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00:00 (music)
00:07 Hellophane is a visually startling restoration of burnt cellophane.
00:11 It can be done with a deck of cards, a pack of cigarettes, a DVD, or any other object that contains plastic or cellophane.
00:18 (music)
00:31 What's great about hellophane is that it's real world magic.
00:34 You can take borrowed objects from a spectator, you can then alter those objects before healing them entirely and returning them back to their spectator.
00:40 Completely unique.
00:42 What you're seeing is exactly what hellophane looks like.
00:46 It looks like a camera trick in real life.
00:49 This is hellophane.
00:51 (music)
00:56 Hi, I'm Brent Braun and welcome to hellophane.
00:59 Hellophane is one of those effects that's so visually startling.
01:02 It's one of those things that I'll constantly carry with me.
01:05 The gimmick is very small and easy to manipulate.
01:07 You can keep 10 or 12 of them in your wallet at any one point in time.
01:10 Anytime you have the opportunity, you're really able to just fry your audience in a very incredible and visual way.
01:15 This is actually a creation of a gentleman named Dan Huffman.
01:18 Dan's been creating magic for almost 20 years and has a couple of Linking Ring parades that if you haven't checked them out, you should probably look into them.
01:24 He has a lot of creative ideas and this is one of those things that when I first saw it, just entirely blew me away.
01:29 So, let's take a look at what hellophane actually looks like.
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02:06 So, we're going to talk a little bit about the construction of the hellophane gimmick.
02:09 The great thing about the hellophane gimmick is that it's simple, easy to make.
02:12 You can make up 10 or 15 of them in just a matter of minutes.
02:15 Then you carry those around with you and you're always set up and ready to perform this effect and fool the hell out of people.
02:19 The neat thing about it is it's just a small, tiny gimmick.
02:23 We'll actually look at one of those gimmicks now.
02:26 This is what we're going to produce.
02:29 This is just a piece of cellophane that's had a hole burnt into it with either a match or a lighter
02:35 and then cut into a square right now.
02:37 We're going to manufacture that down to a smaller donut-sized hole in just a moment.
02:40 I just wanted to give you an idea of what that looks like before we cut it all the way down.
02:43 So, we manufacture these using a cigarette or a match and a piece of cellophane.
02:48 So, essentially we have a card box or a cigarette pack.
02:51 We just slide this off and all we're going to do is heat up a cigarette or a match and burn holes in this.
02:56 We're actually going to burn several holes.
02:58 You can get about 30 gimmicks out of one piece of cellophane.
03:01 So, as we burn those holes, what we end up with is this cellophane gimmick that has all these holes burnt inside of it.
03:08 Now we're going to talk about how you actually burn the holes.
03:10 Obviously, if you're a smoker and you have cigarettes, it's very simple.
03:13 All you have to do is take the cigarette, extend the cellophane off of the box.
03:16 You're just going to take the cigarette and start poking holes in.
03:18 The construction of the gimmick is pretty simple that way.
03:20 If not, you're going to use a match.
03:22 We're going to show you how to get into that in just a moment.
03:24 All you have to do is burn those holes in the cellophane.
03:27 That will look something like this.
03:43 We'll go ahead and make another one of those holes so you can see exactly what we're doing here.
03:47 So you let the match burn.
03:50 You get pretty hot.
03:52 You extinguish the match and then you touch it to the cellophane.
03:55 So we'll just continue to do this, making holes into the cellophane.
03:59 As I said, you can get about four rows of four so that you're going to end up with 16 per side in the cellophane.
04:04 We're then going to cut that down into a square, which gives us this gimmick that we're looking at here.
04:10 Now what we do is cut these individual gimmicks down into small donut-sized pieces.
04:14 The easiest way to do that is going to be to cut them into squares.
04:17 So that again, we end up with the square piece that we saw earlier.
04:20 Now we're just going to trim around the perimeter of that square piece so that all we end up with is a melted plastic donut.
04:26 We're going to trim up one of these cellophane gimmicks.
04:28 I'll show you what this looks like over white paper so you guys can follow along with us.
04:31 So all we're going to do is cut the cellophane gimmick.
04:34 You just start by trimming it along the edges.
04:37 What you really want to do is get as close as you can to that donut and that black edge without actually cutting it in half.
04:45 So we just give a couple small cuts, getting closer and closer to the edge.
04:49 The important thing is to remember you can leave extra and then come back and trim that extra off, but you can never add any back ends.
04:54 You just want to trim this slowly around the edges.
04:57 So this gimmick is almost finished.
05:11 Got a couple more small edges that I'd like to get off of it.
05:14 And then we set that down and that's what that looks like.
05:18 That is a cellophane gimmick.
05:20 So that's all you have to do to construct a cellophane gimmick.
05:23 Now once you make these, you're making them in sheets of 16 at a time.
05:26 As I said, it will take five or six minutes to make up a whole sheet of these.
05:29 You can actually double side it on the card box or the cigarette box.
05:33 That's going to give you about 32 gimmicks.
05:34 So in about 10 minutes you can create enough of these for 32 performances and sometimes more.
05:38 Because every once in a while when you perform the trick, you're actually recycling the gimmick and you're able to use it for the next performance.
05:43 So this will give you quite a supply and you'll be ready to perform.
05:47 One of the most interesting things about the cellophane gimmick is that it can be used on any plastic object.
05:51 You can use it on the playing card box, which we discussed.
05:53 You can use it on cigarette boxes, which I think is great because you can borrow someone else's cigarette box and openly load the gimmick onto it and then make their cigarette box restore, which is a really cool idea.
06:03 You can do it with gum. You can do it with a variety of gum.
06:06 Anything that has cellophane on it.
06:07 You can do it with a DVD cover.
06:09 You can do it with bags of candy.
06:11 Anything that has cellophane on it.
06:13 You can literally load one of these gimmicks on, remove the gimmick and really get this amazing effect out of it.
06:18 [Music]
06:23 So let's talk about the actual setup or the preparation of the cellophane when you're actually doing the setup to get to the point.
06:28 Essentially, a clever way to carry these around is in a matchbook.
06:31 I just have a matchbook and I have two or three cellophane gimmicks kind of jammed in below the flap on the match.
06:36 I can close the matchbook and those will be completely hidden ready for performance.
06:40 So now we have this. We put this away in our pocket and it conveniently hides the cellophane.
06:43 Now we're ready to do the trick. Whatever we're going to do it on, we just set it on the rear of the table closest to us.
06:48 So the cigarette box is sitting here or the card box or the gum wrap or whatever we're going to be using.
06:54 We're now going to open the matchbook.
06:55 So the cellophane gimmick is inside of the matchbook.
06:57 You open up the matchbook again.
06:59 This is sitting back towards you and this is before the trick starts.
07:01 All you do is reach in with your thumb.
07:02 You slide out one of the cellophane gimmicks and then you literally just dump it on top of the card box.
07:08 It's now in play.
07:10 Now we do this before the trick even starts.
07:11 This is kind of pre-setup. We've not even mentioned that we're going to do anything.
07:14 And then we're going to move forward and talk about the matches.
07:16 Now when we move forward, the cigarette packs on the table becomes completely unimportant.
07:20 Then we're going to strike one of those matches and we'll burn the actual hole in the cellophane.
07:25 We're going to show you guys what that looks like.
07:27 At this point, we've openly loaded the cellophane gimmick onto the box but nobody knows that at this point.
07:37 We haven't even started the trick yet.
07:38 We're going to move forward and take a match out of the book.
07:41 Close the book up and we're going to have the spectator light the match.
07:44 While they're lighting that match, we're going to openly pull the cellophane down.
07:48 And from this view, it is exposed.
07:53 But from the spectator's view, it's hidden behind my hand and they can't see that the cellophane gimmick has been added onto the box.
07:59 So at the moment that the spectator strikes the match, you're going to reach over and take the match from the spectator.
08:04 Let it burn for a little while and then blow it out.
08:07 You're immediately going to come down behind your hand and mimic or mime burning a hole in the cellophane.
08:13 Now it's important when you do this that you not get too close because that match will still be hot and it could burn a real hole in the cellophane.
08:19 That wouldn't work very well.
08:20 So what you want to do is just come down here, move it around for a moment, then toss the match onto the table.
08:25 Now for the first time, you're going to pull away and expose the gimmick.
08:28 At this point, we're going to show you what that looks like.
08:30 We've just dumped the cellophane gimmick onto the cigarette pack.
08:34 We tear out a match.
08:36 We then hand this to the spectator.
08:38 As the spectator is lighting the match, we simply slide this out.
08:43 Again, hiding it behind our hand so the spectator can't see this.
08:47 We take the match, blow it out, give it a little rub, and then expose the gimmick.
08:57 So one of the great things about this effect is that you don't have to have matches.
09:00 If anyone's around smoking, you know matches are sometimes hard to find nowadays.
09:03 If anyone's around smoking, the way Dan originally created this was that he would use a cigarette.
09:07 So all you have to do is do exactly the same moves that we have with borrowed objects.
09:11 So you borrow a cigarette pack, you dump this gimmick onto the cigarette pack,
09:15 you then slide it out the same way we did earlier, so now it is exposed but hidden behind my hand.
09:20 You borrow the spectator's cigarette, and as you come over, you burn a hole into the cellophane.
09:26 Now it's completely impromptu.
09:29 Literally, as long as you have this cellophane gimmick on you, you're able to do this trick with a borrowed pack of cigarettes and a borrowed cigarette, which is pretty strong.
09:36 So there are other ways to get the gimmick in.
09:42 If you're not going to hold that in the matchbox, you can actually take the gimmick in advance and clip it between your second and third finger.
09:48 So that has been clipped here.
09:49 When it's clipped, it actually allows you to still hold a cigarette.
09:51 So you're going to hold the cigarette vertically, as if you're going to come burn the cellophane.
09:55 So all you're going to do is start by opening the cellophane to get it out to here.
10:00 You then reach into the ashtray to get the cigarette, and as you come back with the cigarette, you're just going to drop the gimmick onto the case.
10:07 So all I'm doing is bumping that onto the case.
10:09 This is the exposed view again.
10:11 So this falls off onto the case, and then is hidden behind my hand as I come over and burn the cigarette.
10:16 So you can actually do all of that in one motion.
10:18 We'll look at what that motion looks like close up now.
10:21 So the hellophane gimmick is clipped between my second and third finger of my hand, just clipped here lightly between those two fingers.
10:27 This gives me quite a lot of movement and freedom with those hands.
10:31 All I'm going to do now is reach over with my first finger and my thumb.
10:34 I'm going to slide the cellophane off the bottom of the box.
10:37 As I do this, I'm going to kind of move it around like this back and forth.
10:40 That builds up some static electricity charge in there, which is actually going to help hold the gimmick in place once we've dropped it onto the box.
10:47 Now all I do is reach over and pick up the cigarette.
10:49 As I come back with the cigarette, all I'm going to do is openly knock this off onto the case.
10:54 Now once it's loaded onto the case, my other hand is still going to be holding the case when I do that.
10:59 So if I need to, I just slide this down a little further, and then I come over with the cigarette and pretend to burn that hole in.
11:04 Again, that's covered from the audience's perspective because you're kicked back to here and they can't see that.
11:08 When you bring that cigarette down, you just kind of rotate it around like you'd really be burning a hole.
11:12 Then you bring the cigarette back up, lay the gimmick down, and you can put the cigarette back in the ashtray.
11:18 [Music]
11:23 We're going to talk a little bit about how you remove the gimmick.
11:25 There are a lot of different kind of handlings that we have, some very visual, some that happen more in the mind, some that happen in the downbeat.
11:32 There's a lot of different ways that you can do it, but really we'll leave some of that up to you.
11:36 You can be creative with it.
11:37 You can decide what is your favorite way to remove that gimmick, and you can come up with some kind of clever techniques yourself.
11:42 We'll discuss some of those now.
11:44 [Music]
11:49 The original way that Dan handled the restoration, and probably still one of my favorite, is just to bring over your second finger and your thumb.
11:57 You're going to pinch down and lift up.
12:00 The natural moisture in your thumb is going to lift off the Hella Fane gimmick, and it's going to carry it away.
12:05 Once you've carried this away, literally all you'll do is carry it away and just dump it into the floor.
12:09 If you want, you can recycle it. You can dump it into an ashtray or dump it somewhere near you so you can recycle that gimmick and have it again.
12:14 They're so easy to make, we usually just dump them onto the floor and get rid of them entirely.
12:18 It just allows you to end really clean.
12:20 As you've snuck this away and it's stuck to your thumb, you just come to the edge of the table, push it off onto the floor, and the gimmick's so tiny that it's gone forever.
12:27 Nobody's going to know what it is, even if they find it later.
12:29 We're going to show you up close that restoration.
12:31 All we're going to do is come over with our second finger and our thumb, and I'm going to squeeze together.
12:35 When I do, the natural moisture in my thumb is going to carry that Hella Fane gimmick away.
12:39 All you do is come over, give it a squeeze, and then come up.
12:42 It immediately carries it away.
12:44 When it carries it away, I come back, and immediately I can transfer that onto my third finger.
12:47 I come to the edge of the table, I can dump it entirely.
12:50 Then we end up completely clean.
12:52 After I dump it, I usually come out.
12:54 I can then slide this back onto the case.
12:57 They can see that the gimmick's gone and that the pack's been completely restored.
13:01 [music]
13:06 Another interesting way to get rid of the Hella Fane gimmick is to just openly ditch it off of the box.
13:10 There are several different techniques for this.
13:12 One of my favorites is just a nice wave, where all you have to do is grab the box,
13:16 and you're just going to give it a little wave.
13:18 As you give it a wave, you'll give it a nice upward gesture.
13:20 As you come back, the Hella Fane gimmick will just get shot off into the universe, gone forever.
13:25 That's going to look a little bit like this.
13:29 And then it vanishes entirely.
13:31 So the wave restoration, in order to do this, you would really want to be standing up.
13:34 You don't want that gimmick to fall off onto the table.
13:36 That wouldn't be good at all.
13:37 But what you're going to do is come up here,
13:40 and you're going to wave the box about 8 to 10 inches back and forth about 2 or 3 times.
13:44 As you do that, it's going to propel the Hella Fane gimmick off onto the floor,
13:48 and it'll look like it visually vanishes.
13:50 That'll look something like this.
13:52 [music]
13:58 One of the other ways that you can get rid of the Hella Fane gimmick
14:01 is by snapping your fingers above the box,
14:03 and at the moment that you snap, you're going to blow the gimmick off onto the floor.
14:06 This is great for places like nightclubs or bars, someplace that's a little dimly lit,
14:10 and that Hella Fane gimmick's going to disappear entirely.
14:12 Now you may see it go on camera, just because we're so close up and we're shooting in HD here,
14:16 but this is what that's going to look like.
14:18 [music]
14:25 So the Hella Fane gimmick can be made in any size to be used on anything.
14:28 The only thing to be careful is if you burn that hole and make that gimmick a little too large,
14:33 sometimes it'll give up the illusion a little bit.
14:35 You'll be able to see that there's still cellophane in the center of the hole.
14:38 We think ideally it's about that cigarette-sized hole that works perfectly,
14:42 but again, we encourage you to experiment with what works well for you and what you think will work.
14:46 In certain lighting conditions, you can make that hole larger.
14:48 In certain lighting conditions, you may not want it to be any larger,
14:50 but we encourage you to experiment around with what you want the hole to look like
14:54 and where you want to put the hole and how you want to remove it.
14:56 The great thing about this is it's just this small gimmick, this small illusion,
15:01 that's so convincing to the spectator that the possibilities and the uses for this are really unlimited.
15:06 You can do this with just about anything, anything that has cellophane on it.
15:09 You can do it with DVDs. You can do it--we've experimented doing it with iPhones
15:12 that have a screen cover on them or a case on them.
15:15 There's some pretty cool applications that you can do with that.
15:17 Just be careful that you don't get punched in the face for burning a hole in somebody's iPhone.
15:21 But there are a lot of applications and a lot of things that you might be capable of doing.
15:24 Most of these loading techniques that we discussed will work with those
15:27 if you just hide it between your two fingers here.
15:29 The key to remember about putting the gimmick in
15:31 is that when you're loading the gimmick onto whatever you're doing it with,
15:34 the effect hasn't even started yet. That's the important part.
15:37 Earlier we talked about using it with a bottle of water,
15:39 and you can easily do it with a bottle of water.
15:41 All you need to do is put the gimmick onto the bottle of water before the trick starts.
15:44 And you almost openly just do this.
15:46 You just reach over and put it onto the bottle of water before the trick's even started.
15:49 Once you get it applied onto the bottle of water, there's one small point.
15:52 If the water bottle has water in it, there'll be some bubbles in there.
15:55 So just make sure you find a spot on the bottle that doesn't have a water bubble behind it.
16:00 It's kind of odd to have a hole that has a bubble in it.
16:04 So be careful with that.
16:06 Actually, let's get a close-up of that real quick so we can see what that hole looks like.
16:08 So that's what it looks like once we've added that onto the water bottle.
16:11 And again, we're going to do that before it ever starts.
16:13 If the spectator is on our other side, we just rotate it around to the back side of the bottle,
16:16 the trick hasn't started.
16:18 As we take the cigarette or the match, we're just going to hold the bottle on this side,
16:21 naturally by its lip, as we come over and make the hole.
16:24 We pull away, we put the cigarette down, now we turn the bottle to expose that we've burned a hole.
16:31 So I'm super excited to be here with the inventor and creator of Hellefane, Mr. Dan Huffman.
16:44 Again, we discussed it earlier. If you're not familiar with Dan, Dan's been creating magic.
16:47 I think he created this almost 15 years ago.
16:50 Dan, can you give us a little bit of detail or a little bit of information about how you came up with the idea
16:53 or where the effect was inspired?
16:55 This one, actually, there's no story.
16:58 I know a lot of times when you're creating magic, you'll be working with a certain prop
17:02 or you'll get an idea about something, or maybe I could try this.
17:06 It just came. It just came.
17:09 Sometimes ideas just show up, and this one did, and I kind of ran with it, and I'm glad I did.
17:13 Sure. When you say that it originally just came up, just the idea of wanting to burn, like the effect itself,
17:18 you were like, "Oh, it would be neat if I could burn a hole in cellophane and then heal the cellophane."
17:22 Is that what the original idea was, or were you just inspired because you made the gimmick?
17:26 No, the whole thing sort of came together just as one idea.
17:29 Like, "Oh, I bet I could make a fake burn," and it just happened that way.
17:33 Yeah, and the first fake burn process that you created was to just make the hole, cut around it,
17:37 and it worked out that well. You didn't experiment with other--
17:39 It worked out that well. The experimentation came into the various handlings of getting it on and stuff.
17:45 I used to use Spittle. It's not a terribly elegant solution, but it works.
17:49 Sure, sure.
17:50 I would just put the gimmick in my mouth for a little bit, and then it would be sticky.
17:53 And then I found what you talked about with the static electricity.
17:57 If you slide the sleeve on the card case or whatever, it builds up a charge,
18:00 and it will almost draw it right into place.
18:02 Yeah, and even experimented with it. I mean, I've even found that sometimes that, you know,
18:06 elegant technique, but using a little bit of saliva on that will help it stick in some situations.
18:10 That helps with the water bottle and some of those situations where you don't get the static electricity.
18:14 And again, that's just something you have to experiment with, depending on what you're using.
18:17 And you can tell whether you've got the static electricity or not.
18:20 If you're holding it horizontal like that, you'll feel it kind of draw down.
18:25 You'll feel a little sensation on your fingers, and you'll see it's not moving.
18:29 And in that case, you can actually tilt it upright and hand it to the spectator and have them hold it.
18:34 So while they're looking through it--and actually, it gives a little cover on the glare problem
18:39 because they're looking through this end and the gimmick's stuck over here.
18:42 But that way, while it's in their hands, they're holding on to it.
18:46 Sure, because they're going to hold on to the gimmick for a moment.
18:48 Right, and then you can just come up and affect the restoration.
18:50 And that's actually interesting. I don't think we talked about it on the DVD, but I forgot.
18:53 When I've seen you perform this in performance, even when you do the heel with the--
18:57 where you're just going to use your thumb and finger to kind of pop the piece off and get carried away.
19:01 I forgot in performance because we're in the studio here, and I didn't have a spectator.
19:04 But I forgot one of the things you do that I think is important is you come over and you have the spectator hold on to that end of the box.
19:09 Which is really a nice moment because, again, it just seems really clean.
19:12 And we talk all the time about magic in spectators' hands.
19:14 And it's great that you're going to get this kind of moment that happens in their hands as you come away.
19:18 It also--I think what's nice about it, too, is that as soon as the hole's gone, they want to examine it.
19:24 Right, you don't have to say, "Oh, and you can check it out." They're going to look.
19:27 They're immediately going to look at it.
19:28 And when they look at it, that gives you all the time in the world to ditch the gimmick or to get rid of the piece or to do whatever you want to do.
19:33 So that's a great point, and I'm glad you pointed it out.
19:35 We didn't really talk about that in the DVD, but it is--
19:37 And then another thing that I think we forgot to talk about was something that you had come up with,
19:40 the idea of having the restoration happen under the spectator's hand.
19:44 Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that, actually.
19:45 Let's talk about that.
19:46 Let's talk about that a little bit because I forgot about that.
19:47 So essentially, once you've loaded the hillofane onto the card box--right?
19:51 So it's onto the cigarette or onto the card box, loaded and ready to go.
19:54 You can slide it back onto the cigarette pack.
19:58 And I don't know that this is going to show up on camera, but you guys, I think, will be able to understand what's happening.
20:02 So now they see the hole there.
20:04 Now what you're going to do is say, "If you would, hold your hand out for me, and I'm going to have you just come down onto the box."
20:08 And as I come over, all I'm going to do is hit this with my second finger and steal the gimmick away as they cover it with their hand.
20:13 What's nice about that is it really creates that illusion that they've healed it or that it's healed under their hand.
20:17 Let's go through that one more time, and we'll kind of just do the timing.
20:20 I lost the gimmick, but we'll just do the timing there.
20:21 So as we're here--oh, he's got another one.
20:24 Perfect.
20:25 Take two. There's more.
20:27 So as we load this onto the box, we're here.
20:32 Okay, so that's loaded onto the box here.
20:34 And all I'm going to do is say, "If you would, hold out your hand for me."
20:36 And as I come over, I'm just going to steal the gimmick once his hand gets above it.
20:39 I just go down with my second finger and tap the gimmick.
20:41 The other thing that we talked about is maybe not even doing the steal on the first try, right?
20:44 So you say, "Here, take your hand for me, Dan."
20:45 If you want to, you can just concentrate on healing the package.
20:48 Just imagine you can see that cellophane in your mind really starting to just weld itself back together
20:53 and it'll go away.
20:54 Let's see what happened.
20:56 Well, it looks like it's still there.
20:57 I tell you what, let's do it again.
20:58 If you would take your hand for me and just cover it up and just think "heal."
21:00 And then when you do that, you're going to steal the piece away, which is kind of nice, too.
21:03 Yeah, Brent, I do definitely like the idea of having them not heal it at first--
21:07 Sure.
21:08 --and then doing it again on the second time or the third try.
21:10 Sure.
21:11 It just sort of, I think, cements the idea that, "Well, no, I did it instead of the magician."
21:17 We should also talk about--one of your presentation, employees, that I really like is you talk about faith healers
21:21 and you talk about the idea of being able to heal something, which I think is great.
21:24 And last night we were hanging out doing this at the bar.
21:27 We had an interesting conversation where there's an old joke where you ask somebody if they've seen a match burn twice.
21:32 And the old joke, which is awful and I don't recommend anyone do it, is that you light the match
21:37 and you blow it out, you say it burnt once, and then you burn the spectator's arm to number two.
21:41 And again, it's not a pleasant thing to do, but it's one of those things that you've seen in bars
21:44 and that people talk about all the time.
21:46 What I do is kind of use that a little differently and I say, "Have you ever seen a match burn twice?"
21:50 Strike the match, you blow it out, then you come and pretend to make the gimmick.
21:54 You say, "So it burnt once, now it's burnt twice," and now you expose that it's done there.
21:59 Now, the reason that you're going to do that is you're going to actually open up the conversation by saying,
22:02 "Do you know the difference between a con and a miracle?"
22:04 And they say, "No, I don't."
22:05 You say, "Well, let me show you. Have you ever seen a match burn twice?"
22:08 "That's once, that's twice."
22:10 And now they've seen the match burn twice and you say, "That's a con, right? I just tricked you."
22:14 The difference between that and, say, a miracle, a miracle would be like healing, like faith healing, that sort of thing.
22:18 That's something that people really consider a miracle.
22:20 Let's see if we can't use that kind of a concept here.
22:22 If you would hold onto the box for me.
22:25 And then the idea is the gimmick's hanging out there and you talk about faith healing
22:28 and then you come over and you give it that squeeze and you say, "Heal," and then it heals, again, inside of their hand.
22:32 And I just like the presentational point. I think it's interesting.
22:34 It gives you a reason to kind of use the match to burn the cellophane.
22:37 The other thing that I like about it is as soon as you've loaded the gimmick and you've burnt the cellophane,
22:42 you have a nice moment of kind of time delay there.
22:45 Once you've burnt the hole in the cigarette, it's just a joke to them.
22:48 It's a joke about making a match burn twice.
22:50 So you can allow the box to sit on the table for an extended period of time.
22:54 You can just leave it hanging out there, which is nice because it really creates that illusion that there's nothing to hide at this point.
22:59 You can just have a conversation about, "Here's what we're going to try to do. This is the thing."
23:03 It kind of pulls you further away from the method because they really believe that you burnt the hole in the cellophane
23:09 just to show that a match could burn twice.
23:11 So it kind of makes that a little bit more convincing, and I kind of think that's a good idea.
23:15 I do as well.
23:16 Another presentation that I've used is as a pseudo-hypnosis routine.
23:20 The thing about that, you have to be careful if there's more than one person around if you're trying to present it as hypnosis.
23:26 Sure.
23:27 Just allow the one person that you're showing it to, that you've put them under in whatever way you want to do.
23:34 If you do any legitimate hypnotism, actually it's always good to throw a little magic in, just deepen it a little bit.
23:41 But even if you're not really hypnotizing them, you go through the motions of whatever you do to bring them under.
23:46 Then you talk about how you're going to make them observe things that aren't there.
23:51 In that case, you want to do it so that just the one person can see.
23:56 Because if everyone else sees, it's not hypnosis. It's the vanishing hole trick, which isn't the same thing.
24:01 Sure.
24:02 But that's been another way that I've presented it in the past that has had a pretty good effect on people.
24:07 They've actually thought that instead of the guy doing a magic trick, it was like he made me see something that wasn't there.
24:13 Sure.
24:14 One of the things we talked about last night when we were discussing this is you might go as far as to even switch the match after you've lit the match.
24:19 You light the match, you pseudo-burn the hole, they see the hole.
24:23 While they're seeing the hole, as soon as you make the hole heal, you then switch the match for an unburnt match as well.
24:28 So you say there is no hole. As a matter of fact, I never lit the match.
24:30 Now they look back and the match isn't lit either.
24:32 Again, it's just interesting ideas and concepts.
24:35 Another thing that we mentioned was with your presentation on have you ever seen a match burn twice.
24:40 After you do that, then you switch the match for a match that's been blackened with a sharpie.
24:45 Sure.
24:46 It's a little anti-climactic, I think, to the miracle of healing up the hole.
24:52 Sure.
24:53 But you also say, "Yeah, actually some matches will burn three times."
24:56 Then you just pick it up and strike it again and show that it's once again.
25:00 Yeah. I agree with what you just said and I think that's important.
25:03 The great thing about the effect is that, and I hope that it shows up on video when we do this.
25:09 It's hard to know in the studio when we're shooting this how well it's going to look.
25:12 The reality is when I first heard about it, not that I disliked the trick game, but when I first heard about it, I thought, "Oh, that's an interesting idea."
25:19 You talked on the phone and you explained the gimmick to me and I kind of had a feel for what it was, but I hadn't actually seen one.
25:24 Then when you actually showed it to me, it completely floored me.
25:28 I hope that it's shown up on video good enough, but it really is, you can really see that there's no cellophane in the middle of that hole.
25:36 There's an optical illusion that happens where you can see through the hole and there is no cellophane there.
25:41 I don't know how it happens. I don't know if it's our expectations or if it's just our brain erasing information because we know the situation.
25:48 But there really is this incredible optical illusion that's happening where it really 100% when you get this gimmick in play, it's amazing how good it looks.
25:59 Yeah, I think it's always more interesting when the spectator convinces themselves of something.
26:04 You don't have to say, "I have here a hole." I mean, it speaks for itself.
26:09 They're like that, they see the ring, they know what a hole is.
26:12 So they've convinced themselves of how legit the situation is.
26:16 Sure, and I think unlike a lot of moving hole tricks or other hole tricks that I've seen in the industry, sometimes they'll use black art or they'll use those sorts of things.
26:23 And when they do, if you have a card or something with a black art hole in it, to me a black art hole never really looks like a hole.
26:29 It's not a convincing hole.
26:30 What amazes me about cellophane in general is just how convincing that is as a hole.
26:37 When this gimmick is in use and you look, it really is 100%.
26:42 If we burnt a real hole right next to the hole, I don't know that I would be able to identify which one was real and which one wasn't.
26:49 It really is that convincing, which I think is what's so great about the effect.
26:52 And I think the point that I'm trying to make there is some people might think of this as a throwaway.
26:56 Like, "Oh, and you heal the hole and that's done."
26:58 Oh, it's so much more.
26:59 It's so much more than that.
27:00 And if you use it in the right way and use the right application, this is really one of those things that's, you know, I use the word beautiful.
27:07 But it's because it works so well and it looks so good that at the moment that it heals, the spectator sees it.
27:15 It's interesting in that it seems to be that you're visually healing the hole, even though some of the methods aren't visual.
27:23 You know, when you squeeze it with your thumb and your second finger, which is, again, still one of my favorite methods,
27:27 it's still extremely visual even though the moment is hidden.
27:32 Yeah.
27:33 It's really kind of crazy.
27:34 It's like a flow of, like you said, it almost seems visual even though it's technically not.
27:40 Sure.
27:41 The other thing about it in terms of presenting this is I personally would stress over and over, do it with borrowed objects.
27:49 If just, you know, like Brent's pointed out, you know, packs of gum, anything, there's cellophane all over the place out there.
27:56 Sure.
27:57 And, you know, if you could borrow someone's, if you see someone with matches or if someone is smoking,
28:02 particularly if you see someone smoking, you've got both props right there.
28:07 They've got their pack of cigarettes.
28:09 Sure.
28:10 They've got the lit cigarette.
28:11 You don't even have to smoke yourself.
28:12 If you don't smoke, you can still say, "Can I borrow that for a second?"
28:15 Sure.
28:16 And I think when it's done with their own belongings, you know, it strengthens it so much more so than like if it was in some sort of formal close-up show,
28:23 like at a Magic Castle and, you know, "I have here a box of cigarettes and a cigarette."
28:27 Right.
28:28 You know, it's just a lot more intimate that way.
28:29 No, I agree with that, and I think one of the things that's interesting about that conversation, Dan,
28:32 is that one of the other huge benefits about this, and actually, do you have your, you've got a little sleeve that's got some gimmicks in it?
28:37 Yeah, I do.
28:38 We can talk about that a little bit.
28:39 Yeah, this is usually how I carry them around.
28:40 I just keep it in my wallet.
28:42 It's just a little coin envelope.
28:44 It has a bunch of the little gimmicks in it.
28:46 Normally, I'll just stick it in my pants pocket for, and this is like for informal situations when I think I'll be doing it,
28:53 and, you know, you'll see someone smoking or if someone's got a deck of cards out or something and there's matches nearby,
29:00 you're not announcing that you're going to do a trick.
29:03 You've got all the time in the world to stick your hand in the pocket and just kind of fiddle around and find one.
29:07 I do love the match idea for a holdout, though.
29:10 That's a natural way to steal it off.
29:12 Sure, sure.
29:13 You know, one of the things that I love about the match idea is that because they're so small, it does take a little bit of light pressure.
29:18 Don't be afraid.
29:19 Every once in a while, you're going to pull one out of your pocket,
29:21 and before you get it set up, you're going to drop it on the ground or you're going to lose it.
29:24 That's why you keep a pocket full of them.
29:25 If you drop one on the floor, you're immediately--
29:27 And I think that it's important that you're setting it up before you ever say, "Hey, we're going to do a trick."
29:32 So if you drop one on the floor, it's not like you've said, "Hey, let me borrow your cigarettes."
29:35 You say, "Hey, can I have a cigarette from you?"
29:37 They hand you the case.
29:38 If it falls, you just get another one out and then you set it up.
29:40 The idea is that you're taking cigarettes from them, that you're not, "Hey, let me show you this big grand trick.
29:45 Watch close what I'm doing."
29:46 The whole setup and preparation starts way before the effect ever does, which I think is interesting.
29:50 Also, definitely, if you're carrying around a little plastic thing like I'm doing or you've got them in the matchbook,
29:57 I would definitely suggest putting a few in there because they're going to come loose in your pocket.
30:02 Or if you're trying to fumble for them in your pocket, good luck finding just one.
30:06 If there's one floating around loose in your pocket, say if it's contained in something smaller and there's several,
30:10 you can get a tactile sense of, "Oh, okay."
30:13 And if you grab more than one, it's going to fall on the ground.
30:16 Nobody's going to see it.
30:17 It's quite all right.
30:18 Sure. And I talk a lot about it in my magic, about the idea of tricks that some people would call one-off effects
30:24 or effects that you're not going to do all the time.
30:26 And this is one of those effects that I'm not going to do it all the time.
30:28 I'm not going to do it in a formal close-up show and I'm not going to do it all the time.
30:31 I'm not going to do it every time I go out to perform magic at a corporate event or I'm with a deck of cards.
30:35 I have certain things that I use all the time.
30:37 But this is one of those things that's packed so small, that little coin envelope full of 15 of these goes into my wallet
30:42 and it's there forever.
30:43 And I'm just going to have it ready.
30:45 And when I see that situation where there are people outside smoking or they see that situation where I'm in the bar
30:49 and there's bar matches, you know, when I see those situations arise, I'm really going to use it because it's such a powerful effect.
30:54 But I just kind of want to stress the idea that, and this is what you were saying earlier, that it's completely impromptu.
30:59 And it's so strong, I just want to make sure people understand what it, kind of how strong and how powerful it is
31:04 with borrowed objects and with completely impromptu.
31:06 And then it packs so small.
31:08 I don't have to carry anything with me.
31:09 Literally, it's in my wallet and I'll forget that it's there for two weeks.
31:13 Sure.
31:14 And then I'm out at a bar and there's some girl smoking and I go, "This is the perfect application.
31:17 This is going to be great."
31:18 And then I'm able to do it, you know, which is, it's just nice to have that kind of, you know, intimate moment that packs into my wallet.
31:24 Now I'm always ready to do it, you know.
31:25 So I know that Daniel Garcia had a variation or some, on this plot.
31:29 This isn't a plot that's been unexplored.
31:31 And I know last night when we were talking, you said that maybe one of the reasons that you released this is because Daniel put out his work on it
31:37 and you wanted to make sure that people kind of understood your concepts or your ideas with it.
31:40 Right. For, actually for a long time, this was the one effect I kept under wraps that I didn't tell other magicians about.
31:47 That, you know, I kind of had liked to think and maybe I was fooling myself that I was the only person doing this kind of effect.
31:56 Sure.
31:57 And then some years later when the Daniel Garcia thing came out and I saw that, it was like, that's, I was like, "Okay, it's time to talk about it now, I guess.
32:03 It's time to release this."
32:05 His version was great.
32:07 It looked good.
32:08 The only thing was that it left you kind of dirty at the end and like, you couldn't really do it with the spectator's property.
32:14 Sure, sure. Right, right, yeah.
32:16 And I think that's on the Art of Astonishment DVDs, the box set that Paul Harris put out, which is great.
32:20 You guys can look it up in there just to see what Danny did with it.
32:22 And it was a great trick.
32:23 It was.
32:24 It was a great trick.
32:25 Again, just didn't leave you with that moment where you could hand the spectator everything and walk away, which is, again, what's so great about this is
32:30 borrowed objects, you get in it, you get out of it, you leave everything with them, which is one of the things that I think is so great about this.
32:36 Added to the fact that it's so visual.
32:38 Again, I can't talk highly enough about how visual this is once the gimmick is in place and how just visually fooling it really is.
32:45 Dan, I just want to thank you for putting this out on the market.
32:48 It's one of those things that I think is, as I said earlier, I think it may be a little too good to even release because it really does look that visual.
32:53 I appreciate you putting it out and putting it in the marketplace.
32:55 Hope to see some more magic from you soon.
32:57 I'd love to see what you've got to get out there and we can get some other products.
33:00 And I want to thank the guys who purchased this DVD for supporting Dan and supporting his ideas.
33:04 He's a great guy and he's got a lot of great ideas.
33:06 So it's awesome. I hope you guys enjoy it.
33:08 Obviously, if you guys have any questions, you guys can always email in and we'll get your questions answered.
33:12 And we'd also love to see any videos or submissions if you guys come up with other ideas.
33:16 We've got a lot of ways to shake the gimmick off or to blow the gimmick off.
33:19 You can knock it off. There are a lot of interesting concepts that you can use there.
33:23 What I'm really encouraging you to do with this project is think about this as a beginning, as a jumping off step.
33:27 I can't wait to see what you guys come up with with the HelloFane gimmick. I'm super excited.
33:31 Thanks a lot.
33:34 No, seriously. Thanks a f*cking lot.
33:36 No, thank you.
33:37 I mean seriously.
33:38 And you.
33:39 Without you all, we wouldn't even be here.
33:40 [Music]