen, so if I didn’t do that part, it felt like the trick was complete. The first phase of the trick was bullet proof, and really couldn’t fail.

This is where being a student of whatever art you’re doing makes a huge difference! Put the time in!

-Louie

The Crated Coin by Mark Strivings

Recently I came across The Crated Coin by Mark Strivings. This is a coin flip routine where you play “heads and tails” with the whole audience.

I’ve been playing with this premise as part of a larger routine. I’ve played with several other versions of the trick, however the main problem I have is dropping the coin. Mark’s solution, which he says is based on a Gaeton Bloom thing is to have the token put in a case and shaken. That makes it incredibly difficult to drop the coin. You are in 100% control of the result of the flip.

This also has the bonus of the sound factor of the token being shook inside the case. I’m a fan of this method!

-Louie

Comedy Mentalism Routines!

Last week has been a HUGE week for me creatively. I’ve come up with three ideas for stage routines. One of them I actually had what I needed to try out and got to do about eight times onstage!

All three of them are comedy mentalism. Two of the three of them focus on the process of what the audience perceives is happening and the other is fairly generic mentalism.

You can read a little bit about one of them here:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/showing-process-for-mentalism/

The second one is a lock trick where someone picks a key and that’s the only one out of six keys that opens the lock. Fairly standard, but and some process to it and it’s more of a stand out trick.

The premise of the trick is luck.

I get someone who says they’re lucky onstage. The try out all of the keys and confirm that only one will unlock a lock. What’s cool about the lock I’m using is that I don’t need to touch any of this!

They are now locked by their beltloop to a folding chair with short piece of chain.

Now to test their luck, I’ll flip a coin and for every correct flip they get a key to try to free themself. For each flip, they get it wrong…However on the last flip, when the call it and it’s wrong, I openly flip the coin to what they called to so that the get one key.

They select the key, it opens the lock and it frees them!

I’m going to try this out later this week to see how it plays. When I am trying new things, I want to get them onstage as quick as possible. I want to get a sense for how it actually plays with my personality. If it feels right, I’ll start working on writing up a more complete script for it. If it doesn’t, I need to reevaluate whether I should try a different angle, or stop doing it.

Louie

Showing Process for Mentalism

When I went to a Gerry McCambridge workshop a few years ago, he talked about how it was important for a mentalist to show the process of how they’re reading a mind. A common process shown by mentalists is reading someone’s body language. In the mentalism I do that’s not presented as a coincidence, I try to show a process that’s believable.

I’ve been playing with unbelievable processes. One idea I had was for someone who it thinking of a work, they whisper it into their fist, then the need to get that idea into my head…so they slap me in the face!

That was just an idea, but it lead to a couple other ideas that were more workable. The idea I think I’m going to go with is to have someone think of a word. Then I hand them a paper roll and they are going to swing it like a baseball bat at my belly in a way that feels like their word.

I think there’s a ton of comedy potential that can happen around how the hit me. They can’t hurt me with the paper roll as it just collapses if they swing it hard.

Then after I verbally reveal the word, I can unroll the paper tube and it says the word they are thinking of!

I think this routine has potential.

-Louie