Magic Tricks

Chris

We nailed it! I can't tell you what a thrill it was to perform your Oscar 2015 Predictions for my family during tonight's award show. As magicians, it is rare that we can give our family members an experience of real mystery. They are too jaded, having seen one too many card trick. Even if they don't know exactly how you did something, they will deduce that there is some trickery at play. Watching my two teenagers’ reactions to me hitting “6 out of 6” perfect predictions was awesome.... They were clearly mystified and felt that they had witnessed the real thing!

I say this not because I relish pulling one over on my teenagers who have seen it all, but performing this effect was a very interesting experience for me and will inevitably influence the way that I think about my own magic. A few things that I take away from this experience are:

- It was a cool feeling of camaraderie to know that as I was unraveling this mystery, my fellow magicians were doing the same. It is unusual for a magic experience to take place simultaneously for multiple audiences around the world, without live feed or simulcast.

- The real time nature of the effect added a jazz element which reminded me so much about what I love about Second City style improv comedy. There is a real performance thrill to being "in the moment" and creating those magic moments when an improv piece really gels... This does not happen every time but when it does, is sheer magic for both the performers and audience.

- Another unusual aspect of this piece is that it took 4 hours to perform...This is a rarity and while I would not suggest that this become a norm, it helped to elevate this from a magic/mentalism trick to an Experience... something that is not only memorable to have witnessed but also something that will hopefully live on the minds of your audience for a long time. And, in the event that this slips into someone's subconscious, the memory and experience will be re-awakened next year and every year thereafter that they turn on the Oscars.

- The unscripted and low key nature of the performance meant that I could just relax and go with the flow of the event. This laid back style is part of what made the method so disarming. Because nothing was seemingly happening other than my spectators opening envelopes, the heat was totally off me, the performer. This makes me think that a laid back, hands-off approach can be a powerful weapon for other magical effects, where it is organic to the performance setting.

Thanks for sharing......The direct, super-clean and diabolical method is nothing short of brilliant! I also appreciated your thinking regarding living with less than 100% certainty and how this allows you to present such a clean and confounding effect. The effort to eliminate the last percentage points of risk of failure, are not worth the price that you have to pay. It had never really thought about this before and I think it is liberating and opens up many more magical possibilities.

I did not see your Penguin Live lecture so I am curious to know how effect went over with fellow magicians...I am guessing that many were fooled.