Whispering Imps
Whispering Imps on Magic Posters: Rhett Bryson's collection of magicians posters that somehow include a whispering imp character, probably the first to do this was Kellar, the collection shows images of 125 posters.
Your Chosen Vehicle
Having just recently started to listen to MagicBroadcast, I caught Robert Baxt being interviewed by Gerald Kirchner. Robert said some great things about how to make your magic meaningful to your audience, by taking even the most simple of things and giving it a personal meaning that they could identify with. This would then take it away from being just a simple trick, to an experience that they will remember.
The interview closed with a question posed to Robert about if he found himself in an impromptu setting, what card trick would he do? Robert's answer was something along the lines of he wouldn't do a card trick as what meaning does the Seven of Clubs or the Eight of Diamonds have to someone, other than when you do a gambling routine. He would much prefer to do a money trick as he felt people would better relate to this.
For someone who's first and foremost love in this art is card magic, I must say I disagree! Bear with me while I quickly give you my views on the old argument of 'Card Tricks are boring'. I do hear this suprisingly quite a lot, but usually from magicians, magicians relatives/partners/friends. Sometimes I do get the reaction of 'Seen that one' when I pull out a deck of cards, but usually that happens when I have been working with other magicians who are also doing card tricks. Briefly I believe they only think they are boring because they have seen a lot of bad and boring card magic. Also because there is a lot of card magic out there, and its quite an 'easy' option then lots of magicians use this vehicle to show a quick trick and it's easy to do so without much thought to presentation or the why's and wherefore's. That's why I think they automatically assume that all card magic is boring, its easy to condemn when you see a lot of the same style of bad magic.
I could easily harbour this opinion about manipulation acts, the linking rings or the cups and balls, as a magician you are subject to so many of the same kinds of tricks, with the same routines, but just every so often you get a little ray of sunshine that makes you re-evaluate, Just watch the manipulation type acts of FISM Winners Norbert Ferre and Mirko watch someone like Mark Raffles do the rings, or David Regal's presentation for the Cups, what these people have in common is that they have thought about standard routines, and how best to change them to suit their style and to make them meaningful to the audience.
I do believe you can make card magic (as in any kind of magic) meaningful to your audience, it just requires a lot of thought, care and attention to do so, which is only what your audience deserves.
So I guess our job should be to try and lift all of our material to the realm where people can care about and relate to it, be it card magic, kids magic, mentalism, manipulation or whatever vehicle you choose to bring your magic to others.
The interview closed with a question posed to Robert about if he found himself in an impromptu setting, what card trick would he do? Robert's answer was something along the lines of he wouldn't do a card trick as what meaning does the Seven of Clubs or the Eight of Diamonds have to someone, other than when you do a gambling routine. He would much prefer to do a money trick as he felt people would better relate to this.
For someone who's first and foremost love in this art is card magic, I must say I disagree! Bear with me while I quickly give you my views on the old argument of 'Card Tricks are boring'. I do hear this suprisingly quite a lot, but usually from magicians, magicians relatives/partners/friends. Sometimes I do get the reaction of 'Seen that one' when I pull out a deck of cards, but usually that happens when I have been working with other magicians who are also doing card tricks. Briefly I believe they only think they are boring because they have seen a lot of bad and boring card magic. Also because there is a lot of card magic out there, and its quite an 'easy' option then lots of magicians use this vehicle to show a quick trick and it's easy to do so without much thought to presentation or the why's and wherefore's. That's why I think they automatically assume that all card magic is boring, its easy to condemn when you see a lot of the same style of bad magic.
I could easily harbour this opinion about manipulation acts, the linking rings or the cups and balls, as a magician you are subject to so many of the same kinds of tricks, with the same routines, but just every so often you get a little ray of sunshine that makes you re-evaluate, Just watch the manipulation type acts of FISM Winners Norbert Ferre and Mirko watch someone like Mark Raffles do the rings, or David Regal's presentation for the Cups, what these people have in common is that they have thought about standard routines, and how best to change them to suit their style and to make them meaningful to the audience.
I do believe you can make card magic (as in any kind of magic) meaningful to your audience, it just requires a lot of thought, care and attention to do so, which is only what your audience deserves.
So I guess our job should be to try and lift all of our material to the realm where people can care about and relate to it, be it card magic, kids magic, mentalism, manipulation or whatever vehicle you choose to bring your magic to others.
Bad Referrer
Just to let people know that I have hopefully implemented a few of these ideas to stop some of the referrer spam I am getting, hopefully now we have stopped that and any comment spam, its a real shame when it comes down to this, but I won't let them win damnit! So if you are legit and are seeing some errors or have problems getting to the site, then let me know.
Set to Stun-ning
Jack Parker is not a name known to many, we lucky few over at TSD have had the chance to see his creative output in the tricks and video's he has posted there. Also you might recall a number of things he has had published in MAGIC magazine. Now its time for this UK card man to release his first e-book. This was released earlier this week, the reason it has taken me this long to post about it is that I wanted to really play around with the material and get a feel for the routines, rather than just dashing something off. So here are a few thoughts that might constitute a kind-of-review.
The e-book is split into three sections, with a stunning graphic layout courtesy of Andi Gladwin. The first section entitled 'Compulsive Swallowing' starts with Cross Eyed Suprise. This is a neat little packet effect where two aces transpose from in between the four queens. Inspired by David Solomon, and David Regal, you know this is going to be good! In the last phase we are introduced to a lovely variation on the Kosky Switch that brings about the Hotel Mystery type of climax.
Jack then brings us his variation of a Tamariz routine, namely Four of a Kind or All of a Kind as its published in Mnemonica. Rather than using a fully stacked deck as in the Tamariz version, this can be done from a shuffled unprepared deck. However this does slightly change the premise to the trick, rather than you turning over three cards that you say will match the card the spectator hasn't yet seen, the spectator looks at a card, you then turn over three indicator cards that you hope will point to the identity of their card, they don't but you do get out of trouble as in the original routine, with a bit of a Walton premise thrown in for good measure. I think I actually prefer this way of doing the trick, rather than being wrong three times, having to openly act this, and possibly giving away where the trick is going, you are wrong once, and then you correct it for the finish.
First of the First is a very clean vanish and re-appearance of a selection from between two other cards, reminiscent of Elmsley's Point of Departure, a very clean looking setup phase introduces us to an interesting Vernon move that I had only briefly seen before, here Jack uses it to good effect as this one move accomplishes the necessary to bring about the trick.
We then move onto part two, in fairness to Jack I won't mention the title of this section as it would tip some of the workings of the three effects, I think it is ok to mention that this is my favourite section of the e-book and you will own the necessary to do the tricks, or what is required is very commonly available, and here it is utilised to great effect to bring about so much magic!
Persistent Offenders is based on Paul Harris's Tap Dancing Aces routine, it see's the four kings jumping from their packet to the deck and back again, and even in the spectator's hands. More Effort Less Magic is a comedy routine which utilises misdirection to bring about some visual changes. In short a selection vanishes from between the Kings in an amusing fashion, and re-appears in a visually startling way. Lastly in this section The Heist is a great packet cards-across effect, based around the theme of a jewel robbery. Inspired by two Paul Harris routines again the construction of the routine gives you a very clean and clear picture of what is happening, as part of the story a card is very fairly placed with four-of-a-kind in the middle of the deck by the spectator, it can immediatley be shown to have vanished and re-appeared in the packet you are holding, its that clean!
The last part Pin Tweaks starts off with U.D.S.I which is an un-gimmicked handling for a Luke Dancy effect, a very straight-forward setup is required utilising a move seen earlier, you can then pull off the very visual climax of the Ace of Spades transposing with the tabled kings, this in terms of handling may be the hardest effect in the book if you cannot do a certain move, but Jack offers alternate endings. Fletch is a variation on a Jerry Sadowitz trick entitled Fetch. Jack has modified this so that instead of one indifferent card seemingly taken on a life of its own and moving around a fan of cards (based on an old gag we all probably do!) and then finding the selection as in the Sadowitz routine, here an indifferent card animates and then magically changes into the selection. 100% Confidence is the trick that concludes this last section, you can see a video clip of this at the Underground Collective site. Based on David Solomon's Three Indicators trick, Jack has taken this and John Bannon's Discrepancy City prediction to the limits, with a great climax and some lovely displays, I encourage you to watch the video and see the little nuances of Jack's handling of this trick that make it look so free and fair.
As a last bonus item Jack offers the Can Can Coin, a lovely impromptu coin through coke-can effect, which is one of those things I will store in my head and await the opportunity to try. I laughed out loud at the ideas used in this routine, for the sheer cleverness of the convincers, and the cheeky clean-up, a well thought out routine that Tim Trono said was worth the price of admission!
This is a great e-book, excellent production standards, well explained routines, but most of all you get the feeling that Jack really knows how to construct his effects, selecting the right moves and sleights to give you the cleanest and fairest possibly setups, with the most powerful climax possible. Hopefully this little review of the effects contained within will give you some idea of what you will be getting for your money, none of the effects contain knuckle-busting sleights, just clever thinking to obtain maximum output. You can purchase Set to Stun at Jack's Deck priced $20.
Predict Boredom
So I've been thinking a lot lately about selection of material, and how what I choose to do reflects my performance character, but more about that in a later post! I've wanted to do a version of Simon Aronson's Shuffle Bored ever since seeing Ali Bongo's excellent version. The only trouble is that the more I think about it the more it raises my in-securities about predictions in general. I know that Simon has raised this point before about the prediction version of this effect. To paraphrase the problem I believe is that the trick includes such a fair and powerful random looking shuffle sequence, that to then pull out a printed, pre-conceived prediction just blows this out. Which in a way is the problem I have with most predictions, if your audience has any powers of deduction, when they backtrack surely they realise you must have spent time printing your prediction, and that is permanent and non-changeable. Therefore in order to bring the effect to a successful conclusion you must have somehow controlled what went before, no matter how fair it may have looked.
Which is ok if thats what you claim to be doing in some kind of mental/psychic way, influencing people to come to a certain conclusion. Maybe thats what is missing from the presentation of most predictions that I see, but I don't believe thats how Shuffle Bored should be performed, as the procedure is so fair, the idea, for me anyway, is that it can't possibly be controlled, therefore how can you possibly have printed out the outcome hours in advance? In Paul Cummins workshop when he teaches a version, he suggests writing the Ali Bongo prediction, even in front of the clients, this is slightly better, and at least it gives the prediction some kind of immediacy, but I'm still unhappy with this way of doing it.
Off on a slight tangent, I did what I usually do when I want to add something to my repetoire and aquired a lot of versions of this trick, when did it become ok to release Simon's effect (when in the original manuscript he categorically asks that this not happen), with Ali Bongo's prediction, with the justification that you have a slight change of script to go with it? I have seen this on at least two occasions, with hardly a fleeting mention to either...
Anyway back to the plot! Recently two versions have been released that have caught my attention, Bill Goldman's Little Bunny is a great addition to the Ali Bongo style prediction, and does in my opinion justify its release, but it still suffers from the problem stated that this is a printed prediction, that is more over-prepared than even the Bongo one, the outcome is a printed book(let) that is not going to change between performances, so we are back to the problems above. Simon recently released his Random Sample version, which I aquired in person, when we met in Chicago, boy was I miffed when it came out in MAGIC! This is fantastic and almost goes far enough to solving the inherent problems with the prediction style of this trick... almost. I believe that using the booklet style of multiple prediction as in Little Bunny, is a significant improvement, and that that Simon's presentation does take some of the sting out of the full on prediction, by suggesting this is how the common outcome of a shuffle is recorded, still with possible margins of error/freedom, almost into the realm I mentioned of influencing the shuffle, in increasingly impossible ways.
I believe the main issue I have with predictions is the obvious way of backtracking to a solution from the outcome, if you can somehow soften this, or change it in some way then in some instances I think you could lead the spectator away from the only possibly method of you 'somehow' controlling the outcome. In other words having someone for example select a card and then immediatley showing your prediction to match, is to me bad magic, how else could you have done it if not influenced them to somehow select that card.
A similar situation can be seen in the trick, where the magician continually forces the same card on someone, and uses that as the effect. WHY!? What are you trying to show? How clever you are at making them select the same card, how you can influence them, how stupid they are for falling for it? Does this not amount to some kind of exposure, especially if you are using such a fair looking procedure such as the classic force or hofsinzer spread. For me you could forget doing any pick-a-card tricks after that, they already know that you can make them pick whatever card you want, so whats the point? Why waste such a fair and free looking procedure, on such a stupid outcome... much like the prediction shuffle bored.
So whats the answer? For me at least it means changing the outcome and premise, there are various different ways to utilise the shuffle bored procedure which are outlined in the original manuscript, or fortunately for me John Bannon has done this in his version Waiting for Dark, or a souped up version of this style of presenting it can be found in Mnemonica. I really like John's thinking and his way of presenting this, even with the ending which does somewhat violate what I've said about the prediction side, but not in such an in-your-face way that hopefully will just twist the knife ever so slightly!
Which is ok if thats what you claim to be doing in some kind of mental/psychic way, influencing people to come to a certain conclusion. Maybe thats what is missing from the presentation of most predictions that I see, but I don't believe thats how Shuffle Bored should be performed, as the procedure is so fair, the idea, for me anyway, is that it can't possibly be controlled, therefore how can you possibly have printed out the outcome hours in advance? In Paul Cummins workshop when he teaches a version, he suggests writing the Ali Bongo prediction, even in front of the clients, this is slightly better, and at least it gives the prediction some kind of immediacy, but I'm still unhappy with this way of doing it.
Off on a slight tangent, I did what I usually do when I want to add something to my repetoire and aquired a lot of versions of this trick, when did it become ok to release Simon's effect (when in the original manuscript he categorically asks that this not happen), with Ali Bongo's prediction, with the justification that you have a slight change of script to go with it? I have seen this on at least two occasions, with hardly a fleeting mention to either...
Anyway back to the plot! Recently two versions have been released that have caught my attention, Bill Goldman's Little Bunny is a great addition to the Ali Bongo style prediction, and does in my opinion justify its release, but it still suffers from the problem stated that this is a printed prediction, that is more over-prepared than even the Bongo one, the outcome is a printed book(let) that is not going to change between performances, so we are back to the problems above. Simon recently released his Random Sample version, which I aquired in person, when we met in Chicago, boy was I miffed when it came out in MAGIC! This is fantastic and almost goes far enough to solving the inherent problems with the prediction style of this trick... almost. I believe that using the booklet style of multiple prediction as in Little Bunny, is a significant improvement, and that that Simon's presentation does take some of the sting out of the full on prediction, by suggesting this is how the common outcome of a shuffle is recorded, still with possible margins of error/freedom, almost into the realm I mentioned of influencing the shuffle, in increasingly impossible ways.
I believe the main issue I have with predictions is the obvious way of backtracking to a solution from the outcome, if you can somehow soften this, or change it in some way then in some instances I think you could lead the spectator away from the only possibly method of you 'somehow' controlling the outcome. In other words having someone for example select a card and then immediatley showing your prediction to match, is to me bad magic, how else could you have done it if not influenced them to somehow select that card.
A similar situation can be seen in the trick, where the magician continually forces the same card on someone, and uses that as the effect. WHY!? What are you trying to show? How clever you are at making them select the same card, how you can influence them, how stupid they are for falling for it? Does this not amount to some kind of exposure, especially if you are using such a fair looking procedure such as the classic force or hofsinzer spread. For me you could forget doing any pick-a-card tricks after that, they already know that you can make them pick whatever card you want, so whats the point? Why waste such a fair and free looking procedure, on such a stupid outcome... much like the prediction shuffle bored.
So whats the answer? For me at least it means changing the outcome and premise, there are various different ways to utilise the shuffle bored procedure which are outlined in the original manuscript, or fortunately for me John Bannon has done this in his version Waiting for Dark, or a souped up version of this style of presenting it can be found in Mnemonica. I really like John's thinking and his way of presenting this, even with the ending which does somewhat violate what I've said about the prediction side, but not in such an in-your-face way that hopefully will just twist the knife ever so slightly!
