Salvage Yard: Slide Project

I picked up Slide Project by Sebastien Calbry a few weeks ago. In my mind it looked as good or better than most anything I do close up at least in a visual sense, but the reactions have been only so-so. Any thoughts on why or ideas for a presentation that might take this up a notch? —CM

I don’t really have an answer for this, but I can point you in a direction you might want to consider as far a potential weakness to address. And I’ll give you the beginnings of an idea of how I might address it.

You see, while this looks nice enough in the gif above, it falls into the category of the type of effect that doesn’t seem to get the strongest reactions in my experience. It would be the type of effect that is described thusly:

“This thing happened! And also this thing!”

So, for example,

“The card moved through the dollar bill without him touching it. And the card changed to a different card.”

Two beats is not great when it comes to describing a trick. I want the tricks I perform to be described in one simple sentence or in a full paragraph detailing the twists and turns of the effect. Two beats usually implies that two unrelated things happened, and that doesn’t usually get the best reaction from an audience because their focus is being split between the impossibilities.

Remember the Jerx Calamity Sentence: The experience of MAGIC is created by the gap between what the spectator knows to be true and what feels real to them in the moment.

Spectators know that objects can’t move without being touched.

They also know that one object can’t change into another.

So when either of these things happen individually you are really emphasizing that gap between what the know and what they seem to be experiencing. But when they happen simultaneously, I don’t think you get twice as much magic. I think it just confuses things. Not that this trick wouldn’t fool people, I just think it’s weaker than doing similar effects separately.

What you could do, if you particularly like this gimmick, is to try and combine those moments into something that is a singular effect. And I don’t think “correcting my prediction” is a singular effect. That accounts for why the card changes, but not for why it moves by itself.

Here’s an example. This isn’t fully formed but it’s halfway there.

You have someone select a card and you place it into a folded bill. You hold up the card by the bill and freeze like that. You ask your spectator to open up a picture you texted or emailed them a few minutes ago. It’s a picture of you in a similar position, holding up a card in a folded bill. You ask your spectator to spot the differences between you in this moment and the photograph. Eventually the spectator spots three differences: it’s a different card, it’s coming out the other side of the bill, and in the photo you’re smiling, but in this moment your face is expressionless.

Then you demonstrate your ability to synchronize reality with a photo (okay, it needs some work as a premise) and after a brief moment of concentration, the card moves from one side to the other, changes to a different card, and a big smile comes across your face.

Now the movement and the color-change are part of the same thing. They’re part of the “absorption” of the photograph’s imagery into the current reality. So while a spectator may recognize these as distinct things, they are presentationally part of the same action.

Now, it’s not really my style to come out and say, “I can change reality to mimic a photograph.” So I’d probably come up with some backstory for it. Although I’m not quite sure what that would be just yet. Maybe something like, “So here’s something strange… I’ve been stressed out a bit recently because of some work projects. And I was having a hard time getting myself in a better headspace. So I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a psychologist and asking if she had any little hacks or anything to boost my mood. She told me about this thing called, ‘Photographic Assimilation.’ And it’s like this quick breathing/visualization technique where you concentrate on a photo of yourself in a happy time, and you’re able to take on some of the emotional elements that were occurring at that time.”

And then I’d go on to describe practicing this technique and noticing other changes happening as well when there was an overlap of physical objects between the photo and reality. Then I’d go on to demonstrate this weird phenomena. Or… something like that. As I said, it’s only halfway there

If you’re performing for a single spectator and willing to lose the visual element you could have them hold the phone at arms length and then block their vision of you with the phone for a moment and then, in an instant, you will have changed to match the photo when they move the phone away. Although losing that visual might be too much of a sacrifice.

So to answer the original question, no, I don’t have a particularly great idea in regards to how to perform this. But I do think if you can find some way presentationally to make the movement and the change a result of the same impetus, then you’ll likely get a better response, because it won’t just be two somewhat disconnected magical moments jammed together.