ProMystic just put out a new trick called 50/50 and it’s great! It’s basically a location of someone holding a stack of your money.
The base routine is someone out of a group holds some money of yours. You say you’re betting your money that you can find it. You then narrow down the group until you have one person left and they have your money.
What I like about the routine is that it really fills the stage with a few bills. It also has a feeling of a chance of failure and while the method isn’t 100% is is 99.9% surefire. There is a strange scenario that I can imagine where it could fail, but it’s very unlikely.
I’ve done this three times as preshow and it’s worked great! I need to do some writing and hopefully can move it into the show soon!
One of the things that’s a challenge when performing at fairs is when there’s a visual obstruction right in front of the stage. A couple of weeks ago the fair I was performing at had a tent that the stage and audience seating was under, but it had a support pole directly in front of the stage.
Before I go any further, I will say that I will take an audience with shade and a visual obstruction over an audience in the sun with a clear view every day!
The challenge with the pole in front of the stage is that no matter what, someone’s view is going to be blocked. In my morning shows, which are slower, I pack everyone to one side of the audience and that solves the problem. Later in the day when it’s busier, that’s not really an option.
After years of trying to come up with ways to deal with this, I think I’ve finally figured out what to do with it. My solution is to accept that it’s there and simply do my show as if it’s not there. That’s really the only thing you can do. Once I mentally decide that the pole is part of my life for 45 minutes, it’s much easier for me to not pay attention to it and just do my show.
If you have a solution that works for you, let me know, I’d love to hear what you do!
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.
The clock routine I’m working on uses the Pitata Magic Time Hacker. It’s no secret how it works and they give it all away on their website, however I have made a modification to the gimmick.
A while ago I accidently broke the pin that engages the clock. When I went to order a replacement, they didn’t have them, just the new gear style attachment that engages the clock. Personally I don’t like the gear as it requires double stick tape which I felt was unreliable after practicing with it.
My solution was to glue the gear with pin from the clock to the gear attachment and it works like a dream!
The nice thing is that it’s easier to detach from the clock than the original pin attachment that came with the Time Hacker trick. This arrangement is easy to change if it gets worn down. I’m glad I stumbled onto this solution!
Also in my routine the clock is “broken” so it doesn’t matter that the the clock is non functional at the end of the routine.
Last week I learned a lot about using the Pitata Magic Time Hacker/UTP. For example mine’s range was only reliable within about 10 feet of the unit when using the remote control. This isn’t a deal breaker, but something that is good to know and be aware of!
The bag that I have the clock in has the top edge rolled down, so I can peek inside and see if the hands have moved, this is a bit of security so that I know at least it’s gotten some sort of signal and moved before I take it out. I do still need to figure out some sort of “out” for when it doesn’t work.
I’ve also started a habit of hitting the clear button before I key in the time. The feedback from the clear lets me know I’m in range…or at least gives me the sense of security that I’m in range!
In my opinion, push button electronic tricks are some of the hardest tricks to do! There’s soo much that can go wrong with them, and it’s not like sleight of hand, where you can sleight of hand your way out of a problem! If you just blindly take out the clock and it misses the signal, you’re screwed!
I’ll keep working on this as I really like the routine I’m working on, and hopefully it’s something that sticks in my show!
In working on the trick with pictures of my cat, that is really just a clock prediction using UTP/Time Hacker this week, I feel like I’m learning a lot.
First of all, I was going to have the cat pictures like a list joke, where there are three pictures and I end up the final one of my cat. It think I only need one picture and that’s of my cat. Initially I was hoping to get 5 mins from the routine, but it’s looking like it’ll be more of a 3 min routine and that’s fine if that’s where the trick naturally wants to land. There no reason to make a trick longer than it needs to be.
The second thing I learned was if you ask someone to give you a random time, they give things like six o’clock, which is fine, but not very interesting. The reveal is better if they are thinking of 6:17 as it feels more impossible.
The final thing I’m coming up with is that this trick needs an out. The first day I did it, it worked great…but the second day it failed both times. I think the fails were user error, so I’ll try to figure it out…
One of the symptoms of getting older is that my vision is going. One of the tricks I’m working on this week is Time Hacker by Pitata Magic. The device has switches and the functions are molded into the plastic. Unfortunately I can’t easily read this stuff anymore, so I had to add labels the unit and a cheat sheet to the board that the remote is mounted on.
It’s little things like this that make setting up the show much easier and will reduce the chance of mistakes. For example the remote has two modes and two switches, and it’d be easy to forget which is which. Now I really have no excuse to flip the wrong switch.
Look at your show and try to find spots where you can dummy proof or at least reduce the odds you’ll make a dumb mistake.
About a month ago I picked up two Richard Osterlind books. I got The Principles of Magic and The Principles of Mentalism. These books look like they’ve been out for a while, I think the magic one had a copyright date of 2005 and the mentalism one a few years newer.
These books are filled with short thoughts on different aspects of performing. Usually these little essays about about a page and a half to two pages. Richard gets the information across, but it’s a pretty much just the facts. He doesn’t go too deep into much of it, but it’s a starting point to get you thinking about different aspects of how you perform.
I’d say these books are targeted towards someone who is going from performing for family and friends to maybe trying to do a show, or just starting doing formal shows. If that’s you, pick up a copy of the one that’s appropriate to what you do.
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.
A while ago I bought Measure for Measure by Iain Bailey which is a prediction using a tape measure. You pull out the tape and someone says stop and you’ve predicted where they say stop. Here’s the promo video for it:
I think it’s a great trick, but the method didn’t really work for me. There’s a move that needs to happen, and it’s not hard to do, but the move just didn’t work for me. I’m not saying it’s bad, because it’s not, it’s a great trick. The method didn’t work for me.
I ordered a few tape measures and got to playing around with altering Iain’s gimmick.
What I ended up with is a tape measure that starts legitimately closed, ends legitimately closed and is 100% self working, there’s no move. I also upped the width of the tape to the Stanley Fat Max tape measure, so it’ll play a little bit bigger. As a bonus, you can see the prediction retract with the tape as you close it.
Here’s a quick demo of what my solution looks like:
I want to be clear that I’m not knocking Iain’s release, it’s a great trick and I think it would work for most people out of the box. Also, the hard part of creating magic is the first 90%, from the initial idea to a finished product for how the creator wants it to work. The final 10% is easy, and my “improvement” was the easy part, since the idea and gimmick already existed.
Also when it comes to marketing magic, there are a lot of choices that have to be made. Sometimes a method won’t be the best, but more accessible to the majority of magicians, or something that may seem like a small, insignificant tweak will triple the cost per unit.
I’m heading out on the road in about a week, I’m excited to give my version of Measure for Measure a try in front of real audiences! -Louie
