A Tale of 2 Methods

I clicked on “Buy Now” with a feeling of satisfaction.

“There,” I thought. “One less thing to worry about.”

After a few days of fiddling with a new prop, I finally threw in the towel.

The prop was too finicky, and the method was overly complicated. It just didn’t need to be so complex.

WARNING: I’m going to talk about methods in this issue. I won’t reveal the product names, only methods.

True, you may be able to figure out what products I’m talking about just by my description. But for the point I’m going to be making, I gotta talk method.

And maybe that’s a bigger problem with our industry. We get so hung up on method to the detriment of what we are trying to achieve in performance.

But I digress.

Here’s the exercise for today…I’m going to talk about two methods for achieving essentially the same effect.

Play along and ask yourself which you’d be comfortable using.

My goal is to force a piece of information on a volunteer.

Earlier in the show, around a dozen volunteers are asked to write words on slips of paper and fold them up.

For context, the words they write are ‘character’ words, or words to live by. Things like honesty, integrity, respect, etc.

The audience is provided with a long list of words on a colorful banner to choose from.

“Or,” I tell them, “You can even write down a word you think of that’s not on the banner.”

Since my hypothetical audience is middle schoolers, 12- and 13-year-olds, I provide the banner of words to ‘jumpstart’ their thinking.

The words written are gathered into a container. A spectator is invited onstage. They select one of the clearly visible slips of folded paper.

She’s going to mentally send it to another student. The second student, seated across the stage, picks up the thought. Both students write down the words they are thinking of on large pads of paper.

When both pads of paper are turned around, they match.

Ta-da!

To get the second student to ‘pick up’ the first student’s thought-of word, I’m using Inception from ProMystic. ‘Nuff said.

To make things easier on me, I only want one possible word for Inception. No scrolling through multiple words or anything like that.

But I want the illusion of limitless choices.

That means I gotta switch the written billets for my force billets which all have the same word on them.

Method 1: The students toss their written billets into a small see-through container. When the second student comes up, I shake the container, causing written billets to fall out of the container to the floor.

I keep shaking until there is only one billet left. The student reads the billet, and that’s what she concentrates on to send to the second student.

This method involves using a small holdout with the force billet hidden in your hand, attached to a length of thread.

The other end of the black thread is attached to the container. The legitimate billets are placed into the container.

When you start shaking, you have to shake in such a way that the force billet is pulled from the holdout palmed in your hand. During the shaking, it flies into the container under cover of the shaking.

After working with this for a few days, I tossed it aside.

Making all of this look deceptive and natural is hard as heck. It involves a lot of coordination. Plus the thread snapped on me quite quickly.

I admit I bought this because the video looked good. It looked very fair and deceptive. That’s what we want, right? We want a force to look fair yet deceptive.

But there are so many moving parts to this that it’s something I know I’ll never use in live shows.

Too much can go wrong.

Method 2: The written billets are tossed by the students into a clear container. The container is set on a table. The second student is asked to reach into the container and select one billet.

The work is done.

The force billets are hidden underneath the floor of the container. In the act of bringing the container to the table, the unit is flipped upside down, hiding the legitimate billets and bringing the force billets into view.

And the added benefit? The spectator herself gets to choose from among many billets.

Easy, fast, bulletproof.

In truth, I already had a Method 2 in my possession when I was looking for a new way to force a billet.

It’s perfect in every way.

But my Method 2 prop was already a part of another show. I didn’t want to have to go into a second trunk to get another prop.

One of my goals this year is to make my performing packing easier.

If I’m going to perform Show A, I want all the props for Show A to be in one trunk. That makes packing and preparing much easier.

In the past, I’d use a given prop for Show A, Show F, and Show G. (I have a lot of shows.) Then I’d use another given prop in Show F, Show Q, and Show H.

To pack a given show, I’d have to dig through several trunks, eating up more time and frustration, because of course the prop I wanted would be at the bottom of the trunk.

Now I’m buying duplicates as necessary so when I need Show A (for example) everything I need is in Show A’s trunk.

So when I needed to force a billet for a new show, I naturally didn’t want to use Method 2. It was already in a different trunk.

After fiddling with Method 1, I said, “Screw it,” and just bought a duplicate of Method 2.

Today’s overall message?

Don’t get hung up on fancy James Bond-esque ways of doing something in magic. If there are multiple methods to accomplish something, go with the easiest.

Other than manipulation acts, our methods are supposed to be invisible. So it doesn’t matter if something is easy. The audience only wants to be entertained.

They won’t know or care about how you accomplished your feats.

Plus, the easy stuff is a lot less stressful.

Speaking of easy VS overly complicated, be sure to check out my effect Serendipity. It’s my solution to Brian Brushwood’s Simpatico.

I invite you to check out Simpatico. It sounds awesome, right? But the method is unreliable. The electronics and other materials provided are garbage. You literally cannot perform the effect with what is provided. I found out the hard way.

Plus you turn a spectator into an instant stooge.

Serendipity duplicates the exact same effect…and the spectator is never in on it. And you can put the whole routine together with a quick trip to your local staples.

Oh, and Serendipity is even more deceptive. My friend Cody Fisher contributed some amazing ideas to the routine.

Check out Serendipity for a great, low-tech, easy-as-dirt way to do the same effect as Simpatico.

Have a great week!

--Cris

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