Braiiiiiiins and being underestimated.

A favourite magical past-time of mine is reworking classic tricks to suit me. Not the handlings - most classics have enough style to stand on their own method wise, and the ones that don’t certainly have enough variations already in print to piece something together.

It’s the presentation that I always look to change. How can I make this trick fit me, and, just as importantly, topical? This last part is often overlooked I feel.

Peter Kane’s ‘Watch the Ace’ or Wild Card as it became known, is a classic example. I simply LOVE that trick. Changing a bunch of cards into duplicates of a selection, (or printing blank ones) can be hugely effective. A handling I particularly recommend is John Bannon’s ‘Mag-7’ from his Mega-Wave book available here.

Mega Wave by John Bannon

 

There are some great Wild Card routines already out there, but the vast majority are playing card based, and I was looking for something a bit different.

So, an obvious solution was to get double blank cards and a bunch of marker pens, and customise my own sets - it’s quick, opens new presentational angles, and also alternative methods as you can of course draw your own gaffs.

I’ll pause here briefly to explain why I often hand draw the pictures, as many people do ask me why in lectures, or they suggest that I should get the cards printed up, as it would look more professional - which certainly can’t be denied, as my own artistic skills are comparable with those of a wildly untalented badger.

So why do I ignore this advice, and present tricks with badly drawn pictures? Well, there are two reasons.

Firstly, it shows my spectators on some level that the trick is mine. When I perform a card trick, or a packet trick with printed cards (say Colour Monte for example) I have no doubt that a spectator doesn’t even consider the fact that the trick is original with me. The fact that it looks professionally produced speaks for itself. While I appreciate that this looks better, and certainly suits certain characters more, the hand drawn approach for me gets a better reaction, as the trick is clearly something I have made up. It generates a little more interest.

Secondly and most importantly, it lowers expectations. I’m not entirely sure what spectators think when I pull out some blank cards with some drawings on, but I’m confident that they aren’t expecting much from whatever might be forthcoming. Lower expectations means that when the magic hits, it exceeds their expectations, and generates a much better reaction, for me at least. It is much easier to impress someone who has subconsciously underestimated you, and that’s what my whole performance hinges on.

Anyway....

I won’t go into the handling of the now standard Wild Card, but here are some cool themes that you can apply.

Cloning - at the time, Dolly the Sheep was big news - the first animal that had been cloned! A bunch of cards were shown double blank, and laid out in two rows. On the last one, I drew a cartoon sheep, which then proceeded to be cloned onto all the other cards. An unexpected advantage to this approach is that all the cards could be examined at the end, due to the fact that only the faces printed, and all the backs were blank.

Credit Card Security - ‘Card Cloning’. Showing a stack of blank cards drawn up as mastercards, and then changing them all to Visa was another presentation I came up with. I justified the cards by saying that it would be unethical to show it with real credit cards, but this was really just to cover the fact that I hadn’t bothered to get some made up (marketing rights reserved).

Braaiiiiins - Zombies! Zombies are big business at the moment, with movies, TV series and games everywhere, and when I stumbled across this blog that teaches you how to draw cartoon zombies, the idea of applying it to wild card was too perfect to resist!

http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon-blog/2012/10/how-to-draw-a-cartoon-zombie.html

Now, a bunch of cards with stickmen drawn on slowly become zombies, one by one. LOVE it!

What other themes can you think of? Anything relevant or typical to today? Share your ideas with us :)

Laters...

 

Liam Montier for dudethatscoolmagic.co.uk