Until August...

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This is the final post of July. Regular posting begins again Monday, August 3rd.

The next issue of Keepers will be sent Sunday the 2nd.

Regarding the emails and comments on Trident from this mailbag post, Reid Ferry has this response…

  • Hi everyone,

    First off I want to thank everyone who has supported Trident, it’s really blown me away. My #1 goal it to ensure people who pick up the project will be happy with their purchase. So with that said if you have any questions or concerns please reach out and I’ll be happy to help.

    There is so much more that goes into Trident then many people realize. I chose to be transparent and put out a live performance, knowing that some magicians would look at it and think they know how it’s done. And that’s fine, it doesn’t really bother me. It’s their loss and they’ll never be able to perform it. The neat thing about Trident is it’s one of the only propless mentalism pieces where the method is not only reliant on the script. There’s a system that goes on in the performers mind that cannot be backtracked from a live performance. 

    Now I do want to stress that I think the propless version is probably the least interesting thing that you can do with the system. While I chose to showcase the propless performance, you are buying a new mentalism system. I have clearly stated it is a system that can be performed propless if chosen, but can also do many other things. 

    Either way, Trident is extremely deceptive when performed correctly. Ive performed it hundreds of times, some of which was to some of the best mentalists in the world, and they had absolutely no clue how it was done. Of course you’ll pick up on some aspects of it when you watch it back several times on video but I’m sure people can appreciate the difference from a real performance. 

    Please feel free to reach out with any questions and I’d urge you to consider thoughts from people who have seen it.

In that same mailbag I wrote:

Any truly propless “any word” revelation has to be obvious almost by definition.

I received an email that asks:

I just don’t really get this- wouldn’t that apply to any prop based revelation? 

‘I wrote it down and now they know- option 1 they are magic. Option 2 they saw what I wrote down somehow, maybe sleight of hand or tech.’

It’s the convincers that make the difference, why would propless be different? Harder, yes! But different? Sleight of hand and tech etc have all been eliminated- crack this and it IS the holy grail.

Let’s break this down. Fooling magic requires a hidden deception: gimmicks, sleights, technology, incomprehensible mathematics, linguistic deception, etc.

The strength of these deceptions are what make a trick “not obvious.”

For example, if the spectator thinks, “He only could have known my word by looking at what I wrote down,” but you have deceptions in place to make it seem like you couldn’t have done that, then you have a non-obvious peek.

Now, if someone thinks of any word, and there are no props used or limitations on the word, then the only way for the magician to get that word is to get information out of the spectator. The information has to be enough to filter out 10s of thousands of other words to bring you within a few guesses. 

For that reason, the information used to figure out the word can’t be subtle. It may be clever and they may not see every leap in logic you make but they'll see the clues they've given you.

Remember, to fool someone, you need a deception.  When revealing a thought of word, that deception can hide in the props used: how they're gimmicked or how they're handled. Or that deception can be baked into the words the spectator is allowed to think of (e.g. anagrams or binary). But with propless, there are no props. And there is no deception that’s inherently within the set of "all possible words." So logic demands you must extract A FUCK TON OF INFORMATION in order to whittle it down.

This is why I said it’s obvious “by definition” because the limitations of the method require it to be. To reiterate, I’m talking about truly propless, and truly any word.

Solid advice from the team at Vanishing Inc. Don’t go bowling or get a meal with him either. You’re bound to end up wishing you were anywhere else.

Really enjoyed this photo triptych from Vanishing Inc. detailing the aesthetic evolution of magicians over the years:

  • First, the 19th-century gentleman-conjuror: The perfect tuxedo and the quiet confidence of classic sleight-of-hand.

  • Then, the 20th-century transition: Losing the jacket for that slightly casual, 'working parlor magician' look.

  • And finally, the prototypical 21st-century master: Backwards baseball cap, rolled sleeves, and just absolutely firehosing a jet of vomit-water into a bucket.

Truly, a golden age for the craft.

Catch you all back here next month. This is your yearly reminder we’re in the back half of summer now .If you haven’t visited an ice-cream stand, taken in a drive-in movie, gone to a baseball game, attended an outdoor concert, or hit the beach to enjoy the waves and the bodacious babes… get going. Summer 2026 on’t come around again. Now is the time to be out having fun and making memories. “Now” is always the time.

Two From Ollie Mealing

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I have a couple of tricks from Ollie Mealing to share with you today.

Ollie is someone whose material I always enjoy checking out. He has a chill demeanor and friendly vibe when he performs, which I find easy to wastch. And his methods frequently fool me.

If you're not familiar with his material, one of the best deals in magic is his membership site. This isn’t an ad or some kind of affiliate post. I’m just pointing out you can get 300+ effects for under $15. That's like, what... a nickel a trick? Basically what you'd get for returning an empty soda can. And that's a steal, because some of the tricks are worth at least two empty soda cans.


Handspo

I perform this differently than Ollie does. I'll describe how it looks when I do it, and then I'll share Ollie's video of him performing and describing the effect. Then I'll annotate some of the details of my version.

I ask my friend for help with a trick that keeps going wrong for me.

I have her cut the deck in half and keep one half for herself.

I ask her to "open" her half somewhere near the middle* and flash me any card from her packet, then close her half and cover it with her hands.

"Okay, Jack of Hearts. That will work."

I then go to do the same thing with my half, opening it up for her to spot a card, then I stop myself. "Actually, I'll let you choose a card at random. Just say stop."† And I flash her the card she stopped at.

I cover my half like she does.

"Okay, now the idea is that I'm going to try to make each of the cards we're thinking of turn over in our packs."

I close my eyes and focus my energy for a moment.

I shake my head a little. "Hmm… that doesn't feel right, but let's check. What card did you see in my packet? The 10 of Spades? Okay, let's see if it turned over."

I spread my half on the table. The Jack of Hearts is face-up in the middle of the packet. "See? That was my card from your packet. Something I'm doing is making them swap places. But I can't figure out what it is. What was the card you saw in my packet? The 10 of Spades?"

I turn over all the other cards in my half.‡ "Yeah, there's no 10 of Spades here." I spread through all my cards, clearly showing no 10 of Spades.

"It must be in your half," I say, kind of annoyed it went wrong again.§

My friend spreads her half to find her chosen card has appeared, reversed in the center of the pack she was covering from the start.

Here is Ollie's original version and explanation.

My set-up is slightly different. I don't have the matching (unused) card from the other side of the double-facer in the deck at all. Just the one the spectator will see.

* When I say "open" her deck, I mean pulling open the front end like a mouth. I don't tell her how to do this. I just demonstrate with my packet.

† This is a technique I call fencing. I make it seem like I'm just going to open my half in order to have her think of a card. Then I change my mind and do something "more fair" with the Hindu force.

‡ I don't turn the cards over in the same way Ollie does. I just slide out the face-up card and then turn everything over openly on the table to show no 10 of Spades anywhere.

§ It's quite disarming and intriguing to act like you "screwed up" a trick where the mistake ends up being more impossible than what you were apparently trying to do in the first place. Like if you were trying to make a pen move on the table and it floated instead. The implication is that some part of this isn't quite in your control, which is a more interesting notion than that this is just sleight-of-hand or trick cards. Just act mildly annoyed. Don't ham it up.

Equation

Here’s a newer effect from Ollie that I intend to try out this weekend. You have a bunch of different elements coming together to identify the location of a “freely” thought of card. Seemingly, if any one of these inputs were even slightly different, the whole thing wouldn’t work.

The explanation can be found here.

Thanks to Ollie for sharing these tricks. To see more of what you’ll find in his membership site, check out the performances on his youtube channel.

Troubleshooting My Color-Changing Deck Routine

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I need some help troublshooting a routine I’ve been working on. It’s Paul Harris’ Color Stunner.

I used to do this years ago and it always seemed to go over really well. But recently, at the climax of the effect, people seem to activeley hate it. They’re booing me; cursing at me; saying “I hate that,” “That sucks,” “Why would you show us that?” One woman even vomited.

For those who don’t know, it’s a Color Changing Deck routine.

You start with a regular deck with one odd-backed card (for this example, a red card) on top of it. Place the deck in a case that matched the odd-backed card.

You remove the deck and do a face-up Hindu shuffle, occasionally flashing the back of the right hand’s packet to show “multiple” red backs.

No one ever questions this. So I know that’s not the issue. They frequntly say, “This is certainly just a regular red-backed deck of cards.”

You then use a face-up riffle force to force the odd-backed card on the spectator.

Then the Opitcal Reverse to set the deck to be apparently shuffled face-up into face-down, while still only showing the single red-backed card.

Next I use Tilt to show multiple red-back cards mixed in with the face bup half. Still, at this point everyone seems engaged, interested, and not questioning anything.

I now snap my fingers and reveal all the cards in the deck have righted themselves except their selection.

HUGE cheers at this point. “Yes! Amazing! We love you! What a great trick! It’s so good to see expert level close-up magic in person!” Etc. etc.

I then say, “What if I told you this deck isn’t a red-backed deck at all?”

And they’re like. “No way! But I saw it! I swear it’s red. If that’s not a red deck, I’m going to lose my mind. Greatest magic trick ever!” And so on.

But then when I actually reveal the color change, that’s when they become openly hostile. One guy punched me. Another woman took a shit on my close-up pad.

Any idea why?

DoublePrint Gum

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Here’s an idea from Harry Milas that I find interesting, but as it stands at the moment is maybe of limited use. However, it inspired another idea that I think has potential if anyone wants to pursue it. I’ll share that after his idea.

I bought this pack of gum in Liverpool the other day and noticed it's branding was in Arabic on one side and English on the other.

I came back from the shops and showed it to my mate (paddle move showing two arabic sides) and wondered what language it was in and what it said. I was hoping he'd say we could translate it in the Google translate photo app, and luckily he did. He got his phone out.

I only did a paddle move twice, once when I first showed it under the guise of looking for anything on the packaging in English, and again when I decided which side was "best" for the camera

When I held it in frame it looked like a perfect English translation (because it was). I put it on his hand and then I said  "if you take a photo of it then it locks it in place" while tapping the take photo button. He wasn't sure what I meant but after a sec he took the phone away and saw the gum wrapper was in English. He was genuinely shocked, to a degree I wasn't expecting. 

I realised later that until the gum changed in real life, he didn't think a magic trick was happening. The moment was more impactful because of how easily photos can be realistically faked these days. It was only after I took the photo and he saw it in English in his hand it became a magic trick. He took the initial "live translation" completely in stride. Even five years ago the perfect live translation would have been an effect in and of itself. 

People's criteria for what constitutes "impossible" is constantly in flux. 

Best, 

Harry

PS: The next day it occurred to me that you could actually see the live translation change in real time by showing the English side to the camera but getting the app to translate it first into Arabic, with the hope it would pass for real. Show them the fake Arabic as if it's the real Arabic side, then you'd hit the language swap button in the Google translate app to see it change in real time into English, then show it changed to English in real life too. 

It turns out our estimations of what is possible with technology don't meet that idea just yet and it looks pretty shit (see attached) But maybe it could work with a simpler design. 

Translating the Arabic side into English creates an interesting middle act - you could show the poorly translated Arabic to English (attached), then "refocus the camera" by moving the gum and phone closer and further from each other, (turning the gum over in that action) to then show a much better translation. Then show it's changed in real life. 

I like this idea. I’ve always liked tricks where something in the digital/virtual realm affects something in the real world. However, as I said at the beginning, it’s perhaps of limited use—unless you live somewhere where packaging like this is availble, but not too common that everyone already knows it has one language on each side.

A similar idea you might want to pursue is to do something with color-changing knives and your friend’s phone camera.

You can change your camera's filter before shooting, and see the effect live in the preview.

So you could take a red knife, have them hold the phone camera over it and change the filter to black and white, and when you pull the knife out, now it’s black.

Or maybe to give the effect a little more build, you pull out a dull green knife.

You have them change the filter so it makes the colors more vibrant, and when you pull the knife out from below the screen it’s a bright green.

Then do the thing where you change the filter to black and white and the knife is now black.

The first moment is subtle enough that they will wonder if they saw it correctly. And the second beat creates a more obvious moment of magic.

And I think having the phone between their eyes and the knife will allow you to better choreograph a switch that leaves you with an examinable black knife.

This isn’t really my type of trick to perform. But if anyone wants to run with it, feel free.

Mailbag #176

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I don’t think you’ve written anything about Instant Paper to Money 

It’s really smart and hyper visual but even in a pro setting it’s a pretty strange prop.  Let me show you what I can do with my several pieces of perfectly rectangular cut sheets of glossy magazine clippings that are all identical in size and are in my speciality weird wallet.

I bought it without thinking because it is stunning and while the hype has died it was and is still being proclaimed as the new best method and Extreme Burn killer.  However, once I got it I just sat on it because these damn slips of paper are so unusual it’s annoying.  After weeks I finally gave it a go and tried to just get out of my own way and clear my head trash only to have my audience immediately question and ask about the slips of paper that are conveniently perfectly cut and sized to a $20 bill.  Even in a professional gig this feels like an impossible hurdle whether the audience verbalizes it or not.  Maybe I’ll intentionally tear the edges and make them look ragged and less perfect.  In fact maybe that’s what the creator should do, send them slightly oversized so the buyer can tear them up a bit to fit but still be truly torn.

Regardless I’m again left feeling like most people don’t really perform and the marketing engines are stronger than one may assume.

As a fellow Extreme Burn user, where you at on this one?—SK

For a casual performance, Extreme Burn is a much better option. Changing 1s to 100s is more organic and it’s examinable. And you can keep it in your wallet or pocket like a normal human.

That said, this is a pretty trick.

I don’t think ripped edges really solves the problem you’re facing. Now you’re a person carrying around ripped pieces of paper rather than cleanly cut pieces of paper. That doesn’t make you any less weird.

I think the best approach is to address it presentationally. If you’re demonstrating a counterfeiting technique, or a way to hypnotize people to see cut up paper as money, then it makes sense you would have these items with you to demonstrate such a thing. That’s more than enough reasoning in professional performing stiuations. In social situations it could still be seeen as somewhat unusual, but there’s no way around that really.

This video for "Headache" shows up in my feed a lot from Penguin. It's so obviously AI due to the way the camera pans and the creator shows up in different places that it's almost excusable. But the effect and reactions are also included in these seamless extended scenes so it's questionable what is real if anything and what's not. —RD

Yeah, I’m certainly not going to wave the flag that there should be no AI used in magic advertising at all. I can see they were trying to do something interesting with it there. But I can also understand why it would make any ad that uses it feel suspect.

More importantly, if I was marketing magic, I’d want to avoid AI because it has a certain charmless-ness to it. I know very few people who say, “Oh, look at this great AI ad!” But I know tons of people who are actively turned-off by it or find it weirdly unsettling.

What’s interesting is the ubiquity of AI has led to advertising that is technically more professional and polished, but people now associate that AI look with cheapness not professionalism. Like every shitty restaurant I know has advertising that looks like this now.

And while that might have looked fine 10 years ago, now it just looks like they put the least possible effort into it. And it raises the question, “If the food here is good, wouldn’t you want to show us pictures of the actual food?”

I tend to feel the same way about magic advertising. It seems like the biggest selling point should be the demonstration of the routine. When this is chopped up, abbreviated, modified with AI, or not shown altogether, it doesn’t instill great confidence in the routine.

Regarding Headache, I don’t find the AI use egregious. It just doesn’t add anything to the marketing for me personally.

Protection Spell is a good starting point to anyone new to the site. In making my notes for the site, I finally read about this and have shown it to a couple of people.  The cards and pencil are in my wallet and I think this is a pretty good litmus test to see if handling this kind of material is something the performer is comfortable with. Originally, I had tried to think of a basic beginner trick to apply your ideas to and chose 8 card brainwave. This has its own problems if it’s something you carry with you everyday (space, examination, magician-centricity) and Protection Spell just keeps the same essence. Getting to this conclusion was a lesson in how effect has priority over method choice. —CJR

Protection Spell is good for both people new to the site, and audiences new to the style of presentation I write about here.

It’s a small effect (50/50) so you’re not asking them to play along with something too fantastical. And you can gauge their interest as you delve into the presentation, and if they don’t seem engaged, you can jump to the climax fairly quickly. This lets you know that in the future they’re probably not someone who is going to be locked into a long-form, more immersive trick.

There’s a shockingly dull trend that hit the DFB facebook page today and unsurprisingly is very popular there. What do you think? — JC

This feels like one of the less impressive ways to hide a word in an image. And given that’s it’s something AI clearly shits out in 2 seconds, it’s not even that interesting.

If anything, I’d probably go the other way with it: show the written name as a failed prediction and then zoom out to reveal the image. In that case it might be better if the image is made up of a bunch of different names so you can scan over to the next name. “Is it Rihanna? Cardi B? Megan Thee Stallion?” And as you zoom out it’s just a cluster of more and more names, as if you were covering all your bases, until finally the image reveals itself.

But either way, this sort of thing never comes off as much more than a gag to people. There’s no real sense that you “screwed up” and then made things right. There’s nothing particularly magical about it.

It’s the phone version of a corny packet trick.

Dustings #147

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Austin Lineback has been kicked out of the GLOMM.

If only we’d had some clue this guy was an unhinged piece of shit. Oh wait…

This looks like it’s a great book for Marcs.

Yoo-hoo, Jay. Over here!

I think Sankey needs to update his eyeglass prescription. Pretty sure he’s talking to a lamppost here.

Obsession

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Once a month, at least, I'll get a long email from someone asking me what I think of their new presentation.

They'll describe the trick to me and it will have what sounds like a lot of interesting elements—the spectator's aura, numerology, some psychological experiment, and a drawing the magician did as a child. I don't mean it will have one of those elements. It'll have all of them. (Not those specific ones. That's just an example.)

And I'll say something like, "It sounds interesting. But I'm not quite following. What is the trick, exactly?"

And then they'll reiterate what they told me the first time.

And I say, "No, I mean from the spectator's perspective. What did they just see happen?"

And that's where the conversation fizzles out. Because they can't answer it.

Their motivation is good. They had a standard meaningless magic trick and they attempted to give it some more compelling presentational elements. But they ended up with a presentation that wasn't meaningful, so much as it was "complex."

Complex can be fine in a novel or a TV series. But it's not great for a magic trick, which by its nature is already going to have something the spectator can't wrap their head around.

Dai Vernon said a good magic effect should easily be described in one sentence. He was talking about what happens in the trick itself. But I think what's more important is that the premise can be explained in one sentence.

You can have a complicated trick where half a dozen things are happening, but if you have a simple premise—

"The magician stepped into a closet that he said took him 12 minutes into the future. When he stepped back out, he was able to predict everything I would do for the next 12 minutes."

then you're all set.

They may not remember every beat of the trick. But they'll remember the premise.

If you can boil the premise down to a sentence, that's your best hope of having a story that sticks with them.

Storytelling Example: Obsession

During one of my daily updates last month, I recommended seeing the movie Obsession.

Since that recommendation, the movie has gone on to become the highest-grossing original live-action films of the decade. Now, is that because I recommended it? Possibly. We'll never know. But I'm guessing at least a couple hundred million of that was the "Jerx-bump."

One thing that makes the movie so good and watchable is the simplicity of the premise: a guy makes a wish that his longtime crush will fall madly in love with him, only for her devotion to spiral into a possessive nightmare.

That's the extent of the backstory. He wishes on a novelty item (a "One Wish Willow") and it actually works.

I watch a lot of horror movies, and so many are bad because they would over-explain how she came to be obsessed with him.

"Turns out the novelty item was a cursed Egyptian relic. The girl is the reincarnation of the guy's long-lost lover from 3,000 years ago. The wish doesn't just make her love him—it awakens her past-life memories and a parasitic demon that feeds on unrequited love, so now she's obsessed, violently jealous of anyone who ever talked to him, and slowly turning into a monster unless they complete a ritual involving his childhood teddy bear."

This is what I often see magicians doing when they try to come up with a "better" premise—they cram in a bunch of different concepts because they think more equals more interesting. It doesn't.