I’ve been working recently on a new DVD Making Magic, with Craig Frith, Travis Carter and Adam Bell. This is designed to offer the student magician a sound introduction to the basics of close-up magic… the sort of instructional DVD we would have liked to have had when we started in magic.
We discussed the old adage that if you know ten ways to find a chosen card and one way to reveal it, you essentially have one trick. But if you know just one way to find a chosen card and ten ways to reveal it, you have ten tricks.
Of course that’s something of an over-simplification; and you wouldn’t do all ten at one performance, would you?
So I thought it would be fun to drop in a few example revelations at an appropriate point in the DVD. So on Saturday I roped in a few of the layab…, sorry, Loungers, to perform some quick card revelations. Things escalated somewhat so I decided to put them all together in a short, and possibly amusing, film.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGfhAg-ZPe8]
The ‘silent movie’ theme seemed to fit. There are no explanations in this particular section; we’re just looking at ‘the what’, for ‘the how’ you’ll have to wait for the DVD. And for ‘the why’ you’ll probably need to consult with someone better versed in the convoluted psychology of the average card magician.
Nevertheless, we optimistically hope that it will be a small step in encouraging new magicians to think a little creatively about their card magic!