Tag: mindreading

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

Mentalism and the Misses…

One of the things that armchair mentalists say is that having “misses” in your show makes what you do feel real. I get what they are going for, however I’m not sure if they mean complete misses, or close enough to kinda be a hit on a technicality misses. Here’s the example people use to … Continue reading “Mentalism and the Misses…”

One of the things that armchair mentalists say is that having “misses” in your show makes what you do feel real. I get what they are going for, however I’m not sure if they mean complete misses, or close enough to kinda be a hit on a technicality misses.


Here’s the example people use to describe why it you need misses. Let’s say you go see on of the TV mediums who talk to dead people’s spirits. They throw out stuff all the time and that doesn’t land. However if they did a full program without only a couple of hits, I think you’d probably never buy a ticket to see them again. Also they are doing a different type of show than a mentalist show and the audience expectation is very different.


Back to a mentalism show. If you miss the word someone is thinking of completely it’s a loss for your show. Typically this happens when your method for the trick fails, like you don’t get a good peek at the word. This is bad.


A good miss that, while still a miss, but is a hit goes like this. They are thinking of the word and the word is “submarine”. You ask them to visualize the word. You say, “There’s a “U” in it? Great. Is there an “A” in it?” You continue, “visualize not the letters, but what you are thinking of, like in a scene from a movie…” You then write down and reveal the word Underwater, which is wrong. However you can then show that essentially they mean the same thing. The word sub means below, and the marine means water, or however you want to connect the two. this is a good hit, because you’ve planned it out and it’s not really a miss.


TLDR: Script your misses, so they aren’t really misses.