Tag: stage illusion

Need a Coin Tray

The “need a penny” tray that I’ve been playing with for a little while has been getting good reactions. It was time to tweak the design to make it look better and slightly more deceptive. The new one (on the right) is next to the old one:

Magic coin tray

The two main changes that I made was that I beveled the edges of the tray and I printed the bottom portion in black. Here’s a few more views of it:

Magic coin tray
Magic coin tray

The beveled edged and black bottom make it look soo much thinner. This is a great example of why you should learn about all types of magic. Essentially I took some stage illusion principles and applied them to a close up magic prop to make it more deceptive. I guess reading Rand Woodbury’s Illusionworks book when I was a teenager finally paid off!

Assistant’s Revenge Illusion

For some reason I’ve never really liked the Assistant’s Revenge Illusion. I think that from a method standpoint, it works exactly how anyone would think it does. If you’re not familiar with the trick, here’s what it looks like:

What the trick has going for it is that it has a nice surprise, where the audience is expecting the magician to escape, but it’s a substitution. I’m going to imagine it packs pretty flat and it plays big. I’m not knocking anyone that does the trick, I just think the trick is just “meh”.

Recently this one popped up for sale:

assistants revenge illusion

This pic is what got me thinking about why I don’t like the trick. The chains end up soo loose on usually the female “assistant” that there’s really no reason why the person couldn’t just slip out. If you watch the video above, you can see how loose they are at the end. I do understand that at the beginning they are tight, but that’s not the final image the audience is left with.

The trick would be greatly improved with some sort of handcuff type restraint, but I also think that would make the switch much slower.

-Louie