sleight of hand – Page 16

Ace Production…

In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about a four ace production that I saw on social media and why it wasn’t good. This morning I’m going into my social media and found a four ace production from about a year ago. If I remember correctly this is from Principia by Harapan Ong.

Here’s why the is a better trick that the one that I shared yesterday:

I’m talking, it fills the dead space a bit better
No procedural shuffling
You get an ace production right away
The final ace production is magical and puts an punctuation on the trick

Is the ace trick that I did the best? No, however it’s way better than the one that I shared yesterday. Think about what you’re sharing before you put it out there.

Shell Game Ending…

When I perform and have tried doing the solid shell kicker, it never played how I’d like. I think there’s a disconnect between the shell game and when the solid shell is reveals, it’s a little out of left field. I was playing around with an ending as a topper to the kicker of the solid shells that I found in an old notebook of mine.

You can read this post about it from about a month ago.

I don’t think I ever posted video of it. Here’s the first version of it. I need to remake it, but you get the idea

I’ve done this a few times over a livestream and so far it’s playing really well. I can’t wait to try it out for real people, whenever that will be!

Scripting Magic Book…

My current book that I’m reading is Scripting Magic by Pete McCabe. This book is interesting and I’m only about 145 pages into volume one and it’s pretty good. When I was younger I used to have a loose script, but nothing formally written down. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized the huge advantages to writing down what you say in your show.

For me writing out a script makes it a lot easier to see where jokes should be. It also makes it easier to work on them. One thing I don’t like very much is the script format that this book uses when it’s showing scripts. I find them hard to read, however I’m 99% sure it’s simply because I’m not used to that format. I think the more I use it the easier it will get to read.

I’m working on my Polaroids to Envelope trick that I wrote about a week or so ago. I decided to write out the script using the format in Scripting Magic. What I did was simply use a practice video and wrote down what I said and added the actions.

Polaroids to Envelope Download

In the version in the document above it’s pretty basic and narrative. It’s got a rough presentation hook, and a chuckle in it, but it needs more work.

Polaroids to Envelope

For the Polaroids to Envelope magic trick I’m working on, the last technical step is to clean up the handling. The initial handling had three Tenkai Vanishes, which is fine, but redundant. I also think that if you do the same false transfer over and over, you need a convincer to show both hands empty.

Here’s the tweaked handling:

One thing that I decided with showing both hands empty was that I didn’t want to make both hands being empty part of the vanish. I wanted to show both hands, just not show the dirty hand as a “moment” of the trick. In the video you’ll notice that I show both hands as I turn the envelope over.

The technical end is finished for now. The technical part is something that may evolve over time, and something that’s never completely done.

Pics to Jumbo Card.

The last couple of days I’ve been writing about doing Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper and how it morphed to Cards To Jumbo Card. Today we’re going to talk about the next leap it’s taking, and that’s starting to get rid of the cards. In place of the four regular cards, I’m using Polaroid pictures of my daughter and our pets.

The cool thing about these is that they are slightly smaller than playing cards, which makes a lot of the sleight of hand much easier! The nice thing about coming up with a method that doesn’t use a duplicate, they pictures could be of people from the audience, or of a company’s products, or whatever.

Once again, the video below wasn’t intended for people to watch other than me. It’s a “proof of concept” video that was for me to watch and see how well everything worked and also to remind me of what I was doing.

Things are starting to come together, but there’s still one thing I don’t like, and that’s the jumbo card. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how I got rid of that.

Color Change

The other night while watching TV with the family I was fiddling with a deck fo cards and came up with a strange color change. There’s a lot wrong with it, and in its current state it’s not a good color change.

The main problem with it is that it’s not good for video. I can see the flash that happens when you palm the card being hidden in a live show, but not on video. Also there are better ways to do a color change.

It was fun to play with.

The Penny Solution…

In yesterday’s blog post, I mentioned it took a bit of work figuring out what to do with the penny in the trick where a penny changes into two silver dollars. The challenge was that the coin change happens immediately, however I need to keep the coin hidden for the whole routine. Based on the conditions I posted I can’t just ditch it as my hands need to remain in the frame. Adding to the problem is that I also have two coins finger palmed the entire routine (until the end).

The solution I came up with, which should have been pretty obvious was to attach attach a magnet to the penny as the silver dollars already have magnet in them. I took the penny shell from a Dime and Penny set and used teflon tape to hold the magnet.

I figured using a shell would allow the penny to sit flat on on the silver dollar. The flatter it sat, the less chance there would be for me to accidentally knock it off, and it won’t rattle as the coin moved.

The “penny solution” brings me back to something Nick Lewin always says, I love how elaborate this 30 second coin routine has become!

Conditions on a Coin Routine…

The last couple of days I created and refined a coin routine. Here are the two routines and the conditions:

Initially the conditions were:

Viewed from the front
Done for the camera
No table
Face must be framed

I will say that I initially fudged the face must be framed because I put the coin in my pocket, however there’s still action by my face as that’s where my right hand stays holding a coin.

After coming up the first version, I added a couple more conditions:

Hands stay in frame
Usable in a LIVE show with video projection
Able to set up quickly

With the second set of conditions, I’m thinking about actually using the routine. In the second version, I’m playing the the camera for the two times the coin disappears from one hand and reappears in the other, but it will still work live. The set up quickly condition is huge, I need to be able to reach into my case, grab the coins and be good to go.

Then there’s a small challenge with the condition of my hands not leaving the frame. I have the stupid penny to keep hidden after it changes into the two silver dollars. It sounds simple, but was a pain to figure out how…until I came up with a very simple and obvious solution to holding out the penny for almost the whole routine.

The next step would be to start to work on a verbal routine, or at least intro, to get more than 30ish seconds out of the routine.

Continuing Creating a Coin Routine…

The coin routine that I started yesterday started with a penny turning into two silver dollars. One silver dollar repeated traveled from the pocket to the hand and for a finish one of the silver dollars turned clear. It’s a decent routine, however after playing with it, I added a couple more conditions (I’ll write about the conditions tomorrow) and here’s what the routine changed into:

The first big difference is the routine is about 17 seconds shorter. I took the coin going from the pocket to the hand, that I felt was pretty redundant after I did it more than twice. It doesn’t feel as impossible with a coin as it does with a ball. It’s interesting that the routine started with a billiard ball manipulation premise, however moved away from that.

The ending with both coins turning clear makes more sense than just one of them doing and the final display of one in each hand is better.

Working On A Coin Routine…

A bit ago I noticed some coins on my desk, and figured I’d start playing with putting together a quick coin routine. To start the routine I gave myself a few conditions that it had to adhere to and I’ll get to those in a future blog post. Here’s what I put together:

When I started playing with the coins one thing that I quickly realized is that I could almost do a billiard ball manipulation routine with them. Once you have the initial change from a penny to two silver dollars, the routine is essentially Percy Abbott’s Perpetual Ball routine.

Next up the routine needed an ending. I don’t think that producing 4 or 5 silver dollars would have the same impact as producing 5 billiard balls. Luckily a clear coin caught my eye and I threw that into the mix. I think it gives it an ending.