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EndersGame Inner circle Reviewer EndersGame 2196 Posts |
Hello friends in magic, this is my first post here after finally registering, but I've lurked here for many years, and I have been doing magic for friends and family as an amateur for over 20 years.
John Scarne's "Scarne on Card Tricks" contains many gems, and one of my personal favorites is #147 "Scarne's Power of Thought." It's a mentalist effect, where the spectators randomly select five cards from a deck, vote for a captain amongst them, and when the five cards are later revealed it turns out that the magician has previously predicted the card that the captain would select. This has the potential to be a fantastic mentalist effect, but I'm struggling to come up with a way to improve the handling of the captain's card. Of the five selected cards, the magi reveals the cards when stating what they are, but he can't reveal the captain's card (it's indifferent, and will later be switched for the predicted card, say the 10 of Hearts). However, doesn't the fact that this card isn't revealed already get the spectator's thinking that it's a different card than what you say it is? "Hmm, he says it's the 10 of Hearts, but maybe it isn't, because he showed us all the other cards but he didn't show that one?" And even though later you produce the 10 of Hearts, at the end of the trick spectators might think back to their original thought and be on their way to figuring out the secret. Is there a way to improve the handling to prevent spectators even getting started along this thought process? I've thought that perhaps when identifying the five cards chosen by the spectators, I should just flash them very quickly (except the captain's card) so as not to draw attention to the process of revealing the cards, but just focus on this being a minor convincer that the cards are really what I'm saying they are, and hope they don't notice that I'm not revealing the captain's card. Perhaps I should flash only three of the five, to make it even less noticeable? Any other ideas? The first couple of times I performed the effect, spectators were thinking the whole way through the trick whether the captain's card really was what I'd said it was, which has two disadvantages: 1. when revealing it at the end (after the switch) it is somewhat of an anti-climax ("oh, so it was the 10 of Hearts after all"); 2. it gets them thinking about the idea of substitution, and thus has the potential to give away how the trick works. Any thoughts about how to overcome and improve this? Anyone else had success with this trick, or have other ideas about performing it well? Thanks in advance for any feedback and ideas! |
Father Photius Grammar Host El Paso, TX (Formerly Amarillo) 17161 Posts |
Interesting question. I find that spectators only think when we give them opportunity to do so. In orther words , we fail to engage their minds in some other way. We pause, rather than keep talking, we hesitate, we act nervous, we stop and look at the cards we are turning over, etc. Not seeing you do the effect, I can't really put my finger on it, but what seems to be lacking is appropriate misdirection. You are doing something that is triggering a doubt in the spectator's mind, or you are giving them cause to think about it. The number one give away I've ever seen is where the magician is looking. We give so many cues to what we are doing because we look when we shouldn't be. Keeping eye contact with the spectator is strong misdirection. The second is unexplainable pauses, our patter should be smooth and keep moving, it shouldn't hesitate.
If the spectators mind is engaged by us in other ways, they don't think about the things we don't want them to. If we are thinking too hard about the "move" or the "result" then we give them subtle cues to suspect something. You noted the problem occurred the first few times you did the trick, which probably means you were far from sure of yourself in performing it at the time and probably gave a lot of cues to the audience. Normally audiences don't think that much about method, because the patter and the presentation is taking their mind elsewhere, and they are not magicians. As such they have no real clue of what to expect us to be really doing.
"Now here's the man with the 25 cent hands, that two bit magician..."
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Hideo Kato Inner circle Tokyo 5649 Posts |
'Scarne's Power of Thought' is one of tricks which has my marking "xx" on its title. "xx" means that I marked it with "x" when I read it the first time, and I marked it with another "x" when I read it the second time. "x" means no good. "xx" means "Don't read it anymore".
'Miscalling' and 'Switch in Pocket' are weak, but the weakest point in this trick is that taking out spectators' card from pocket has no meaning. To me, this is the trick hopeless to be improved. But I sincerely thank gregorytopov-san for giving me a chance to read this trick again. I found a way to give a reason for taking out spectators' cards from pocket. Before I place the cards in pocket, I do Charlier Shuffle maintaining the order. After a spectator named his card, I take out the card from pocket. As the cards are seemingly well shuffled, it can be a magical effect. I do this for four spectators other than the captain. But we still have the big problem of 'Miscalling', I don't believe most of audience won't believe miscalling. It is very easy to cope with this problem. I can be solved by not using 'Miscalling'. = to be continued in "Today's Finding" = Hideo Kato |
EndersGame Inner circle Reviewer EndersGame 2196 Posts |
Thanks for the comments so far. Photius, you're probably correct that part of the problem perhaps is that I needed more time to become familiar with the trick and create effective misdirection. But I think part of the problem is the handling of the trick itself - as Hideo Kato points out, the miscalling seems to be inherently problematic, and even with good misdirection this seems to be begging for improvement in some way.
I also appreciate Hideo Kato drawing attention to the problem of giving a reason for taking the spectator's cards from the pocket. As we all know, providing Motivation is very important in magic, especially to cover up a secret move (in this case, the need to put the cards in the pocket to cover a switch). One approach I have tried with this trick (after the "captain" has been appointed) is not to just flash the cards when identifying what they are, but to leave the four non-captain cards face-up on the table, and deliberately draw attention to the fact that the Captain card is not revealed yet and turn this into something of a question: "The captain's card is the 10 of Hearts. Or is it? We'll see later if it is..." (I'm sure the patter can be improved) Drawing attention to the questionable identity of the Captain card in this way gives has two advantages: 1. it provides some motivation for taking the cards out the pocket later (to show what the card actually is); 2. it gives a stronger cover for the miscalling, because now the magi apparently has a reason for not revealing the captain's card, and treating this card differently than the others is done consciously and deliberately. However, it still leaves me missing Motivation for putting the cards IN the pocket in the first place, so it's still not entirely satisfactory, and it still doesn't address my earlier concern that this could get the spectator's minds on track to figure out the secret. So is my suggestion an improvement? I'm not sure. Including the Charlier Shuffle and playing with the shuffling of the selected cards is an interesting idea (although it does increase the technical difficulty of the trick, and still leaves me looking for motivation for putting the cards in the pocket in the first place.) Thanks for your comments though! To Hidea Kato: Where can I find "Today's Finding" where you intend to continue discussion on this? |
Hideo Kato Inner circle Tokyo 5649 Posts |
Quote:
On 2008-01-23 23:12, gregorytopov wrote: You can't access to it until you have posted 50 times in Magic Caf$B!&(B It is in "Secret Session" forum. Hideo Kato P.S. Taking out the named cards one by one from shuffled cards in pocket is a good reason to pocket the cards, otherwise you can't do that effect. I already created a version in which you can have spectator shuffle the cards before placing them in the pocket. P.P.S. In the former post, I wrote : I don't believe most of audience won't believe miscalling. It should read : I don't believe most of audience will believe miscalling. |
EndersGame Inner circle Reviewer EndersGame 2196 Posts |
In the instances of miscalling while performing close-up magic with cards, what do you say if spectators demand to see a card because they don't believe that it is the card you say it is? (this could also apply to routines like the Ambitious Card).
Regarding the miscalling in Scarne's Power of Thought - as I suggested above, one possibility is to draw attention to the fact that the magician isn't revealing the captain card, by placing the other four cards face up. As a result, the spectators think they have the trick figured out "He's going to make the captain's card `change' from what he says it is", and then when you reveal the cards from the pocket, there's a twist because the captain card is actually what the magician said it was, so that's the first surprise for the spectators. Then you can play the "magician made a mistake" routine, by saying something to the effect of ""That's strange, nothing happened, it was supposed to change!" From here you can recap the trick (emphasizing the random choices of cards and random choice of the captain), and then say, "you know what's even more strange?", and then show the prediction. Would that be an improvement over Scarne's handling at all? PS: Is there a way for me to subscribe to a thread and get email notification of replies?(aside from choosing this option when making the initial post) |
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