<-|Top|Showmanship For Magicians|Trick Brain|Magic By Misdirection|Mail|->
<-|!*!|C|I|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|32|33|34|35|->
The
TRICK
BRAIN
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It has occurred to me that the so-called sleight-of-hand performer may think his branch of magic has been neglected in this work which fairly reeks with mechanical magic terms. So this chapter is being prepared to translate those obnoxious mechanical terms into language more in keeping with performers who place more stress upon the use of the hands.
Of course, these mechanical terms do apply, no matter how much pride the performer may take in using his hands instead of mechanical devices, because the hand is a marvelous mechanical device too.
Let's look over some of the expedients we have been discussing, just to see how they do apply to this situation.
Repeatedly we have used the term "secret hiding place." This, obviously, means the sleeves. It means a holder that might contain a billiard ball. Or it may mean the body servante that receives one. It means the pocket in a double handkerchief. Or it may even mean a naturally held hand that conceals something secretly. It may be the coat lapel, behind which rests the liqueur glass or the roll of bank notes. It also means the back of the hand when something is concealed there. Or it may mean the area under the arm when a stem glass or a fish bowl is held there in readiness for production. It may mean the trousers or coat pocket when they serve as places of concealment of something just vanished or about to be produced.
In fact, it means just what it says—a secret hiding place. No matter whether the hiding place is formed of tin, or of cardboard, or of the flesh of the hand, or of the lining of the pocket, or of wire. The essential is that something be concealed secretly.
And it is in this way that you must consider and analyze all of the expedients and stratagems discussed in this book. Everything—effect, trick, method—must be critically dissected to find out just what it is made up of. If you hear of an effect you'd like to do, and need a method. Use your reasoning powers to break it down.
Perhaps it is the transformation of a bouquet of flowers to a large silk square. We've stressed before that a transformation is a combination of a vanish of the original object and the subsequent production of its second identity. No matter how quickly the transformation may be made, it is still the vanish of one thing and the production of another.
Take the familiar old transformation of a card to a matchbox. First the card is folded up and concealed behind the matchbox. This is the vanish. But just as soon as the card is folded up—and concealed—the matchbox is turned over. Then the production is made. So the card is a collapsible object which is concealed in a secret hiding place. And the matchbox is an object that comes from a secret hiding place.
But to get back to that bouquet of flowers transformation: The trick as outlined—a change from a bouquet to a silk square—is obviously a transformation. It is first the vanish of the bouquet. Afterwards it is the production of a silk.
In considering the vanish, we realize, of course, that we have a collapsible—really compressible—object. Most vanishes require the use of a secret hiding place. Perhaps because so many feather bouquets come from the sleeve during production we think of the sleeve as a hiding place during the vanish.
A bouquet is pretty large and colorful to divert attention away from it successfully. So we can't use the first basic method. But in checking down the list of basic methods in THE TRICK BRAIN section, we come upon Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7. These are, respectively, the taking of the object to the secret hiding place by means of an invisible cord or thread, the elastic pull, the spring reel or a guided movement through gravity or centrifugal force. The cord, the elastic pull or the spring reel seem most practical in this case. But the elastic pull is discarded because the strength of the elastic required to corn-press the feathers and pull the bouquet out of sight would be too great. The spring reel is practical, but difficult to acquire. So we decide to use the cord vanish, just as it is used with the disappearing birdcage.
We may want to add some refinement in attaching the pull to the bouquet, if the bouquet is to be taken from a vase. This is a matter for the performer to determine.
So we have the vanish taken care of.
Now, because so many productions are made from secret hiding places, we immediately begin casting about for a good place to hide the silk. Again, we realize that this is the reverse of collapsible. It is expandable. Therefore, it may be hidden in a small hiding place. The bouquet is bulky. There is plenty of room for hiding places. Suppose we decide to hide the silk in the bouquet. We could, of course, use the other sleeve, or a secret pocket. Or, if we wanted to, even a piece of apparatus apparently there for some other purpose. But the bouquet will do because it has the added advantage of being self-contained, and it eliminates the necessity of body loads or extra pieces.
Just as taking the object from a secret hiding place may make a production, we realize also that a production may be made by taking the hiding place away from the object. Well, now, during the vanish our secret hiding place is being taken away. It's made to order. So the silk goes into the bouquet.
Now we have the transformation of a bouquet into a silk. The bouquet is to vanish by means of a cord pull. It is to go up the sleeve. And as it is vanishing, the silk is pulled from a secret hiding place within the bouquet, pulled away with the left hand, the opposite corner being held meanwhile by the right, while the bouquet is also being pulled away from the silk. This is not an original trick plot. And probably the method has been utilized again and again.
The purpose of this extended discussion is to stress the analysis I have been urging. It shows step-by-step just how to break up these effects into their basic parts. You know THE TRICK BRAIN can't do all of your thinking for you. Some of it must be done by yourself. In securing THE TRICK BRAIN it is assumed that you have an interest in its subject. If you have an interest, certainly you will do some thinking in connection with it. You will get just as much out of this as you put into it—trite as the expression is, and not one iota more.
But to get back to our translation of the mechanical terms to the language of the sleight-of-hand performer:
A form simulates the presence of an object. This need not be a mechanical form. Certainly, in the production of a bowl of goldfish the bent arm that imitates the outline of the bowl is as much a form as is one made of wire.
For many years a small piece of silk, used with a finger tip, has been a detachable portion signifying the continued presence of a silk which has been long since spirited away. And it hasn't always been used with the tip. Slyter does a sleight-of-hand vanish of a burning candle after surreptitiously eliminating all but a small portion at the top.
Of course, it isn't necessary to explain the applications of the various forms of pulls. All sleight-of-hand performers have used elastic pulls, the spring reel and various form of the arm pull. And thread is an essential.
One may translate "subject taken from a fixed secret compartment built into the place of production" as "subject taken from a place of concealment in the hand." And there have been many devices designed for sleight-of-hand performers which are "rotating, tipping, hanging or other movable containers." These include coin and card spiders, handkerchief balls hanging behind the hands from catgut loops, Kellar's handkerchief production device with the little ball-tipped "handle," called Nikko, and many other boxes, tubes and similar accessories, including handkerchief balls.
In The Multiplying Billiard Balls we have been taking the "subject from a shell object" these many years. And the two hands are two "compartments," either of which may become secret.
The hands have been used for years as accessories behind, beneath and within which subjects have been concealed. They palm off cards. They carry billiard balls to the shell secretly. They conceal and move the balls about in The Cups and Balls. They steal and carry away the body of the doll in Bonus Genus.
All card performers can testify to the usefulness of a single card which conceals a number of other cards, its back acting as a secret compartment, in false counts, double and triple lifts and sleights and stratagems of like usefulness. The space between two known cards has acted as a secret compartment, concealing other cards, for years. A single card, too, has acted as an accessory behind and beneath which other cards have been secretly conveyed from place to place.
A secret compartment near and accessible to a place of production is the area beneath the armpit from which the hand takes the fish bowl when apparently just reaching beneath the foulard.
The principle of the covering that blends with the background is utilized in certain types of coin stands. It is demonstrated in the handkerchief production casket that has a photograph of the palm of the hand concealing a silk. One of Grant's rope tricks uses it to simulate a cut rope. And all magicians are familiar with the many flesh-colored fakes such as thumb tips, false palms, false fingers and similar devices. All magicians are familiar, as well, with card frames, slate flaps and other like applications.
Certainly sleight-of-hand and small magic performers have more than hearsay acquaintance with secret passageways. They have used them to place coins within nested boxes and balls of wool. They have used them with rattle boxes. Even loaves of bread, lemons and cigarettes have received the desired "loads" through them. And they have been absolutely essential in tricks like the thumb tie, the wrist tie, handcuff escapes, and in such tricks as the removal of washers from cords.
Isn't an envelope, containing a card, which is top changed with another similar one from a stack, one outstanding example of a secret exchange of containers?
Silks, folded and tucked to resemble a rose, are disguised as something else. Silks, too, are compressible or expandable objects that may be taken from or concealed within many types of secret hiding places.
So it may be seen that these mechanical terms need not be frightening to the sleight-of-hand magician or to the performer who specializes in cards. All either of these needs to do is to interpret the generalized term in language suited to his particular specialty.
Certainly the card man is familiar with secret compartments. There are many types of envelope cards. And even an ostensibly empty card box that contains several additional cards surreptitiously is a secret compartment. I've illustrated the use of cards as accessories behind which other cards may be conveyed. There are many applications of the secret passageway in card magic, even the opening in the back of the tumbler through which a finger pushes up the rear card in one version of the rising cards.
Just think of these principles in terms of your own specialty.
<-|!*!|C|I|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|32|33|34|35|->
<-|Top|Showmanship For Magicians|Trick Brain|Magic By Misdirection|Mail|->