Matthew Mello - Photographic
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:10 Hey, look at me, look at me, look at me.
00:12 Look at the next card. Look at it, look at it, look at it.
00:14 Got it, got it, got it, yeah. Look at me, look at me.
00:17 Ten.
00:19 [Music]
00:27 You mix them, right? You mix both halves, okay.
00:30 So what you do is I call out a card and then you turn the face up card just on here.
00:35 Let's do it here because these are kind of leaning.
00:37 First one's a jack.
00:40 A ten, yeah.
00:41 A king.
00:43 A three.
00:45 And a nine, yeah, okay.
00:48 We got the king of spades.
00:51 Then an eight.
00:54 Eight of clubs.
00:55 Okay, we got a six, a two, an ace, a nine, an ace, a two.
01:05 We got the four of diamonds.
01:08 And two sixes.
01:12 Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, a three, a three, a three.
01:15 Two tens, two tens, two tens, yeah, okay.
01:18 [Music]
01:21 Eight of spades.
01:23 [Cheering]
01:26 [Music]
01:42 And I want you to kind of mix them up.
01:45 You know, back in the '30s and '40s, around the time of the war and stuff,
01:51 they used to have these guys and girls, actually, who would do --
01:54 they had, like, photographic memories, right?
01:57 And what they'd do is instead of shipping in all this shit and crap and, like, radios and all that,
02:02 they used to get these people to go in the field and then look at the scenes
02:05 and then remember, like, names and phones and address books
02:08 and everything they could see, they'd just remember it.
02:11 So we're going to kind of do the same thing.
02:13 So put both halves down here like this.
02:16 And, Drew, we've mixed both.
02:18 You've mixed mine, I've mixed yours.
02:19 I want you to pick a half.
02:21 Which half?
02:23 Okay, so that's what I'm going to memorize, okay?
02:25 So pick these up.
02:26 And what you're going to do in a minute, I'm going to spread these on the bar right here.
02:30 And when I do, I'm going to look down.
02:32 The very second I look down, I want you to deal all those cards face down in a pile like a timer.
02:38 Do you get what I'm saying?
02:39 It doesn't matter about the faces.
02:40 Yeah, yeah, as quick as you can.
02:41 And in the time it takes you to deal through that half of the deck that you shuffled,
02:45 I'm going to try and memorize this half of the deck that we both shuffled.
02:48 Does that make sense?
02:49 Yeah, yeah, face down.
02:51 Yeah, these are just timer.
02:52 So don't do it yet.
02:53 I'm not going to look.
02:54 I'm not going to look.
02:55 Now, Drew, can you see all the cards more or less?
02:57 Yeah.
02:58 Yeah, so I've got a pretty good shot.
02:59 Yeah, yeah.
03:00 Spread them out a bit.
03:02 Yeah, yeah, spread them out so I can kind of--
03:04 We both shuffled them, so I don't even know if it's going to work.
03:07 Okay, you ready?
03:08 Ready?
03:09 Okay, start now.
03:10 Okay, deal them face down.
03:12 Keep going.
03:13 Fuck, you're fast, man.
03:16 Shit.
03:17 Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
03:19 He's quick.
03:20 Fuck, he is quick.
03:21 Jesus.
03:22 All right, all right, all right.
03:24 I don't know if I've got this, but hold those.
03:26 All right, we don't need these.
03:27 Now, Drew, you mixed them, right?
03:30 You mixed both halves?
03:31 Okay.
03:32 So what you do is I call out a card, and then you turn the face up card just on here.
03:37 Let's do it here because these are kind of leaning, and we'll see how I do.
03:41 We don't need the jokers or anything.
03:43 We'll get to that in a sec.
03:45 Okay, so the first one, I might not get the Sue, but if I memorise even the number, that'd
03:50 be kind of cool, right?
03:52 Okay, first one's a Jack, a 10, yeah, a King, a 3, and a 9.
04:02 Yeah?
04:03 Okay.
04:04 We got the King of Spades, then an 8, 8 of Clubs.
04:11 Yeah.
04:12 Okay.
04:13 Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
04:14 Okay, we got a 6, a 2, an Ace, a 9.
04:19 Fuck, an Ace, a 2.
04:23 We got the 4 of Diamonds, and two 6s.
04:28 I'm going to just pocket those out of the way.
04:31 Okay, don't.
04:33 Jesus.
04:35 Okay, most popular card in the deck.
04:37 If you ask a guy to pick a card, he'll pick the Ace of Spades, Ace of Spades, always.
04:41 Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
04:45 A 3, a 3, a 3, two 10s, two 10s, two 10s, yeah?
04:49 Okay.
04:50 Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
04:52 A King, a 3, and a 9, 9, yeah?
04:57 No, 2, shit, shit.
04:59 Okay, okay, okay, I'm losing it, I'm losing it.
05:01 Okay, do me a favour.
05:02 I'm going to look away, look at the next card, look at it, and then put it back.
05:05 Ready?
05:06 Go, go, go, go, go, go.
05:07 Look at it, look at it, put it back, put it back, yeah?
05:08 Yeah?
05:09 Okay, look at it.
05:10 I'm going to say it out loud, but say it over and over in your mind.
05:11 Look at me, look at me.
05:13 A 4.
05:14 Okay, put it down, a 4, yeah?
05:15 Okay, look at me, look at me, look at me.
05:17 Look at the next card, look at it, look at it, look at it.
05:19 Got it, got it, got it, yeah?
05:20 Look at me, look at me.
05:22 10.
05:24 Oh, shit.
05:29 Okay, a few more cards.
05:30 An Ace and an 8.
05:33 A 2.
05:35 You've got one card left, yeah?
05:37 Okay, if I get this right, just scream because it's tough coming on the street.
05:42 Okay, you ready, ready, ready?
05:44 This guy was the toughest guy.
05:46 Oh, shit, shit, shit.
05:48 Last card, last card, last card.
05:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah, go crazy if it's right.
05:54 Look at me, look at me.
05:55 Answer truthfully.
05:56 Is it a red card?
05:58 Yeah, look at it.
05:59 Okay, look at me.
06:00 Is it a red card?
06:01 No?
06:02 What's your favourite food?
06:03 Quick, quick, quick.
06:05 Pizza.
06:06 What?
06:07 Peanut butter.
06:08 Okay, what's your favourite movie?
06:09 Quick.
06:10 Full Fiction, I don't know.
06:11 Eight of Spades.
06:12 Oh.
06:13 Ah.
06:14 Woo!
06:15 Hey, so this is kind of my version of Matt Mello's photographic from Modern Mentalism.
06:27 I want to say my version, I use that loosely because it's actually exactly the same version.
06:32 I fell in love with this as soon as I saw it on Modern Mentalism because it's, you know,
06:37 I recognised it right away.
06:39 It's been a great routine.
06:40 I mean, in many ways, yeah, it is a stacked deck, but there's nothing to remember.
06:45 I don't have to remember anything, so therefore it's a real work routine.
06:48 And you've seen the performance, you've seen the reactions it gets, so how does it work?
06:53 Well, here's how it works.
06:54 There's actually no set up.
06:55 You are going to need a full deck of cards and you are going to need the Joker from a
06:59 deck of cards.
07:02 So basically, the bottom 30 cards here from the face down, I'd say about 30, I'm not sure
07:08 exactly, but I think it's about 30.
07:10 These cards, up until the Joker, are my stack and they are stacked in an order.
07:16 We'll get to the order in a second.
07:19 This half isn't stacked and this can be mixed.
07:22 This Joker, here's the cool thing about Matt Mello's approach to this stacked deck, is
07:27 that this Joker is the crib for the stack.
07:31 So that's why there's nothing for me to remember.
07:33 I could do this tomorrow or I could do it eight months from now and I would still know
07:38 the order of this stack because the crib, because it's all on there.
07:43 But there's nothing changed about this.
07:44 This is the Joker, the guaranteed card Joker that you get with a deck of bicycle cards.
07:50 So that's pretty cool, if you ask me.
07:52 So how does it work?
07:53 What's the crib?
07:54 This is how the crib works.
07:56 So what we're looking at here is the Joker, the guaranteed Joker from a deck of bicycle
08:00 cards.
08:01 First, I'm going to go through the crib and then I'll go through it again so you can see.
08:05 So basically, we'll look at the word Joker.
08:07 So J stands for Jack.
08:10 Now, we're not particularly remembering suits here because it's not important that we remember
08:15 the suit of every card.
08:16 You certainly could if you wanted to, if you put in the practice.
08:19 But you know what, I don't think it's necessary.
08:21 All that's necessary is you remember the suit of certain cards.
08:25 So I'll explain as I go along.
08:27 So J is going to be Jack.
08:29 O is 10, because it's like the zero in a 10.
08:33 K is King.
08:35 E is the number 3, because it looks like a 3 but reversed.
08:40 And R is 9.
08:43 This is the way that Matt Mellor describes it.
08:47 It just is.
08:48 I think, you know, the cool thing about this is once you remember that R is 9, you will
08:52 always remember that R is 9.
08:54 So Jack, 10, King, 3, 9.
08:59 Then we come down to the King on the bicycle here.
09:03 That's going to be the next card in that stack.
09:05 It's going to be a King.
09:06 And on his sleeve, he has spades.
09:08 So it's the King of spades.
09:10 So we'll go Jack, 10, King, 3, 9, King of spades.
09:16 Then down here next to the King of spades, next to the back wheel, there's a little block
09:20 and it says 8, 0, 8.
09:23 So I actually go 2 8's.
09:25 I just forget the zero in the middle.
09:27 Although, if you wanted to, you could put in another 10 at this point, because the O
09:30 is a 10.
09:31 So you could go 8, 10, 8.
09:33 But I just go 8, 8.
09:35 Then we move down to the word guarantee.
09:39 Now the G is always going to be a 6, because it kind of looks like a 6.
09:45 The form of the letter looks like a 6.
09:48 E's are also 6, because they look like an upside down 6.
09:53 The form of the letter is like a 6.
09:56 So G is a 6.
09:58 U is 2, the number 2.
10:01 And N's are also the number 2, because it's an upside down U.
10:04 And U rhymes with 2.
10:07 So we go 6, 2.
10:10 A is an ace.
10:11 R is always 9.
10:13 A is an ace.
10:14 N is 2.
10:15 T is the number 4, because the shape of a T kind of looks like a number 4, with the
10:25 line going across.
10:26 And then we've got 6 and 6.
10:28 So if we run over the first cards again, we've got Jack, 10, King, 3, 9.
10:33 King of spades on the bicycle.
10:35 8, 8.
10:36 6, 2, ace, 9.
10:39 Ace, 2, 4, 6, 6.
10:42 Now in those first few cards, I always remember the King of spades, and I always remember
10:47 that the T is the 4 of diamonds.
10:50 That's just the way I do it.
10:51 Now you could also, another little tip here, is that you could go in chase order.
10:56 Clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds.
10:57 So if you were to have the Jack of clubs here, you could then go the 10 of hearts.
11:02 This you wouldn't do the King of spades, because the King of spades is on the bike.
11:06 But you could also play around with that too, if you wanted to remember the suits of the
11:10 cards as you go along.
11:12 So we're at Jack, 10, King, 3, 9.
11:14 King of spades.
11:15 8, 8.
11:16 We've got 6, 2, ace, 9.
11:18 Ace, 2, 4 of diamonds, 6 and 6.
11:21 Now the next card we want to remember is in this paragraph here.
11:25 At the bottom it says Ace of spades.
11:27 So we remember the Ace of spades.
11:30 Now you could certainly pick up on some of the letters in this paragraph too.
11:33 There are U's in there.
11:35 There are R's in there.
11:36 You could probably memorize a whole deck doing it this way, or crib a whole deck.
11:41 But I'm just going to show you the 30 cards that I use.
11:44 So we get to the Ace of spades.
11:46 Once we've done the Ace of spades, I skip down to this third line here where it says
11:53 300 Gatway.
11:55 So 300 would be 3, 10, 10.
11:58 Because remember the zeros are tens, and the 3 is either an E that's backwards, or it is
12:04 just a 3.
12:05 But we can use the number 3 as a number 3.
12:08 So I say 3, 10, 10.
12:10 Then I skip to the next line.
12:12 Now here it says Kentucky.
12:13 Now I personally take the first three letters of Kentucky.
12:16 So King is the K.
12:19 E is a 3, remember.
12:21 It looks like a backwards 3, or it rhymes with 3.
12:24 And then N is an upside down U, which rhymes with 2.
12:28 So that's 2.
12:29 So we've got King, 3, 2.
12:32 And then for the last numbers in my stack, after Kentucky we've got a 4, which is the
12:38 number 4.
12:39 Then we've got 10.
12:40 1, 0 is 10.
12:41 Then we've got a 1, which I remember as an Ace, because Ace is 1.
12:45 And then we've got an 8, which is an 8.
12:48 And then finally I skip over here, and I first use the upside down U, which is a 2.
12:55 And then finally the S there looks like the figure 8, if I were to add the extra line
13:01 and carry that motion on.
13:02 So we've got U, 8.
13:04 And I always remember that the last 8 is the 8 of Spades.
13:07 So, quickly reading from the top.
13:10 Jack, 10, King, 3, 9.
13:13 King of Spades on the bike, 8, 8.
13:16 6, 2, Ace, 9, Ace.
13:18 2, 4, a Diamond, 6, 6.
13:21 The Ace of Spades, 3, 0, 0.
13:24 So 3, 10, 10.
13:26 K-E-N in Kentucky is King, 3, 2.
13:30 And then we've got a 4, 10, Ace, 8.
13:35 Then we've got the 2, and then 8 of Spades to finish.
13:38 So King of Spades, Ace of Spades, and the 8 of Spades, and the 4 of Diamonds right here in the T
13:44 are the ones that I remember.
13:46 So that's the crib.
13:47 Now, you can play with this crib as much as you like.
13:50 Alright, so that's how the crib works on the Joker, basically.
13:54 So what you want to do is, once you've got the crib, you're going to set the deck up in the crib order.
13:59 So remember again, we're going to go Jack, 10, King, 3, 9.
14:05 Then we've got the King of Spades, we've got 2, 8.
14:08 We've got the 6, the 2, the Ace, the 9, the Ace, the 2, the 4 of Diamonds, and the 2, 6s.
14:16 Then we've got the Ace of Spades, then we've got the 3, and the 10, and the 10.
14:20 We've got the King, the 3, and the 2.
14:24 Then we've got the 4, the 10, the Ace, the 8.
14:28 Then finally we've got the 2, and the 8 of Spades.
14:31 So that's our stack that matches the crib.
14:34 So what you want to do is, you've got this stack of about 30 cards.
14:38 The rest of the deck is mixed.
14:41 The Joker goes on top, and then your stack goes on top of this.
14:45 Alright?
14:46 So, watch the performance to get the pattern all about.
14:51 I talk about the 30s and 40s, and the war, and people going into the field with photographic memories.
14:56 You can use whatever pattern suits you.
14:59 There is one more thing going on here.
15:02 There's a switch.
15:03 We're going to put the history of the switch at the bottom of the screen there.
15:06 But basically, the switch is a great convincer.
15:09 And this is something that I've added to the original Nat Mellow routine.
15:13 Because it gives the audience member the impression that they shuffled the whole deck.
15:18 So how this works, you remove the cards, and you go through, apparently showing the mixed deck of cards.
15:25 And then you get to the Joker, at which point you lay the Joker down, and that's where you break the deck.
15:32 And you hand this half to the spectator.
15:34 Now remember, this is the half that can be mixed, because it's not in any order.
15:38 This is the half that's in a stack, that has to stay in a stack.
15:42 So, as the spectator mixes this half, I thumb off one, two, three cards and drop on top, face up.
15:53 I then hold the cards face down between my first and second fingers like this.
15:59 And I ask the spectator to give me their, I extend my left hand and say, "Give me your half."
16:05 I'm not even saying that, I just say, "Extend my hand and give me their half."
16:09 I bring this packet back, and what's going to happen is this.
16:13 This packet is going to go between the thumb and the first finger.
16:17 And the first and second fingers of the left hand are going to grip this packet.
16:24 And the thumb and first fingers of the right hand are going to grip this packet and go this way.
16:30 So essentially, I give them back the pack they just gave me.
16:35 But it looks like I'm giving them this pack.
16:39 So, if done in a speed and a smooth action, it looks like I'm just coming to here and giving them the opposite pack.
16:47 It's really, really deceptive.
16:49 You just can't follow it.
16:51 As a matter of fact, when I'm doing it for myself, it's really difficult to follow.
16:55 So, they shuffle this half, I come back, give them the same half back and say, "Now shuffle my half."
17:02 Now, as they shuffle my half, I take those three cards, I move from the bottom to the back,
17:07 and I just reverse count three and put them on the bottom.
17:11 So, this puts this back in exactly the same order.
17:15 So, let's go over that one more time because this is really important.
17:19 Now, I give them this half, they mix them, I peel off one, two, three cards, drop on top.
17:26 Again, they're shuffling their half so there's not much attention here.
17:29 And then place it between the first and second fingers of the right hand.
17:33 I extend my left hand for them to pass me their packet.
17:37 I come back, I'm gripping between the thumb and first finger of the left hand.
17:41 And I come back, I grip this packet between the first and second fingers of the left hand.
17:46 And I grip this packet with the first finger and thumb of the right hand.
17:51 As I apparently say, "Shuffle my half."
17:54 So, they get the same half back and then I reverse those three that I put on the back.
17:59 So, now this is in the same order.
18:01 Okay?
18:02 So, now it feels to the spectator that both halves have been shuffled.
18:07 I place them on the table and I say, "Choose a half."
18:10 Now, this... we have to memorize this half because this is the stack.
18:14 But by saying, "Choose a half," this is kind of an ambiguous statement.
18:18 I'm not saying why.
18:19 So, if they choose this half, the shuffled half, I say, "Go ahead, take it."
18:23 If they choose this half, I say, "Fine, this is the half we're going to memorize."
18:28 So, either way, we're going to memorize this half.
18:31 Okay?
18:32 So, and that's it.
18:33 The rest is theater.
18:35 So, choose a half.
18:37 This one, okay, this is the half we're going to memorize.
18:39 Now, you can go back to the performance.
18:41 They use this as a timer and by dealing these cards face down,
18:45 and the amount of time it takes them to do that, I apparently memorize this stack.
18:49 And in reality, I'm not memorizing the stack.
18:52 I'm just using the crib that we already learned on the Joker.
18:55 And so, that's it.
18:57 That's Matt Mello's photographic from Modern Mentalism,
19:03 and with a few touches and the switch from Mark Spelman and Peter Nardi,
19:08 and we'll give you the exact history behind that.
19:11 And that's it.
19:12 The great thing about this is once you've done the routine, this is already back in the stack.
19:17 So, all I've got to do is pick up the shuffled half, put the Joker on, put the stack on top,
19:22 and put these back in the box, and it's reset.
19:24 And you know, because of that crib, I can leave that and do this six months later,
19:30 and I can remember the stack.
19:32 So, there's nothing for me to remember.
19:34 So, I personally love this, and I think from a working perspective, it's incredible.
19:40 It's a real worker.
19:41 And from an effect on the audience, it's incredible.
19:45 Like, it's second to none.
19:46 Like, you can see from the performance on the video that the effect on the audience is really, really cool.
19:51 So, that's photographic.
19:53 Enjoy it and have some fun.
19:55 [Music]