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This is an idea I have been kicking around in the green room at the local theme park I’m working at. It gets a very good reaction as well. It make sense the natural progression of the magi is to use technology to their advantage. This effect uses your cell phone and doesn’t require you to buy or make anything. It’s damn near impromptu.
Effect: A card is selected at “Randomâ€. While the card is shuffled back into the deck, you get a message on your cell phone. It turns out to be a photo message. When shown to your helper, it’s a photo of their selected card resting on someone’s palm. The magician then pulls a miniature card from the phone and the photo is now of just an empty hand.
Preparation H: Get a miniature card from a small bicycle deck. Take a photo of the card lying on your hand face up. (Fig. 1) Then, as best you can, remove the card and take a photo of your empty hand.
(Fig. 2) Place the mini-card in between the flaps of your flip phone. (Assuming you are using one. Most of them are nowadays) Otherwise just have it somewhere handy and easy to retrieve.
Dance monkey, Dance: Force a card from a regular deck. (That matches the duplicate mini-card) Have them return the card and shuffle it. As you take back the deck say, “Hold on I’m getting a messageâ€. Take your phone out of your pocket and let the mini-card slide down into your hand. (Fig. 3) Open your phone, navigate to your photos quickly and say, “It’s a photo message. I think it’s for you†Show them the photo of their card leaving the mini-card palmed in your hand. (It’s VERY easy to palm a miniature card)
Place the phone back down onto your hand on TOP of the mini-card positioning it behind the top most part of the phone Tilt the phone down towards your helper so they can see the screen. Place your thumb on the display, obscuring it a bit while your other thumb gets ready to scroll to the next photo (The one of your empty hand). Now pull the mini-card from behind the phone quickly, as if you pulled it from the screen. As you do this, change the photo to the one of your empty palm. Show them the card and life goes on.
In other News: You can also take a photo of the card face DOWN on your palm so the production from the screen is more of a mystery until you reveal the card. Your patter would change to something along the lines of, “That’s weird. Does this make sense to you?†(Showing them the photo)
The best phones for this are the wide models such as the Razr. If you happen to have a smaller one like the kind I own, your removal method will have to be altered a tad. Find what works best for you.
Another idea is to take a photo of the deck while you hold it then discard it and navigate to your saved photo of the card face down. Remove the card and say something like, “Criss Angel has a TV show, I work at a theme park†and life continues on.
Bizzaro can be contacted at his website
www.smappdooda.com
I’ve tried something similar, although I didn’t even think of producing a card from the screen.
One little tip who perform this, I’ve added a phonebook entry that’s my own phone number and titled it ‘The Magician’. That way, when I text predictions to myself (pictures, serial numbers, etc…) they always show up as “You have a message from The Magician.”
Great idea! If you have enough memory, you could have several card photos so if you happen to do it again and someone you performed it for earlier happens to be watching, they will see that a totally different card comes out of the phone.
I am gonna try to get some footage of it and submit it to itricks. I perform it a bit differently than in the write up right now. The photo on the phone is with the back facing, pull the card off, turn it over to reveal it, then put it back on face up into the photo (Three images used obviously) The nice thing about showing it face down initially is you can repeat it with different cards. (If you don’t use the final photo)
So far this has been a reputation maker at the local Six Flags. Who’d a thunk it?
Bizzaro.
I like this one. I am definately going to be using it.
Thanks Bizzaro.
PS - I enjoy your column in Street Magic Magazine
Hey! Thats pretty cool. I came with this: nowadays most cellphones which take pictures also makes videos. So, I did a short video with the card face dawn, then revealing it and then drop the card in the video (I cover the display in this part) at the same time I take the mini card from the phone!