mentalism – Page 8 – MagicShow.Tips

Prestige Mentalism Trick as an Opener

The show I did last month for school assemblies opened with a flash opener, that’s not really a trick, but something visual and exciting. Then the first actual magic trick in the show is the Prestige trick. This is a mentalism trick where you have 5 numbered cards with different things written on them and someone picks one and what’s written on the back of that number is your force.

Here’s what the trick looks like:

How I’m making the trick work for kids is that I’m building a pattern of the same thing on all of the cards, then shattering the pattern with the revelation of something different. This is basically how a joke is structured, you build an assumption (set up) and then you change that assumption (punchline). This is a structure that kids can understand and that’s why it works.

Another thing that makes this effective is how direct it is for the selection of the item, because the number is a free choice. There’s nothing complicated like with the PATEO force or that feels strange like with the hotrod force. The effect how I do it would lose impact if I had a process heavy force, and it definitely wouldn’t work in the opening spot in the show if I had to use a lot of procedure.

I really dig this trick, it works out great for me.

-Louie

Ankle Switch Problem Solving…

For this tour I started using my Media Star remote control that runs my music with the magnet ankle switch. Early on I realized that it was running about 2 shows before it stopped reliably working. Changing batteries every couple of shows solved the problem, but is annoying and I have a feeling that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

In the show I use the ankle (magnet reed switch) in a few spots to make the music play seamlessly, however there’s one spot where I need it as I can’t use my hands. I have someone from the audience playing sound effects from a fake music remote, and I need to trigger them when they push the button. With the ankle switch giving me problems, I needed to think of a way to make the gag work.

I defaulted to the mentalist’s old friend, Dual Reality! I put three different colored dots on my remote control.

I simply say “push the blue dot” or “push the red dot”, which implies to the audience that there are different buttons, when in reality it’s all the same button. I’ve done this for one day (2 shows) and it’s working out well and is a great, simple solution to the problem of the ankle switch not behaving properly.

We’ll see how it works for the three shows today…

-Louie
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Mentalism For Kids…

Years ago when I was a teenager I saw Lee Earle lecture and he briefly mentioned his thoughts on performing mentalism for kids. It was only a sentence and it fully stated his position. Lee said, “In order to have your mind read you must have a mind.” He’s not wrong, however it doesn’t mean you can’t do mentalism for kids. You need to frame it differently.

In the school assembly show I’m out doing right now on this tour, I have two mentalism tricks that I’m doing. After writing the show, I realized they are the exact same trick, luckily they are 30 mins apart in the show and are presented very differently. Both are essentially one out of five predictions, but they aren’t predictions. The kid(s) pick an unseen item that turns out to be different from the rest of the items. There’s no formal prediction, but it’s clearly obvious that they picked the outlier.

After doing the show for a week and a half, I think the first effect strengthens the second one. In the first one, it’s a surprise however the second time, I’ve very blatantly foreshadowed what’s going to happen. When I finally get around to the second reveal, it’s a huge release of tension when it confirms what they were thinking.

This isn’t my first time doing mentalism for kids. I used to do a routine that used a billet switch and peek that was essentially me reading someone’s mind, but framed as a game. The general presentation was that I was the worlds best 20 Questions player and could guess what they were thinking of in 5 guesses or less. I had them write down the item so that they couldn’t lie and change their mind. I also did this as an open preshow. I would do it while the classes were coming into the show, but I did it on mic so everyone was aware. This routine is written up in the book Performing Mentalism for Young Minds Vol 2.

Mentalism can play very strongly for kids, as long as it’s framed with a presentation that they can understand.

-Louie

Choices Routine…

I’ve been working on a trick for my platform/stage show that’s essentially an invisible deck. Well, it started out as an invisible deck and has gone through a lot of changes and doesn’t really resemble a traditional invisible deck routine.

The effect is that the audience eliminates half of the cards over and over until there is one card left, and that card matches the prediction.

I’m working on a platform version of it for my carry on luggage magic show. This will end with the card in an envelope in my wallet. Here’s video of an early test of it:

This is essentially Mark Oberon’s Bang On, but modified so that I only need two wallets and can show the back of the card as it comes out of the wallet.

This routine is really no longer the invisible deck or the Bang On routine. It’s now a mix of methods and you couldn’t do the trick how I do it with the standard props that come with either of those tricks. To me this is what more magicians should be doing. Taking standard tricks and really making them their own, not just with adding a joke or “filtering it through your personality” but actually changing the trick to fit your artistic vision.

Got out there a make actual art, not paint by numbers art.

-Louie

Prestige Mentalism Trick

One of the ways to add a bonus trick to a routine, is to introduce the prop you’re going to use for the routine as part of a prediction. In the school assembly show that I’m working on, I’m doing a routine with a tennis ball and will be using it as the reveal of a prediction, then going into the tennis ball routine.

The way I’m going to be doing this is using a trick called Prestige. This prop is visually similar to Tom Stone’s routine Of Dice and Men. It has 5 numbered options on cards and someone from the audience names one of the numbers and on the back of that is your force item.

I picked up the dry erase version of Prestige, I’m not sure this was the right version as I have a feeling I’m going to have to keep redrawing the pictures on the cards. I guess I could draw them in Sharpie and it won’t be an issue.

The trick comes with numbers that stick to the cards with magnets.

The magnet numbers are used for a bonus trick where all the numbers disappear except for the chosen number. I’m not doing that and having the numbers removable add bulk to the folded up packet and makes setting up a little bit harder.

I took some vinyl numbers and stuck them to the outside of the sleeves.

This has less stuff for me to break, or lose while I’m on the road and a good solution for the routine that I’ll be doing. We’ll see how this trick goes next month…

-Louie

Christmas Mentalism

Here’s a little mentalism trick that’s Christmas themed!

Effect: You show five pictures of Christmas things and someone thinks of one of them. You read their mind and tell them what they’re thinking of.

This is simply a progressive anagram. Using the chart below you say letters, one at a time, and if the letter is in what they are thinking of, you move down the list and if it isn’t you move to the right.

The nice think about this list is that you can only get one NO answer before you know the work they’re thinking of.

Personally if I was to do this, I would have an index of the different options, and have a physical prediction, or something like a modified Six Outs by Blake Vogt with only five outs.

-Louie

Creating With What’s Around You…

Right now I’m on a cruise ship and it’s pretty bumpy out, and I noticed that all of the floors at the stairwells have “sick bags”. These look like paper lunch sacks, but are made of plastic and have a tab at the top to seal them.

I grabbed one and took it back to my state room to see if I could figure out something to do with it. Here’s my brainstorming from this morning:

Chew up some food, spit it in…then blow up the bag and pop it and it’s confetti
Someone reaches into the bag and pulls out a single cookie (it’s the only thing in the bag). You take a few bites and spit them back into the bag. Shake the bag and dump out a whole cookie
You have the bag sealed. You tell the audience you breathed into the bag after breakfast and have someone try to guess what you ate. You have a note that confirms they are right!
Someone from the audience breathes into the bag, and you tell them what they had for breakfast
you have a line of people onstage. With your back turned, someone breathes into the bag and seals it. It’s handed to you and smell the bag and tell whose breath it is
You put food into the bag and it turns to rubber vomit
You say you opened the bag on the plane and captured the air at your seat. Someone smells the air and guesses your row and seat number.

What I like about this is the specific property of the bag, it being plastic and sealable ended up taking me away from tradition paper bag tricks. I really like the idea of trapping air in the bag. I think that the row and seat number might be the winner as it doesn’t involve anyone’s breath, so it’s not cringy.

I don’t know if I’ll ever do this stuff, but it’s a fun creativity exercise.
-Louie

Telling Time by a Cat’s Eye

While reading Sid Fleishman‘s autobiography The Abracadabra Kid, he mentions urban myths and one them he mentions is being able to tell time from the eyes of a cat. That struck me as interesting and a great premise for a mentalism routine.

A bit of research has turned up that it was a belief that ninjas could tell time from a cats eye. I found this little graphic that sort of explains it, it’s based on how dilated it pupil is in the daylight. It’s interesting, and jumpstarted my idea for a trick.

Ideally this would be done with a video screen. You are holding an envelope and begin by showing the graphic above on the screen and explain the premise. You then show a picture of your cat on the screen and ask someone from the audience to tell you what time they think it is. You open the envelope and inside in the same picture and written on the back is the time.

The method is simple, it’s an envelope with a cut out on the back and you nail write the named time on the back with a thick listo lead or marker tip on the nail writer.

You could add in some comedy filler by showing pictures of different cats that have funny expressions (derpy cats) and you tell the times. Have one that looks stoned, “it’s clearly 4:20” and one that looks drunk or has booze bottles near it and say, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” and a passed out cat, “it’s last call somewhere” or whatever.

The trick has a premise, and some bits, and a method all within about 6 hours of reading the line about telling time from a cats eye in Sid’s book. This is also why it’s important to always write down things you find interesting, you never know what idea that will spark!

-Louie

When Your Props Don’t Arrive…

I had a blast being a guest on Nick Lewin’s talk about what happens when you props don’t show up when you do when travelling. If you’re not on Nick’s mailing list where you can get notified of his talks, you need to be on his email list.

you can sign up on his website here: http://www.lewinenterprises.com/join-our-vip-mailing-list.html

Here’s my segment from the talk:

Hope you learn something from my experiences!

-Louie

Promystic Color Match FTW

Well, I’m back to my ProMystic Color Match set. This one is honestly the best solution for the trick in my opinion.

I like that I can simply switch on the receiver and it’s ready to go. I can quickly test that the receiver is one and working during my routine by lifting one of the pens while I talk and replacing it into the cup. Also I think the cup is a better display for the pens onstage than them sitting on a flat surface.

The other thing that I like is that I don’t need to use a reset button like on the Murphy’s Magic Anverdi Color Match set. I think that button and the pens timing out is a solution to a problem (for me) that doesn’t need solving. If someone changes their mind, you simply get a new signal. Getting the signal if someone uses a pen a second time is very helpful. It lets you know something is wrong and instead of giving you no signal, it gives you some information to work with. Personally, I’d rather have a little bit of info, than none.

So my conclusion is that the Murphy’s Magic Anverdi Color Match set works fine, just not for how I do my show, and I’m sticking to the ProMystic set.

-Louie