Snap Judgments: Banderaction

With 40% of the vote, the winner of yesterday’s poll was Banderaction by Cyril Thomas. Pardon me, he worked hard for his title, Dr. Cyril Thomas.

My Feelings on Rubber Band Magic

Rubber band magic is the weakest of all the common branches of magic associated with a particular prop. I’m not saying rubber band tricks get bad reactions, I’m saying they have to be much stronger than other tricks to get the same reaction. For example, the trick I performed earlier tonight from Banderaction involved a rubber band jumping from my hand, onto the spectator’s hand, then back onto my hand, in a very visual, camera-trick esque type manner. It got a nice reaction. But if that had been a coin that rested on my hand and in a blink was on the spectator’s palm and then just as quickly was back on my hand, that would have garnered much stronger reactions.

Rubber band magic has these issues:

1. There’s often something to see. Even if the spectator can’t see precisely what happened, they can likely get a sense—on some level— that there was some motion that occurred that they didn’t quite catch.

2. There’s often something to hear. If you could erase the THWAP! of a rubber band whipping around into a new position, rubber band magic would be much stronger.

3. People are quite familiar with the elastic properties of rubber bands. They’ve stretched them. They’ve let them snap back into place. This isn’t some hidden feature of rubber bands that magicians stumbled over.

4. Money has meaning. Cell phones are ubiquitous. Playing cards are timeless. Doing magic with these items feels a little more natural than pulling out some rubber bands you just “happen to have with you.”

5. It’s very hard (at least I’ve found it very hard) to build up a rubber band trick into anything other than a “Hey, check this out” type of moment.

In the past on this site I’ve talked about a spectator’s reaction progressing through three stages: Surprise, Astonishment, and then Mystery.

Rubber band magic tends to get a nice “Surprise” moment, but then the reactions fade quickly after that. I don’t find there to be a ton of resonance with rubber band magic in general. It looks like trick photography, but it doesn’t feel magical.

It may sound like I don’t like rubber band magic. That’s not the case. I like it. It’s just difficult to create really hard-hitting magic with an object that feels so arbitrary and where the method is based on properties of the object that spectators know about.

The Download

But let’s talk specifically about Banderaction.

Dr. Cyril Thomas is truly a genius when it comes to rubber band magic. Is that what his doctorate is in? Rubber band topology? Because his ability to figure out the geometry of the method behind these tricks is something I find astounding. It’s so far from the way my mind works. If you are into magic for the cleverness of the methods, then this is a download you should absolutely get.

I found his teaching to be very good. He goes through the steps of the set-up clearly and repeats them a couple of times. Unfortunately, there was one decision made in the production of this video that I found to be monumentally retarded and wildly frustrating. It may take 10 minutes for him to describe a particular effect. This is done over his shoulder with him breaking the move down into steps. That’s perfectly fine. But once you understand the steps, you want to see them done all in one action. And you want this to be easily found so you’re not scanning through 10 minutes of download to find that spot. Wisely, they decided to show the set-up for each effect briefly at the end of each explanation. Insanely, they decided to show this from the spectator’s point of view. Which is essentially a useless viewpoint for teaching magic—especially rubber band magic. So now instead of having one location in the video that I can go to in order to see the set-up in brief, I have to try and scan through, and find the pieces of the set-up and put them together while my fingers are trying to hold a rubber band in place that’s been doubled over a dozen times.

All magic teaching should be done from the performer’s view except for the parts where you want to show me what it looks like from the spectator’s perspective. Why we haven’t cracked this simple concept in 40 years of magic video instruction is beyond me.

Okay, moving on. The trick I decided to learn from this download is Quantum Paradox. A rubber band is wrapped around the palm of your hand. The spectator’s hand is placed next to yours. The band jumps onto their palm. Then it jumps back onto yours. You can see this at 1:55 in the trailer (and earlier in the trailer where it’s performed with a cell phone instead of someone’s hand).

My Experience

I ordered the download Thursday afternoon. I learned the basics of the trick in about 30 minutes and I was pretty comfortable with it with about another 45 minutes of practice.

The set-up for the effect is a little daunting. While you can do the set-up in front of people, it’s not going to look like just a casual stretching of the band, or something like that. You’re clearly doing something (if the person is looking).

I was able to perform this five times tonight. I would generally do the set-up as I was in conversation with someone. So—best case scenario—in their mind I was just absentmindedly stretching and twisting a rubber band I happened to have on my wrist. (And you do have to have multiple rubber bands on your wrist for all the effects on this download. (I think all of them.)) I would then bring attention to the band around my palm, take their hand and place it next to mine, and then have the band jump to their hand and then back mine.

Three out of the five times, it worked perfectly. A couple times the other person pulled their hand away when the rubber band appeared around their palm. And that sort of ends the trick there. This was my fault. I didn’t emphasize that they needed to hold completely still. And I didn’t emphasize that because I didn’t want to. The method requires their hand to remain still but I wanted to see if I could get away without actually saying that or holding their hand in place—just so they’d feel less controlled. But no, you can’t really get away with that.

The trick got the reaction I expected, which was a quick “Whoa!” when the rubber band went to their hand and another “Whoa!” when it went back to mine.

The reactions were good, but brief. I think it came across as a quick fun trick, but not too much more than that. This trick really didn’t have enough resonance for me. But as I said, that’s been my experience more or less with most rubber band magic.

A significant downside to the Quantum Paradox effect—and likely other effects on the download—is that, like many rubber band tricks, the moment of magic is over so quickly that people naturally want to see it again. But the set-up is so extensive that it can’t be executed invisibly if they’re paying attention. So the spectator will often feel caught off-guard by the magic moment and when they ask to see it again you have to refuse. This, of course, leaves them feeling like you were only able to fool them because you caught them off guard. Which isn’t really a satisfying feeling to leave them with.

Why is Crazy Man’s Handcuffs still such a classic of rubber band magic when we have more intricate methods and more visual effects like the ones on this download? It’s because CMH can be done slowly, it can be repeated with no set-up, and it doesn’t look like rubber bands simply snapping into new locations. I wish creators were keeping these benefits of CMH in mind when coming up with new effects, because as clever as the methods may be, they don’t always make for useful and usable rubber band tricks.

My Verdict

Does Banderaction get a bad reaction? No.

Does Banderaction get a bland reaction? No.

Does Banderaction cause dissatisfaction? No.

A sad erection? No!

This review has been as much about my feelings on rubber band magic as it has been on this particular product. The truth is, if you like rubber band magic, then you’ll like this. If you like clever methodology, then you’ll like this. If you’re happy with the response that you get from rubber band magic generally, then you will likely be happy with this as well.

I like the download and I think the thinking involved is worth the price, but I doubt anything from this download will crack my regular repertoire.

A number of effects on the download require a kind of “cozy” handling. There is so much going on with the band behind the hand, that angles can get a little sensitive. And occasionally there is so much tension in the band (when from the spectator’s perspective there shouldn’t be) that it looks a little unnatural. Due to those types of issues, this may be better suited for instagram than real life performances.

If you’re a big rubber band magic fan, I think there is some incredible thinking on here and you’ll enjoy this product despite the performance issues you might encounter.

If you’re just casually into band magic, I don’t think your “new favorite rubber band trick” is on here. But if you have the money to burn and you’re interested in checking out the intricacies of the methods, you’ll likely still find it worth your time.