Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:07 Hello, my name is Daryl and I'd like to welcome you to the wonderful world of magic.
00:13 Now when I first became interested in magic more than 50 years ago,
00:17 magical knowledge was hard earned and quite difficult to come by.
00:21 Today, it's quite different.
00:23 There's an overabundance of information available to anyone and everyone.
00:27 Now some of this information is quite good, but unfortunately most of it is awful.
00:32 What's worse is a lot of the good information is being taught by people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing.
00:39 Now my goal is to teach you good and simple magic in a clear and easy to understand format
00:45 and to steer you away from the countless bad habits that could very easily be developed along the way.
00:51 With that being said, let's get started.
00:54 [MUSIC]
01:02 A great place to begin our journey is with the oldest trick in magic, the cups and balls.
01:07 With just a few ordinary cups and balls, you can accomplish a wide variety of wonderful effects with absolutely no sleight of hand required.
01:15 Now here's a basic routine that will introduce you to some of the many mysteries that are possible.
01:20 A simple mystery with some crumbled up dollar bills and some coffee cups.
01:25 Actually, you can use any different types of cups and the idea is very simple.
01:29 Just make a row with the cups, take a ball, place it on top of the middle cup.
01:33 By the way, that's a solid bottom on the middle cup.
01:35 The idea is you cover it with the other two, snap the fingers once, the ball passes right through and there it is.
01:41 Now if you missed it, it's all right. I'll do it again.
01:43 Watch closely. I cover the one ball with the middle cup and I could make a second ball go through,
01:49 but just to make it a little bit more difficult, I'll make the second ball pass through two cups instead of one.
01:54 To do this, I have to snap the fingers twice. That, of course, makes it twice as snappy.
01:58 And there we have both balls.
02:00 One last time, watch very closely. Two balls there. I'll cover it with an entire stack of the cups.
02:06 The third ball, the final ball, goes into the pocket.
02:08 With a little bit of magic, the ball passes through the pocket, passes through the air, passes through the solid stack of cups,
02:15 and there we have one, two, three balls, one, two, three cups, and that's all there is to it.
02:22 Now I use these cups and these balls just for demonstration purposes, but really, you can use many different types of cups.
02:36 In fact, I have a small sample here. These come from the magic shop.
02:40 This was the first set of cups and balls I ever had.
02:42 It brings back happy memories. They nest well. There's a little bit of space between them. That's important.
02:48 Here's something I've used quite a few times, just regular old plastic tumblers.
02:52 The most important thing, like I said, is that they nest, and there's some space between the cups when they do nest.
02:58 This is good, solid steel. I guess these are flower pots. I'm not exactly sure, but I found these at a store.
03:04 They work very, very well.
03:06 If you want to become a professional magician, you might want to use professional cups.
03:10 This is the cream of the crop.
03:12 I think these are brass, solid steel, beautiful cups.
03:16 Now, balls, you could use many different types of balls.
03:19 Two basic categories. There's the solid balls and the soft balls.
03:23 Soft balls would be things like little pom-poms, which of course come in many different sizes and colors.
03:28 Sponge balls, also very good. Crumpled up dollar bills or paper napkin bits.
03:33 Tin foil balls. These are the professional balls that you buy at the magic store.
03:38 They're cork, and they're covered with a little crochet covering.
03:41 They come in many different sizes and colors as well.
03:44 So, cups and balls.
03:46 First, we're going to start at the very beginning.
03:49 And I believe that if you could turn your hand from palm up to palm down, you can do the cups and balls trick.
03:56 Now, there's a little more to it than just turning your hand from palm up to palm down, so let's take it one step at a time.
04:01 Hold the cup in your palm-up hand, turn your hand palm down, and put the cup mouth down onto the table.
04:07 Believe it or not, that is the most important thing you'll need to learn to perform the cups and balls.
04:13 There is one more little tip, and that is if you put a ball inside, any kind of ball, centrifugal force, with practice,
04:21 you can turn the cup from mouth up to mouth down without having the ball fall out.
04:25 That's what you need to practice.
04:27 So do this over and over again, as many times as you have to, until you can do it flawlessly without even thinking about it.
04:33 Mouth up to mouth down.
04:35 Now, if you add a second cup, here's an interesting thing.
04:38 You could put the cup and the ball together like this, hide the ball between the cups.
04:43 Now you can hold it from mouth up to mouth down, and you can put the second cup next to the first cup or on top as a stack.
04:50 Now, if you add a third cup, this is where it gets very interesting.
04:54 Three cups, put the ball in the middle.
04:56 Secretly, the audience does not know about that.
04:58 And one at a time, you can stack the cups from mouth up to mouth down.
05:03 Pick all three, put them back in your left hand, and you can repeat this little demonstration or this little show.
05:10 That's a drill.
05:11 Practice this over and over again until you can do it without even thinking about it.
05:16 That is the secret to the cups and balls.
05:19 Well, now that you understand how to turn a cup from mouth up to mouth down without letting the ball fall out accidentally,
05:26 I'm going to show you the entire routine using something quite unique.
05:29 I was lucky enough to find a set of glass cups.
05:34 Now, this is, of course, for exclamation purposes only.
05:37 In real life, unless, of course, you're Penn & Teller, you would not use transparent cups.
05:42 Here's the deal.
05:43 For the routine, you need a fourth ball that the audience doesn't know about.
05:47 That's the one-ahead principle.
05:48 The extra ball is hidden in the middle cup, just like this and like this.
05:54 This way, you can start by dumping the three balls onto the table.
05:57 You can show the three cups, in fact, make a stack as you turn the mouth down.
06:01 You can do this once or twice.
06:03 Once is plenty.
06:04 When you're ready to actually start the routine, lay the cups out in a row.
06:07 What that does is it puts the extra ball in the middle cup.
06:11 Of course, the audience, remember, doesn't know about that.
06:14 For the first penetration, you place one ball on top of the middle cup, cover it with the other two.
06:18 Here's an important point.
06:19 When you cover them, like this and this, it's the right-hand cup that goes on top.
06:25 That way, your right ring finger could reach down to the bottom cup, pick up the entire stack of three.
06:30 That creates the illusion of the penetration.
06:32 Once again, here's the timing.
06:35 You cover it up, you lift up all three, and as soon as you lift up the stack of three cups,
06:39 place the mouth outwards into your left hand so that your right hand could pick up the ball and show it to the audience.
06:45 That's the misdirection.
06:47 You want all the attention to be on the ball that went through the cup and not the cups themselves.
06:52 Now you're ready for the next phase.
06:54 The next phase, you turn the cup's mouth downwards, and now, secretly, there are two balls under the middle cup.
07:01 You could take the second ball and make it pass through one cup like you just did a moment ago,
07:05 but this time, you say to make it more difficult, you'll make the ball pass through two cups like that.
07:10 Now, what that does is when you cover it with this, lift up all three, it looks like the second ball joined the first ball.
07:16 But also what it does is because you made it go through two cups, that puts this ball now in the bottom-most cup of the stack.
07:25 So now you show the two balls.
07:26 One last time, you take the cup off the bottom, turn it mouth downwards, cover the two.
07:31 Of course, now there's three.
07:33 You cover this, you cover this, you take the third ball, as far as the audience is concerned,
07:38 and you put it in your pocket.
07:40 You say it's going to vanish from the pocket, fly through the air invisibly, and land underneath the stack of cups.
07:45 Sure enough, there's all three balls, all three cups, and that's all there is to it.
07:50 And here is a special bonus tip.
08:00 Instead of making the last ball, the third ball apparently, go from your pocket to the stack of cups,
08:05 after there's three balls underneath the cups, you actually have a fourth ball hidden in your pocket.
08:10 That's a little bit vulnerable.
08:12 So what you could do is you could go to a magic store and buy flash paper.
08:17 It comes in different sizes and colors.
08:19 All you do is you need a little piece of this special flash paper,
08:22 and you can actually make the last ball vanish by burning it right in front of the audience.
08:26 So watch closely.
08:27 The last ball will vanish, fly through the air invisibly, boom, underneath the stack of cups.
08:33 That's a nice way to get rid of the fourth ball.
08:35 Now you have nothing to get rid of.
08:37 You're finished. You're clean.
08:38 It's always nice to finish clean.
08:40 Now if you like the cups and balls, and remember this is just the very tip of the iceberg,
08:44 there's a lot more top quality information available on our Essentials in Magic video.
08:50 Any effect where one solid object passes through another is known as a penetration.
09:04 Of course, the most classic example of this would be the Chinese linking rings,
09:08 where large silver rings appear to magically link and unlink in the magician's hands,
09:13 solid through solid.
09:15 Now there are many great linking ring techniques already available to you on the Essentials in Magic video,
09:21 but let me show you right now a very simple penetration that is done with ordinary objects.
09:27 You can borrow a finger ring.
09:29 You can borrow a shoestring or a piece of string, a handkerchief or a cloth napkin,
09:34 and all you do is this.
09:36 You say, "I'm going to place the ring on the string like this,
09:40 double length of string like that, fold it in half to make it more difficult for it to escape.
09:45 I will tie a hitch knot just like that."
09:49 So there it is, the hitch knot, the borrowed finger ring on a piece of string.
09:54 You can actually show it to the audience. It's right through.
09:57 Now to make sure there's no cheating, you allow the spectator to hold on to the ends of the string.
10:01 You can do it by breathing under a handkerchief or under the table.
10:04 And here's the magic.
10:06 Just like that.
10:08 The finger ring penetrates right through the knot and the string.
10:12 So all you have to do is reach like this.
10:14 There it is. You hand that back, hand this out for examination,
10:17 and that is the ring escape.
10:27 You can perform this mystery exactly as I showed you with a piece of string
10:30 and a borrowed finger ring and a pocket handkerchief.
10:33 Or for the string, you can use many different types of things.
10:36 This is just a small sampling.
10:39 Shoe strings are great.
10:41 Shoe strings come in all different sizes, different widths, different colors, different patterns.
10:47 Ribbon is good. Same thing. Lots of different colors, lots of different widths.
10:51 This is nice, velvet cord.
10:53 You buy this at a fabric shop. Very, very nice to work with, particularly with finger rings.
10:58 Chain is good. If you don't happen to have something soft like a piece of string available,
11:03 somebody might be wearing a gold chain or a silver chain.
11:06 That will work out just great.
11:08 One of my favorite things to use is magician's rope.
11:11 This is good quality rope.
11:13 You could do the same trick on stage or in a parlor situation using a piece of rope like that.
11:18 As far as the rings, lots of different choices.
11:21 For close-up, these are some good choices.
11:24 A chain link would work.
11:26 A washer. How about a nut?
11:29 Chinese coins. Chinese coins are great.
11:32 They add a nice exotic touch, and they come in many different shapes and sizes.
11:36 For a parlor, you can use a large Chinese coin.
11:39 Bracelet, like a bangle.
11:41 This is a curtain ring, just a wooden curtain ring that I painted red.
11:45 This is a ring for a hoop-the-hoop game or throwing the hoop around the bottles.
11:50 I guess you can find it at a carnival supply house, that type of thing.
11:53 If you're going to work on stage or a larger audience, you can use this.
11:57 This is a harness ring. I like this a lot.
12:00 It's very solid. This could be examined. It's very, very solid.
12:04 Also, here's a couple of choices.
12:07 What this is is this is a macrame hoop.
12:11 This is used for macrame making a purse, like some kind of a bag.
12:16 So you can find this at a hobby store, and for a very large stage, you can use a juggling hoop.
12:22 These you can find in juggling supply houses, or sometimes magic shops carry juggling supplies.
12:27 These also come in many different sizes and colors.
12:30 All right, as far as the handkerchief, a cloth table napkin works well.
12:34 A paper napkin would work all right.
12:36 Sometimes you don't even have to do it under cover.
12:38 You can either do it underneath the table, or you could just cover it with your hands and do the penetration.
12:43 Well, I'm going to explain how to do this with a piece of rope and a big ring, the harness ring.
12:52 All right? So here's the idea.
12:54 The knot is exactly the same, whether you're using a finger ring or a big, giant hula hoop.
12:59 It doesn't matter. It's the same principle.
13:01 What you do is you fold the string in half.
13:05 You take the middle, and it goes through the ring.
13:08 And then you're going to tie what is called the lark's head knot or the hitch knot.
13:12 It goes by many different names.
13:14 You take the two ends, put it right through the middle.
13:18 And what that does is it makes this knot.
13:21 That's called the hitch knot.
13:23 That's what it looks like.
13:24 Now, what the audience does not know is that if you have a hitch knot, you can open it up just a little bit.
13:29 You can release the ring like this.
13:32 You take this part of the knot.
13:34 It goes up and around and through, and it comes right off.
13:38 That's all there is to it.
13:40 There's the knot like this.
13:43 And to have it come off, you just show it secretly under the handkerchief or under the table.
13:49 You do this.
13:50 You bring it around like that, and it comes right off.
13:53 Don't forget to make a big thing out of using the middle of the rope to pass right through the ring like this.
14:00 And then take the two ends of the rope, put them through the middle like this to tie the knot.
14:06 That's important.
14:07 Now, we know now, because this is a hitch knot, that you don't need the ends in order to tie it around the ring.
14:12 But certainly don't get into the habit.
14:14 In fact, never do this.
14:16 Never put the end or the middle through and just tie the hitch knot without using the ends.
14:21 You really want to stress the fact that you use the ends to tie the knot.
14:24 Now, here's the tip.
14:26 Once you've tied the hitch knot, you'll notice one part of the rope goes perpendicular to the two ends.
14:32 That's this part.
14:33 If you have that so that that perpendicular part is at the bottom, then you can open up the knot just a little bit to clearly show how cleanly the rope goes through.
14:42 Watch the ring.
14:43 Just in the act of loosening up the rope, flipping the ring over like this, it has just been released from the rope.
14:50 So you can show how cleanly that's tied on.
14:53 You can show very fairly like this.
14:56 Say, "Look, oh, you could pull on this all day long."
14:59 After the ring has been released from the rope, here's a nice touch.
15:02 Hold it.
15:03 You could twist it to show, "Oh, there's absolutely no way to get that off."
15:07 You can lay this down.
15:08 You can put the ring on top of this part of the rope.
15:12 Do your magic without any cover whatsoever.
15:14 And you create the penetration just by pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, and you walk away clean.
15:31 I love card tricks.
15:33 There, I've said it, and I'm proud.
15:35 There are absolute miracles that can be performed with special trick decks such as the Svengali deck, the Invisible deck, and the Mental Photography deck.
15:43 In fact, we have a whole series of essentials in magic videos devoted to this very subject.
15:49 What I'll show you now is a great trick using an ordinary deck that requires no special training, no sleight of hand, and you'll be able to perform it right away.
15:59 This is what happens.
16:00 You can show a deck of cards like this.
16:02 You don't have to be fancy and do any of this kind of stuff.
16:04 You could just spread them from hand to hand.
16:07 Shuffle the deck several times, and then you give the deck to a spectator in the audience, and you ask that spectator to cut the cards into four fairly equal portions.
16:17 And then you perform the ritual.
16:20 Now, the ritual is very simple.
16:22 You just take one packet, take three cards off the top, place them on the bottom, and deal the next three cards onto the remaining three packets.
16:30 Now, this is performed with each and every group of cards.
16:33 Now, don't forget the cards were thoroughly shuffled at the very beginning.
16:36 The spectator cut the cards into four packets, and where they cut was entirely up to them.
16:41 All you do is you perform the ritual.
16:44 Three cards off the top, onto the bottom, deal one card onto each remaining packet, and the mystery is complete.
16:51 At this point, a mysterious wave of the fingers, a snap, and the magic is done.
16:56 The top card of every pile, amazingly, is an ace.
17:00 Now, sometimes people get suspicious when they see this.
17:03 "Oh, yeah, it's probably one of those tricky decks of cards."
17:05 No, absolutely not.
17:07 Everything could be examined.
17:08 You walk away clean, and that's a trick that you could do with very, very little practice.
17:20 Now, there is a setup involved, a little bit of advanced preparation.
17:24 The four aces are on the top of the deck.
17:27 That's it.
17:28 You're ready to go.
17:30 Now, it doesn't take a lot of practice to shuffle and keep those four cards on top.
17:35 In fact, let me make it easy to follow.
17:37 I'm going to turn them face upwards.
17:39 This is called a lopsided shuffle.
17:41 You just shuffle them, but make sure that the last four cards at least are the cards that were originally on the top.
17:48 Okay? So that keeps the cards on the top.
17:50 If you want to, you don't have to do it in the hands.
17:52 You could just as easily do it on the table.
17:54 The same idea. That keeps them on the top.
17:56 If you know how to do the overhand shuffle, you can run the top four cards to the bottom.
18:02 And once they're on the bottom, you can shuffle the deck as many times as you'd like, keeping them on the bottom.
18:08 And to do that, you just grab them with your fingers of the hand that's holding the deck,
18:12 pull a bunch of cards out of the center of the deck, and shuffle those on top.
18:16 So that looks very fair.
18:17 It looks like there's absolutely no way you could be controlling anything,
18:21 and yet you've got the cards that you want, in this case the four aces, on the bottom.
18:25 I'm going to give you a bonus.
18:27 This is my personal favorite method, and this is great.
18:30 Forget that you know that the aces are on the bottom.
18:33 What you do is you say, "I would like several people to help me in mixing these cards.
18:36 How about you, sir? Would you shuffle those?
18:38 And how about you? You shuffle those, and these are for you, ma'am.
18:40 And how about you, sir? Mix those up for me."
18:42 So you give out several packets of cards to several different members of the audience.
18:46 What you do, though, is you secretly give the final four cards to one person.
18:51 They have the aces. Of course, nobody knows what they've got.
18:53 So this person can shuffle the aces all they want.
18:55 It makes no difference. They're still going to be the four aces.
18:58 In collecting all these packets back, you just make sure that that packet is collected last.
19:03 So now, even though several people in the audience all participated in thoroughly shuffling the deck,
19:09 you finish with the four aces on the top.
19:11 That's where you need to be.
19:13 Now, once the four aces are on the top of the deck, you give the packet to any spectator,
19:17 and you say, "Cut the cards into four fairly equal portions."
19:21 Now, you have to pay attention.
19:23 You have to notice which packet they cut first and which packet has the four aces on top.
19:28 That would be, in this case, of course, this one.
19:30 You start the ritual with the opposite end.
19:33 Okay? So you pick up this packet.
19:35 You say, "Take three cards off the top, put them on the bottom,
19:38 and then deal one card onto each of the three remaining packets."
19:41 What that does is it puts one card on top of the stack of aces.
19:45 This packet goes down. Remember, the spectator is doing all of this.
19:48 They pick up the second pile, three cards off the top to the bottom,
19:52 one card on top of each packet.
19:54 That, of course, puts a second card on top of the stack of aces.
19:57 This is what you call the ritual.
19:59 The spectator performs the ritual with a shuffled deck of cards that he himself cut into four packets,
20:05 and it works every time.
20:07 When they pick up the final packet, the packet that originally had the four aces on top,
20:11 of course, because the ritual was performed, three extra cards were added on top of that,
20:15 the spectator himself will take those top three extra cards, get rid of them,
20:20 and then deal the aces like this.
20:23 Now, with all the cards face down, nobody knows the situation at this point,
20:26 so the big finish is you do your little magic.
20:29 You turn over the top card of each packet, and boom, you've got the four aces.
20:33 That is a great trick.
20:36 I'm going to give you an extra couple of bonuses just because I'm feeling good today.
20:40 If you don't want to use the aces, you could use any four cards as your target cards or your force cards.
20:45 In fact, this is actually better.
20:47 Let's say, for example, I'm going to use an ace and, oh, say, a nine and maybe a five
20:55 and maybe another nine like this.
20:57 That's a good group.
20:58 A nice thing about this is these are not the four aces.
21:01 They're not the four kings.
21:02 They're just apparently four random cards.
21:05 So if you were to use the subtlety of having several people each shuffle a small group of cards,
21:10 if that last person happens to look at their cards, they're not going to see the four aces,
21:15 so they're not going to be suspicious of anything.
21:18 You do the same thing as before.
21:19 You collect them all back, and now you've got these four target cards on the top of the pack.
21:25 The audience doesn't know this.
21:26 They don't know that you've prepared in advance.
21:28 Now, here's what you do.
21:29 You just reach into your pocket.
21:30 You pull out a whole handful of change.
21:32 You just grab any coin you'd like, hold it in your fist.
21:35 The spectator can take any coin, they hold it in their fist,
21:38 and you go through the exact same motions again, either performing the ritual or--here's a different way to do it--
21:46 those top four cards, one, nine, nine, five.
21:50 That represents 1995.
21:53 That's the date on this coin because that's the date on all of these coins.
21:58 All I did was I went to the bank, I got a roll of quarters, a roll of nickels, a roll of dimes, a roll of pennies,
22:04 and I separated through them.
22:05 I put all of the 1900s and '90s in one pile, 1980s in another pile, 1970s,
22:11 and then I took one of those groups and I separated them.
22:14 Eventually, you have several coins with the exact same date.
22:17 So 1995 is the date.
22:20 You have a spectator pick any coin.
22:22 Here's another way to perform the ritual type effect but without going through all the ritual handling.
22:28 The top four cards, these are the target cards, remember?
22:32 You say, "I'm going to just deal the cards onto the table in little packets."
22:35 Anytime you'd like, call out stop.
22:37 When you explain that, you deal two and two more.
22:40 Those are the four target cards.
22:42 The spectator can say stop at any point.
22:44 It makes no difference.
22:45 You get rid of the rest of the deck.
22:47 You discard them.
22:49 Now, what you're going to do is to deal these cards into four packets like you're dealing a hand of bridge.
22:54 Remember, the four target cards are on the bottom, right?
22:58 That means when you deal these into four packets like this,
23:01 automatically, those last four cards that were dealt will be the cards that were originally on the top,
23:07 which originally went to the bottom of each packet.
23:10 So they turn over the top card.
23:11 There's a one, there's a nine, there's another nine and a five.
23:14 You say, "Oh, well, that doesn't look like that means anything particularly special."
23:18 And now for the big finish, you say, "Oh, that's right.
23:21 You selected a coin at the very beginning.
23:23 Would you read out loud the date of the coin that you selected?"
23:26 They'll say 1995.
23:28 Sure enough, 1995.
23:30 And you have yourself a miracle.
23:33 Magic that actually happens in a spectator's hands is the very best kind of magic there is.
23:46 Now, the vast majority of this type of magic is actually quite difficult to do and perform properly.
23:52 However, I'm going to finish this sampler with a routine where the magic happens in a spectator's hands three times,
23:59 and yet there is very little sleight of hand involved.
24:02 Watch closely.
24:03 I should tell you that I learned this from the very first magic book I ever read.
24:08 Ironically, it's called "The First Book of Magic,"
24:11 and the trick I'd like to show you right now is called "The Wandering Spongeballs."
24:16 Ooh, it's a great trick.
24:18 Watch closely.
24:19 Here we go.
24:20 Now, instead of using a spectator, I'm going to use this bowl to represent the spectator's closed hand.
24:26 So that's the spectator's hand.
24:28 You just reach into your pocket and you pull out a few balls.
24:30 These are lovely little balls made out of sponge, and the mystery is very simple.
24:35 You say, "Three balls.
24:36 You hold onto this one in a tight fist."
24:38 The spectator holds it.
24:39 You say, "This one goes into my pocket, and the third ball is going to be used as the magic wand.
24:44 If I tap my pocket and tap your hand, a very strange thing happens.
24:48 The ball vanishes from my pocket, and it lands inside of your hand."
24:53 Oh, that's a good trick.
24:54 The spectator will be blown away when they open their hand and find two balls inside.
24:58 You say, "Look, there's ball number one.
25:00 There's ball number two.
25:01 In fact, hold both of the balls.
25:02 I'll just hold it in my hand this time."
25:04 The third ball goes into the pocket.
25:06 All I have to do is squeeze like this.
25:08 The balls vanish from my pocket, jump into the spectator's hand, and there's one, two, three, just like that.
25:14 Now, for the big super-soccer finish, you can actually have all three balls and give them to another spectator.
25:18 Say, "Hold them very, very tightly.
25:20 You step back like this."
25:22 You say, "With the power of the mind, I'm going to make the balls vanish from inside your fist."
25:27 Of course, the spectator holds very tightly.
25:29 The balls do not vanish.
25:30 You say, "Oh, maybe I used too much concentration."
25:33 Instead of making the balls vanish, they all melted together into one big giant ball.
25:37 Sure enough, they open their hand, and they've got one big ball, and you walk away clean.
25:43 Great trick.
25:50 There is one little bit of sleight of hand at the very end.
25:54 You don't have to do it, but I might as well show you what it is.
25:57 So if you want to add that and finish with the big ball, you certainly can.
26:00 To do this trick, all you need are four balls of sponge.
26:04 Go down to your local magic shop.
26:06 You can buy them in all different sizes, all different colors, even in different shapes.
26:11 So here's the deal.
26:12 You have one big ball, if you want to use this as your finish,
26:15 that goes into the very bottom of your right trouser's pocket.
26:20 On the top of the pocket, you have the four smaller balls, like this.
26:24 So to perform the routine, you just reach into your pocket, and you take out all four balls.
26:29 But when you lay them on the table, you secretly keep one hidden in your hand.
26:33 Now, this takes a bit of practice, but don't worry about it.
26:36 I'm going to show you an easier way.
26:37 If you have all four balls in your hand, you can clip one of them with your thumb.
26:42 That's a thumb palm.
26:43 Trust me, a much easier way is just to take out all four of the balls,
26:47 look in your hand, and grab three of them with your other hand, and place those on the table.
26:52 The audience has no idea you've got a fourth ball hidden.
26:55 So here's what you do.
26:56 You see three balls.
26:57 You hold on to one.
26:59 In the act of picking up one of the balls from the table, you secretly add the hidden ball to it,
27:03 and you let the spectator hold that in a tight fist.
27:06 So the audience or the spectator thinks there's only one ball there.
27:09 There's actually two.
27:10 The second ball, you pretend to put it in your pocket,
27:13 but you just put your hand in your pocket and bring your hand right out again,
27:16 with the ball hidden inside.
27:18 Now, you don't have to have it hidden inside like this.
27:20 What you do is you do this, put it in the pocket apparently,
27:22 and as soon as your hand comes out, you pick up the third ball.
27:25 That helps to conceal the palmed ball.
27:27 You say, "If I use this as a magic wand, tap the pocket, tap the spectator's hand,
27:32 the ball from my pocket will vanish, fly through the air, and land inside of your hand."
27:37 When the spectator opens their hand, they will be amazed to find two balls inside.
27:42 That's the misdirection.
27:44 As soon as everybody's looking at the two balls in the spectator's hand,
27:47 you very casually put this ball down, let your hand rest with the extra ball hidden.
27:51 You say, "Here's ball number one."
27:53 Give it to the spectator to hold on to in a tight fist.
27:55 They open their hand. As you add the second ball, you secretly add the hidden ball as well.
28:00 So at this point, the spectator has three balls, but they believe there's only two.
28:04 If you don't want to use any sleight of hand whatsoever,
28:07 you could finish the routine at this point by actually putting the third ball in your pocket,
28:11 saying, "If I snap my fingers, the ball jumps from the pocket through the air,
28:14 lands in the spectator's hand."
28:16 When the spectator opens their hand, they find three balls,
28:19 and that could be the end of the trick.
28:21 If you want to add that super-saco finish where all of the balls melt together into a big one,
28:25 that's going to require just a little bit of sleight of hand, but not much.
28:29 Let's back up a little bit where you say the third ball goes into the pocket.
28:33 You actually leave the third ball in the pocket,
28:35 but secretly, while you're in your pocket, you grab the big ball.
28:39 But you don't pull your hand out of your pocket until you say,
28:42 "If I go like this, the ball jumps from my pocket into your hand."
28:45 Open your hand.
28:46 When the spectator opens their hand and they find three balls,
28:48 that's a very good misdirection for you to bring your hand out of the pocket with the extra ball hidden.
28:53 Now, nobody knows about this. All of the attention is there.
28:56 Here's the only sleight of hand you'll have to use,
28:58 and don't forget it's done at a very good moment.
29:01 The audience will be amazed when they find three balls inside the spectator's hand.
29:05 So all you have to do is pick them up with your left hand,
29:07 pretend to put them in your right hand, and say, "Here, you hold all of the balls again."
29:11 That's the only move in the whole routine.
29:13 You have three balls here.
29:15 You just pretend to put them in your other hand.
29:17 You bring the two hands together.
29:18 Your thumb sort of goes on top of these three, and the other hand turns palm up.
29:23 You can give them a little flash, especially if they're exactly the same color,
29:26 which these don't happen to be.
29:27 But you do this.
29:28 You say, "Hold on to these three balls very tightly,"
29:31 and the spectator will feel what they believe is three balls in their hand.
29:35 Of course, they have the big one.
29:37 You very casually just step back a little bit, put both of your hands in your pockets,
29:40 and you say, "If I use the power of the mind, I can make the balls vanish."
29:43 Well, this is a good thing to say.
29:45 If you say that you're going to make the balls vanish,
29:47 the spectator is going to hold it even tighter.
29:49 And, of course, the tighter they hold it, the better it is for you.
29:52 And after a couple of attempts, you say, "Did you feel the ball vanish?"
29:55 They'll say, "No, I didn't. It's still there."
29:57 "Oh, wait a minute. Maybe I concentrated too much."
29:59 Instead of making the balls vanish from your hand, they all melt together into one large ball.
30:05 The spectator opens up his hand.
30:07 There's one large ball, and you're clean.
30:10 So that is the mystery of the wandering sponge balls.
30:13 [whoosh]
30:16 Here's a tip.
30:20 Before you have a chance to go to your magic shop
30:22 and purchase a set of professionally produced sponge balls,
30:26 you could do what we used to have to do in the old days.
30:29 You can make them yourself.
30:31 This is the very first set of sponge balls I ever made.
30:34 All I did was I got a bath sponge.
30:37 You cut the sponge into cubes, and then you round off the corners.
30:40 You just keep rounding off the corners until it's spherical in shape.
30:44 They work perfectly well.
30:46 You can just as easily place one here and one here,
30:48 make it jump across invisibly, and land in the other hand.
30:52 These work great.
30:53 In fact, you're actually luckier today than we were in my day,
30:56 because now you can get much thicker sponges.
31:00 These are used for washing cars.
31:02 And with this, of course, you could produce a much larger set of sponge balls.
31:06 They work perfectly.
31:09 So, there you have it.
31:11 A wonderful selection of easy-to-do magic,
31:14 and this is just to get you started.
31:16 I would encourage you to also check out the Essentials in Magic video series
31:20 and my Masterclass videos for more routines and in-depth tutoring.
31:26 I hope you will practice these effects thoroughly.
31:28 In fact, practice until you can perform them flawlessly
31:31 before you show them to anyone.
31:34 Then go out, have some fun, and amaze people with your magic.
31:38 And remember, with proper practice and a thorough understanding of the techniques involved,
31:43 your performances will look like real magic.
31:48 [Music]
31:53 [Music]
31:57 [Music]
32:00 [Music]
32:25 [Music]
32:29 [Music]
32:33 [Music]
32:37 [Music]
32:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]