Spidey (who I’m sure has a real name but I have no clue*) is a mentalist/hypnotist who has posted a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube. One thing that distinguishes him from the “exposers” is that he actually goes in depth on how to do an effect and explains why certain choices are made — they are legit magic tutorials.
One that I saw a while back tickled my fancy, but wasn’t quite the kind of thing that I’d typically perform. Recently I needed an example of a specific type of mentalism technique and remembered this video. I went back to it, watched it, and then reskinned it to make it much better for me.
Watch that video — it could be exactly what you’re looking for and you won’t need to change the presentation.
I didn’t want to use the monsters theme, so I got with my brainstorming partner and started batting around ideas of card sets that could work together. One of the ideas that trickled to the top was that of a shop that appears out of nowhere, one time in your life, and then vanishes, leaving you with one impossible item.
The items we settled on were:
The Key — opens any lock.
The Watch — lets you stop time for sixty seconds.
The Mirror — shows one event from your future.
The Coin — guarantees a winning coin flip.
The Book — truthfully answers any question.
The Bottle — contains one wish. (But no wishing for more wishes!)
I called up my artist buddy and asked him to give me a set of images I could print onto cards, and a bit later he sent me a file:
Oh yeah, we’re cooking now!
We had a premise and things for making the props, now just needed a routine. Fortunately, I know a guy who’s good at scripting (not as good as me, but great at a first draft) so we took that premise and started coming up with a script.
We ended up with a presentation that takes about 3 minutes, uses one helper, and is a lot of fun.
If you’d like a PDF that includes the script and the images so you can print them out and use them (on card stock is good, or plain paper and glue them to cards from your Card Warp deck), make sure you’re subscribed (free!) to my site…
…and when that has been done, a link will appear here that will let you grab the PDF.
The PDF does NOT include the method, so go watch Spidey’s video to find out how to perform the effect, whether using monster cards or impossible item cards.
The mentalism technique in the above video is useful whether you’re doing mentalism or magic, so I recommend the video to just about everyone. To be honest, if you’ve been around a while, you know it, but the whole reskinning thing may give you some ideas for your own use, so I hope you enjoy it!
The monster theme didn’t fit me, the impossible items may not fit you, but that just gives you a reason to get some brainstorming going for your own use!
* Spidey’s real name is Bedros Akkelian — thanks Bernie A. for the info!
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