Yesterday was a good day for the Anverdi Color Match set. I did three shows without an issue. This is a good development and really helping with my confidence with this prop!
The challenge is figuring out why it’s not sending the signal when it doesn’t. The closest thing I can guess is that someone isn’t moving the pen enough, however it appear from reviewing video that the pens have plenty of movement. Unfortunately if not enough movement is the problem, I can’t think of a good solution to get the person to move the pen more. I can’t say, “pick up the pen and shake it like it’s 1987 and it’s a can of Aquanet“.
I did have the thought of buying a second set of the Anverdi color match and put two gimmicks into each pen. That would give me a redundant system and allow me to have two receivers.
I’m going to see how the success/fail rates play out over the next few weeks before I buy another set.
-Louie
Tag: mentalism
Failure Rate With Anverdi Color Match
Well, it kinda sucks, but I’m currently having a at least one pen not signal with the Anverdi Color Match in 75% of my shows! It’s not consistently the same pen that’s not firing. Luckily I have a backup plan that will bail me out of when I don’t get a signal from the pen.
This is something I’ve always said about electronic “push button” magic, it’s some of the hardest stuff to do because when it fails, it fails HARD!
Essentially when I do a trick with this style of method, I run a second method at the same time to cover me in case the cleaner method (electronic) fails. It’s a pain in the butt to do, however it’s what has to be done to have it appear to the audience that you have a 100% success rate!
I still have a few more days at this gig, hopefully I can lower that failure rate!
-Louie
Using Anverdi Color Match
Yesterday I tried out the Anverdi Color Match in the show. I was super nervous trying it out and didn’t do it my first two shows, but did it in my third show. It worked as it was supposed to, there were no surprises. The thing with electronic tricks, is that you really only learn how and why they work when they fail.
One of the things I don’t like about the Anverdi set is that with the receiver, I can’t keep it in my sock. However I did learn that if it’s in my pocket, I can touch it with the roll of duct tape that’s in my left hand and get the signals very clearly through the roll of tape.
That really helps me out with my routine, in case I need to use the reset button.
I’ll keep doing using it and hopefully I’ll have a failure so I can learn a little bit about why it doesn’t work when it doesn’t work.
-louie
Giving Anverdi Color Match Another Try
About 9 or 10 months ago I tried out the Anverdi color Match that was put out by Murphy’s Magic. I had some thoughts about it, and you can read them here
This week I’m kinda in a pinch, I normally use the Promystic Color Match set, however they were doing something funky and don’t want to use them for my current gig. My set is super old and I think it’s probably time to just buy a new set.
With me not being able to use the promystic set, I can drop the trick from the show, OR I can give the Anverdi set another try. I’m at a two week gig and have plenty of time to give it more time to figure out how to make the Anverdi Color Match work for me.
The biggest challenge is where to put the pens before and during the routine I think I’m going to have to go with having the pens upside down in the cup on my easel before the trick. Then at the beginning of the trick, I’ll set them down on my table. In the time since I initially tried the Anverdi set the first time, I have more table space available to set the pens on.
Hopefully they’ll work out…
-Louie
Disappeared Thought by Mathieu Bich
The best version of the princess card trick is Limited Edition by Gordon Bean. Having the thought of card disappear really solved the biggest problem with the trick, that’s that you couldn’t show the card they picked. When their card turns blank, it makes sense!
I just came across Disappeared Thought in magic junk bin purchase and I think it’s a better solution from a method standpoint to the effect in Limited Edition. One of the cool things about Mathieu’s method is that it allows you to show the full front and back of all the cards.
Here’s Mathieu Bich’s Disappeared Thought:
@louiefoxx Mind reading card trick! Think of a card and I'll make it disappear! #mindreading #psychic #readmymind #cardtrick #cardmagic #disappearingcard #mentalism #louiefoxx #iknowwhatyourethinking ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
That got me thinking, what if I reversed the trick, so all the cards disappeared, and that led me to a strange trick, that would probably only be interesting to magicians.
Here’s the version that I came up with:
The ending with the 52 on 1 card isn’t a strong enough gag for a real audience, however I think it would do well for a group of magicians.
-Louie
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Spoons
I’m glad I started doing spoon/fork bending again, it’s a lot of fun, but it also makes really great pictures!
A lot of magic tricks can’t really tell a story, but a bent fork or spoon definitely does! I’m having a blast doing this in my show! If you’re interested in spoon/fork bending, look into Ben Harris’s book Bend it Like Geller!
-Louie
Over Writing Material…
One thing I’ve noticed that I do is over write my patter for my tricks. The early versions of the tricks are full of stuff that ultimately will be cut. I do think that’s a good way to do it, over write and figure out what’s good and what isn’t. I try to initially fill a lot of verbal space, then cut out what doesn’t work, leaving only the best parts.
The trick I’m working on that’s essentially a clock prediction:
The presentation hook is about my cat, and that seems to be something that people really connect with!
I think that another huge part of putting together routines is finding some sort of presentation hook that people can relate to. There are definitely people who are a lot better at this than me, but I’m trying…
-Louie
Still Bending It Like Geller
I’m about halfway through Ben Harris‘s book Bend it Like Geller and it’s a fun read. I didn’t know a lot about David Berglas and Uri Gellar‘s meetings and eventual friendship. It’s a fun read, just for the history of spoon bending.
I really liked Richard Busch‘s essay and while I think I got what he was talking about, it might be worth a reread. The Busch Effect as he calls it, got me to add something presentational to my spoon/fork bending.
One of the cool things about performing at a fair while reading this book is that I have a lot of opportunities to play with the techniques and ideas in this book.
On a side note, it’s been years since I’ve really played around with spoon bending and since then, I’ve learned to do the strongman stunt of ripping a deck of cards in half. That has given me some good hand strength and putting the bends into the spoons/forks is way easier than I remember!
-Louie
Bend it Like Geller
This week I’ve started reading Ben Harris‘s new book Bend It Like Geller. This book is about Uri Geller and spoon/metal bending.
I’m not very far into it, but I didn’t know that according to Ben that Uri Geller was the first person to really bend spoons. That kinda suprised me, Ben mentions that there were spoon bends before Uri Geller, but they were mostly gags, and not bent with your brain power.
This book also goes into routines and methods for different bends. I picked up a few packs of spoons and forks from Costco, so I can work through the book.
I’m enjoying this book so far, and Ben Harris always does a good job with how he lays out the book, and it looks super slick!
-Louie
Paint it Black!
Over the past few months I’ve written about working on my Pitata Magic Time Hacker routine. One thing I noticed in a picture of it was that the gray hands on the white background don’t really pop visually onstage.
I took a black marker and colored in the hands on one of my clocks:
It really makes the hands easier to see and the clock play a few rows further back in the audience. The bigger issue that I think this trick is fighting visibility wise is glare off of the plastic clock face. I don’t think there’s really a reasonable solution, unless there’s an easily applied anti-reflective coating, but even then I don’t know how much that would actually help.
-Louie