Doing Your Weird Magic Trick Ideas
The concept of this video was inspired by some robotics videos from Michael Reeves (https://youtube.com/michaelreeves) where he took suggestions from his own comments section and twitter feed and then built those robots.
Doing this with magic was an interesting challenge, because most theoretical magic tricks that an audience member could (or might) suggest just wouldn’t be possible. Their imaginations aren’t constrained by the methods that magicians have at their disposal, and finding the right tools to fit the bill can be difficult, and is usually impossible to do in real time. Of course, in the format of a video, I’ve got a few weeks to peruse the various suggestions and find ones that might be both doable and entertaining.
The first suggestion I delve into — that after dealing myself the four aces, the rest of the deck should turn into aces — is fascinatingly problematic. Revealing a whole deck of aces would undermine the impressiveness of dealing myself the four aces. Shuffle a deck full of aces enough, and eventually you’ll pull out one of each suit. I think the idea at the core of this suggestion is that “five aces” would supposedly be an unbeatable poker hand. In my attempt to do this magic trick without undermining the four aces part, I decided that the rest of the deck could all turn into some other card (like the king of hearts), thereby fulfilling the initial challenge without hamstringing the first effect.
This pattern can often be seen in magic effects where phase 2 fundamentally undermines phase 1. Imagine that I have you think of the name of a relative. Then, for phase 1, using some arcane method, I am able to divine the name of that relative, letter by letter. So far, this is a miracle. Then, for phase 2, I pull out a sealed envelope and reveal that I had predicted the name you would think of. Yet another miracle. But if I already knew the name in advance in my prediction, why did I bother divining it, letter by letter? Phase 2 defeats the purpose of phase 1. It’s much better to simply do two different routines, one of which is a divination, and the other of which is a prediction. You still get both powerful effects, but without the conflict.
The second suggestion — to deal myself the five pieces of Exodia — comes from the wildly popular trading card game of Yu-Gi-Oh. Exodia is a set of five cards where if you draw them all into your hand, you automatically win the game (or “duel,” as it is called). To do magic with Yu-Gi-Oh cards, I had to go through all of my old Yu-Gi-Oh collections. Since I was very into the game from ages 6 to 10, it was a nice trip down memory lane.
Had I not set out to make a video based on suggestions from the comments, I don’t think I ever would have even considered the idea of doing magic with Yu-Gi-Oh cards. While it’s often tempting to think that total “freedom” leads to more creativity, I find that imposing certain limitations and then forcing myself to work within the confines of those constraints ultimately results in more creative (read: strange and weird) ideas.
I often find myself lamenting the fact that magic can’t be more improvisational in nature. Because successful magic tricks often rely on preparation or at least a carefully prepared structure, you (usually) can’t make them up as you go along. Furthermore, there aren’t actually very many magical effects — just lots and lots of variations. In a way, making some of these suggestions work was a tortoise’s approach to improvisational magic: do the tricks suggested by your audience, just with a six month delay.