talkmagic.co.uk

Hello you lovely Magi. Haven't been here in a while, my MSc has got the better of my time.

Anyway, my 11 year old son is taking part in a talent show at school and he has said he'd like to do some card tricks. Of course, this makes for a happy Dad. He's asked me to show him some tricks he can do....basically he wants a routine.

The duration of his performance would be about five minutes. I'd like to see if any of you can suggest anything he could do? They'd have to be self workers, and I plan to go through the Big Blind Media Ultimate Self Workers DVD for some gold but of course, doing more than one self worker might be difficult due to deck set up. It would be good to have a finale, rather than just a collection of tricks, but obviously with only around five minutes, this might be asking a bit much. Any help appreciated!

Could probably do 5 minutes with a svengali deck quite nicely...

If you have a dove pan, a nice self working opener is to pour some red and black rice (coloured by soaking in food colouring) into the pan, which is then "baked" into a deck of cards.

What are the performing conditions? Is it a stage show?

Barry

I like the dove pan idea a lot.

I've got to agree with Barry's request for more information. Unless there's some kind of video camera set up, are the audience members going to be able to see what's going on?

Five minutes is actually a very long time for a card trick. I forget the name of the effect, but it is where a card is chosen, the deck is thrown into a hat. A rope is introduced and one end is lowered into the hat and then pulled up and of course the end of the rope is now tied around the selected card.

A) it is self working except for the force, but a svengali deck can be used, it doesn't matter.
B) while the core of the effect is quick you can dance around it by first introducing the deck, (the dove pan was a great idea) then having somebody come up and select a card, go through some shinanigans getting all the cards mixed up in the hat, then some by play with the rope etc.
C) Can be close up, stage and parlour.
D) Easy to weave a story around.