Jerx Christmas - Marc Kerstein - 4:37 AM
/Hot damn! I’ve got my second wind. In fact, the whole group seems to have. We all took ecstasy and we’re going to rave until dawn.
I’m just busting your balls. The only thing we’re high on is the Christmas Spirit.
A little while ago I had a burning question I needed to ask my old friend Marc Kerstein.
I went over to Marc and said, “Hey man, I gotta know. I know you work with Blaine a lot. When he did your trick with Margot Robbie, did you get to meet her or what?”
“Meet Margot Robbie?” he said. “Oh… no. I wish. That would have been nice.”
Then he sat back in his chair and sighed. “Truth be told… I’ve never even met Blaine. Worked for the guy for years but he won’t interact with me one-on-one. He says it ‘dullens the mind’ to interact with common people like me. He says, ‘You can talk to me in person when you’ve stood on a pole for two days.’”
“Geez,” I said, “That’s harsh. What do you do? Just email each other?”
“Oh no, it’s not like that,” he said. “He has a guy who’s his ‘personal puppeteer.’ That guy has a Marc Kerstein puppet, and I give that guy a script to read to David as if it’s coming from me through the puppet. David responds to the puppet and then I get a transcription of his response that I then have to respond to and the cycle starts over again. But don’t tell anyone I said this. According to my NDA, I’m supposed to refer to him as a ‘great guy’ who’s real ‘down to earth.’ Whatever.”
"Yikes,” I said, “I had no idea. What a nightmare. On a different subject altogether… can we release the PK Video update as a gift for the people with the Jerx App?”
And Marc gave the okay so now I can tell you about this.
Today we’re adding a feature to the Jerx app that will allow you to do a really strong version of PK Touches. It was inspired by something Seth Raphael mentioned to me back in 2019. But we took it in different directions. I’ve had the exclusive on this for over three years, I think. I didn’t know if I was ever going to release it. But hell, it’s Christmas.
Traditionally in a PK Touches routine you touch one spectator and another spectator on the opposite side of the stage feels the touches.
What we have here is a close-up, impromptu version of PK Touches that you do for one person.
I’ll give you the most basic presentation. Next month I’ll mention a much more interesting way of using the trick as a finale to a three-part presentation.
Here’s what it looks like.
Imagine
I’m with my friend and I ask her if I can try something out with her that I’m working on. I have her stand up and face away from me and hold her hand behind her back.
I tell her I’m going to touch her hand in a moment and I want her to try and really focus on how I touch her—how many times, where, in what manner, etc. And I tell her I’ll record it on my phone.
I get my phone out and start taking a video and tell her to pay attention to what she feels. The video is quick. Maybe 15 seconds.
When I’m done, I recap with her what she felt.
“I think it was three touches,” she says. “On my middle finger. Like… two taps. And then a long swipe down the finger.”
“Interesting,” I say. “That’s crazy. You’re like hypersensitive. That worked way better than I expected.”
I open my phone and go to the last video in my camera roll and open it and either play it for her or send it to her phone. Either way, when we watch the video, this is what she sees…
Method
Okay, what the app does is it takes the audio from one moment and lays it over the video from another moment. So, for example, if you open the app and hit record, it will start recording video. When you hit record again, it will start recording an audio clip that is as long as the video clip it just took.
Then it will automatically and instantly stitch together that audio clip and that video clip and shoot it into your camera roll.
There is no real rule for how to do this trick, but I find it helps to have a template to follow, so I pretty much do the same thing each time, which makes the final product more convincing.
So here's what I do:
I have my friend stand facing away from me and hold one hand behind their back.
I've already given them a preamble. That I'm going to go behind them and touch their hand in a specific way and I want them to try and concentrate on where I touch their hand and how I touch it, etc.
As I'm behind them, I go into my phone and into the app. I start the app and hit record. At this point, they don’t know I’m recording.
At 3 seconds in, I aim the camera at the back of their head and say something like, "Just a second..."
At 5 seconds in, I aim the camera at their hand and say, "Gotta get my camera ready..."
I then point the camera at my hand and at exactly 10 seconds I tap my thumb against the tip of my middle finger twice and then slide it down my finger a little, while I say, "Here... we... go...."
I then hit the button around 15 seconds, which makes the "ding" like I'm starting taking video. Actually, this stops the video recording and starts the audio recording, the clock starts over so I can now match what I say to what I shot earlier, and I say.
"Okay, here we are..."
At 3 seconds, "There’s you,"
At 5 seconds, "There's your hand..."
"And I just want you to pay attention to exactly what you feel right... NOW." The word NOW should occur at exactly the 10 second mark.
I tap her middle finger twice and then drag my finger down her middle finger.
"That's it."
Hit stop.
It doesn't matter what you aim your camera at during the second portion, because that video isn't used. (But for your own sanity, it's best if you go ahead and aim it at what makes sense.)
Here is what my camera actually captured during the recording of the video above.
If you go back and watch the original video, you can see how it all comes together.
You'll see that what makes this particularly convincing is the way what I'm saying lines up with what I’m shooting. So having those benchmarks as you shoot is important.
Obviously, before I show them the video, I debrief them a little. "What did you feel? Where did I touch you? Your middle finger? Okay... and how exactly? How many touches?... Two taps and then down along your middle finger. Great. Okay... let's look at what really happened."
You’ll want to practice this so you get the feel for it. Don’t bother with a real person. Trace your hand on a piece of paper, cut it out and stick it to the wall. You have to get a feel for the choreography. It can take a few times to really get it down. I just try to focus on 3 seconds, 5 seconds, and 10 seconds. And I remember that during the first portion I’m focusing on what I’m doing and the second time I’m focusing on what I’m saying.
There are undoubtedly other uses for this app that people will come up with (one of the people testing it had an interesting idea to use it as part of a “spirit” routine). I’ve been so focused on the PK touches aspect that I’m sort of blinded to the other possibilities, but I’ll make sure to post any other interesting ideas in the instructions.