This Doesn't Work Like You Think It Does: Shuttle Pass

When we were doing the focus group testing more regularly, there were certain techniques that would regularly raise suspicion from the audience. These included techniques that are used by performers all the time.

For example, the “verbal ruse” that I wrote about in this post.

Now, when I say these techniques would raise suspicion “regularly,” I don’t mean 100% of the time. But at least 50%. Sometimes something closer to 60 or 75%

In my opinion, if something draws attention to itself that regularly, it’s not really workable. I don’t know if I would use a technique that even 20% of people found questionable.

Today I want to talk about the shuttle pass.

Now, the shuttle pass itself is fine.

But I want to talk about a use for it which doesn’t work like magicians seem to think it does.

You’ve just pushed the cigarette through the quarter.

“Here,” you say, “take a look.”

I see this all the time. The shuttle pass used to “end clean.”

The problem is that this isn’t how humans hand things out. They don’t take it from one hand and put it in the other and then hand it out.

Would you like a lollipop?

Here, take this sheet of paper.

It might not look that weird to you, but only because you’ve seen it done a million times in magic.

If someone does that to you in real life, you’re in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenario, and they’ve been body snatched.

In some situations, this might go unnoticed. But right at the end of the trick, where there is intense suspicion on the object, unnecessarily transferring it from one hand to the other is going to ring false to people. Whether they catch the switch or not, it doesn’t matter. They’ll feel like you did something. Sorry. I know it’s an easy way to clean-up, but you’re going to have to figure something else out.

What should I do?

Bitch, I don’t know. It’s going to depend on the item you’re switching and the situation in which you’re presenting the trick. You need to find a way to motivate handing it from one hand to the other.

For example, if you’re performing for a few people standing in a semicircle, you can show the object to the person on your right, then pass it to your left hand and give it to the person on your left to pass around. That gives you at least a somewhat plausible reason to pass the coin between your hands.

But of course that doesn’t work one-on-one.

Sometimes, if you have multiple things in play (multiple coins, or a coin and a cigarette, for example) in the process of gathering the items to hand out, you can do the switch at that point.

I don’t know. As I said, it depends on the routine and how you’re performing it. I’m not here to tell you exactly what to do. Just to point out that if your idea of “ending clean” is handing an object to yourself before handing it out, that doesn’t work like you think it does.