Hey everyone.

I can now say why I have not been posting lately. I have been filming and editing all the videos for the new magic website, VanshingInc.  It is a new website created by Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin.

Now I’m not a big fan of any of these magic websites but I can honestly say this one is different.  Why?  Well for starters they don’t carry shit just so they can sell it.  They handpick the books and DVDs that they truly think is good for magic as an Art.  You won’t see any vanishing milk from newspaper to light bulb in this website.  Also, you actually see many heavy hitters in magic review the items on the website personally.  There is no “I’m elite” status here with anyone working on the site.  It’s just our honest opinion on things that we think magic should be and what you need to read to become better.

Even better, I have put up my color change that has been floating around the internet for a long time.  If you haven’t seen my youtube video of it from a year ago, here it is below.  I have made a video through VanishingInc that not only teaches the change but also teaches 3 other tricks with it.  Get it here.

Yes yes, this is a plug for the website but I am not lying when I say this is a website has an anti-ellusionist feel to it.  I for one am glad that someone finally broke the fucking mold.

Check it out and expect to see more posts.  (hopefully).

Once again to everyone, sorry for the lack of updates.  For the last 2 weeks I had to take on a 2nd job.  It is very demanding.  Take a look.

Now on to a real topic that always bothered me.  Sleight of hand vs Gimmicks.  Magic has an inherent problem when it comes to effect/method.  If the trick is done well the method should not be obvious to the laymen.  So it begs to ask the question, does that mean that you can do ANYTHING as long as the effect stays the same?

Case and point.  You can’t palm cards worth shit because you don’t practice.  Is it okay for you to put double stick tape onto your palm and perform the effect as long as the effect looks the same?

Where is the line between putting effort into the art and short cuts.  Now I guess calling Gimmicks a “short cut” is very negative but sometimes I really do feel that way.

A long time ago I was arguing with a magician about this subject.  He told me that since the audience never knows the method, you can use as much gimmicks as you want because it will make it easier on you as a performer.  Now that bothered me.  I said back to him that even though the laymen never knows your method, it is still upon you to put some fucking effort into your craft and hone the skills.

He told me that doing that is masturbatory and just impressing yourself as a move monkey.

That hit me pretty hard.  What he said was true.  If they never know the method and the EFFECT is the same weither you do only sleight of hand or use only gimmicks, then does it make a difference what you do in your method?

I thought about it for a while and then it hit me a week later.  This sounds really fucked up, but some how child labor came into mind.  Think about buying a pair of jeans.  Lets say that you get the same product if you had Americans working in a shop making minimum wage and also the same thing by giving it to some kid in India making only 1 dollar a day.  Now, the END product is the same but the METHOD is different.  The only difference here is that the clothing company can go public and tell everyone that they are legit like American Apparel.  In magic, we can’t.  The secret can’t be given away.  So to me it’s more of a ethics question.  Which is quite ironic since in magic we are lying through our teeth.

What really bothers me is the way that coin magic is becoming today.  It seems when I started out, using an extra coin was all you needed in a coins across.  Now it seems you can only do coin magic if you have a Triple Threat as a starting point.  When did we start getting so lazy?

I’m sure there will be many people that will argue that gimmicks only come into the picture when we can’t go any further with sleight of hand.  The reason we use shells is because it gives a better illusion that no sleight of hand could.  I will agree with that.  Granted I think the line is 80% sleight of hand 20% gimmicks.

I guess the picture I’m trying to paint here is put effort into your magic.  It pisses me off when people say you should concentrate more on the presentation than the method.  I would think you should consider both equally.  Usually people who tell me this bullshit are shitty magicians to begin with.  I have talked to someone who says the above and then tried to argue that the slip force, which he does horribly, is better than the classic force… I would say that his opinion isn’t so high on my list.  Maybe it was because he did MagicK, not magic…

So my final thoughts.  Work on your craft.  Don’t be a pussy and use gimmicks all the time.

Next posting will be a video of me teaching you guys the opener that I use all the time.  Thanks for keeping this stupid blog alive.

-Tony

Alright, I have been super busy in my real life lately that I have been not updating as much.  So here is a small topic I want to talk about.  I am always fascinated by the construction of card sleights.  If you have read The Paper Engine this topic will sound very familiar.  I think many magicians feel that just because a move is based on sleight of hand, it means it is impervious to detection.  If you don’t believe me, then watch all the horrible Youtube videos of people doing magic.  On the camera, it is glaring of faults during the sleight, but yet magicians still put it online for everyone to see.  Why?  They think the notion that the move is constructed to be hidden that it MEANS its perfect by default.

I hate when magicians say “Well, its good enough.  They are laymen, they don’t know what I am doing.”  That excuse makes by default, for me at least, that the construction of the move is horrible to begin with.  Just the mere fact that you need to say that to other magicians is either you don’t practice enough or its just a bad move to begin with.  Now I know that from time to time I show magicians sleight of hand that is pretty out of shape.  Many magicians ask me to do Raise Rise but I don’t perform it much anymore and most of the time I chop through it.  The main difference is that I would never show that to a laymen.

Now many will say, “Well… magicians know what you are doing, you can’t fool them.”  This is true.  But the difference is that when you perform a great control example, they will either be amazed that you can perform it so well or ask you to do it again.  Just because they know you controlled the card to the top doesn’t mean they aren’t impressed by the way you performed it.  But who cares about magicians.  You are trying to fool the general public.

So before I blah too much longer, I wanted you to comment about what you feel about it.  The biggest barrier for a magician is to realize that not everything he does is as “good” as he thinks.  The next post will be about how to make that sleight of hand better.  The truth is that it ISN’T the performance of the move that is important… It is, but what is even more important is how you get into the move and get out of the move.  More on this later.  Again, I appoligise for the lack of posts.

—UPDATE—-

Alright, fuck it.  I had some time.  here is the video.  Hope someone gets something out of my blabbing.

Password is Dai “______”  all lower caps.  If you don’t know this…. you shouldn’t be in magic.

Before and After from Tony Chang on Vimeo.

Sorry for the lack of updates.  Just finished shooting a magic DVD of a great mentalist trick by Patrick Redford.  So here is a quick video of what I am working on.  The damn cascade control was something I really hated and for some reason I spent 3 months on this damn thing and its getting somewhere respectable.  Now I am loving it.  Go figure.  After that is a trick that I do as a opener, I will re-shoot it and give my whole patter that I use which I feel is important but I just want to show you how i end the trick…that’s the other thing I am working on.

Oh, and sorry for my friend filming,  he makes loud mouth noises for no fucking reason.  Also forgive me,  had a long night of drinking before hand so I have that “sexy” voice going on.

password is, What is the name of the trick that Bill Malone is known for.  “___ the bellhop”  all lower case letters.
remember to click on the link below to view in HD.

Cascade Control and a Trick from Tony Chang on Vimeo.

One thing that I notice about the difference between a mentalist and a magician is when it comes to risk.  I always thought it was funny when magicians throw away effects that aren’t 100%.  To a mentalist, not having 100% success makes them more credible.  Ironic I would say.  Now obviously you wouldn’t do risk for risk’s sake.  The result of taking a bigger risk should make the impact if the trick greater.

I want you to try this effect out.  It is a simple simple key card effect, but instead, you put risk into it.   I will explain the effect, and you should be able to come up with a method fairly easy.   Remember, it only uses a key card. nothing extra.

Effect: Spectator shuffles the deck till he feels it’s mixed.  He sticks his index finger into the deck anywhere and pulls out a card and remembers it.  Then he puts the selection on top and cuts the deck to lose the selection.  The magician tells the person to shuffle and mix until he feels there is no way you can find the card.  After the shuffles he puts it onto the table.  The magician, who hasn’t even touched the cards yet, tells the spectator he will try to divine the color of the selection.  He stares at the spectator and then says a color.  The spectator confirms that his card is red for example.

The magician says ” I have two cards in my head that I think is yours.”   He searches through the deck and pulls out two cards.  “I have two cards, but one of them is yours.”  He shuffles the two cards around then says “which one is it.”  The spectator points to one, and the one he points to is the selected card.

Now, this sounds amazing right?  Well it is, when everything hits.  It doesn’t mean it is horrible if it doesn’t hit.  It is only bad if you the magician deems it bad.  So here is the “risk factors” to enhance this simple trick.

This is in thanks to Gary Au’s brilliant thinking.  Many magicians when doing a key card effect always goes for the deck straight away and searches…  This is a dead give away.  Instead, guess the color of the card.  Only a 50% risk.  Infact, I don’t even care if I miss it.  If I guess it correctly I say, “I knew it.  I have a card in my mind…” pick up the deck and find it.  If I guessed wrong I say “Really… I had a Red and Black card in my mind, so I guess it isn’t that color…” and still pick up the deck.   The most important part is that you are giving a reason go to the deck.  You have a card FIRST then find the card SECOND.

Let them shuffle till they go blind.  First of all, they won’t shuffle that much.  The mere fact that you are so free with it makes them less resistant.  The impact of being so free during shuffling is well worth the risk.  People tend to not shuffle that well to separate the key card too far.  Besides, you eliminate one color before you go to the deck.  For example, the selection is red.  If there is some black cards shuffled in between the key card and the selection, you will know which card it is.

Lets assume the card is Red, but you see 2 red cards next to the key card.  Easy, take both out and have them choose it.  50% again, but the effect is just as good if he didn’t guess it right.  You said you thought it was two card, and you did pull out two cards.  That is amazing enough.  Just go on your gut feeling which hand of yours he would point to.

Try it out.  By putting risk into your card effects you can make something pretty mundane into something amazing.

For more on this kind of magic, read “Absolute Magic” by Derren Brown. Da best in the biz.

Many people during the birth of the blog bitched and complained about me making examples of people doing horrible magic. They say that it is unfair for me to “laugh” at them behind their backs. It is true that I laugh at them for performing magic without proper practice or just plain common sense. It’s like watching this and blaming us, the viewers, for being “insensitive”. the person is just fucking stupid. While I wouldn’t say the person performing bad magic tricks is “stupid” per say, I think they really feel that anything they do because its sleight of hand will never get noticed by the laymen.  How wrong they are.

Case in example. The masked magician. You would think he is some kind of bad-ass magician that has gone “rogue” to destroy the very foundation of magic. Watch how amazing he is and he even teaches it on his DVD! Roll Film.

LINK DEAD

So here is my question after watching this horrific clip. To all the critics, is it wrong to show this clip? Is it wrong to make a example out of this and show magicians never to do this? Granted he has amazing outs for pulling out the wrong gimmicked deck and fucking up the trick. Although I have NEVER seen anyone fuck up on the indicator card out AFTER they look through the deck to know where the selection is.

Maybe you say that the difference is that someone is just posting it on Youtube and that it didn’t get as much exposure as on TV. I would argue that TV gives you less exposure as it is only locally on a global scale. Youtube is anywhere you have an internet connection.

All I’m saying is that bad magic is BAD MAGIC. I am not personally hateful of the performer. Just like you would call the person trying to jump through a fucking basketball hoop an idiot, if you knew him, I’m sure at that moment you would be thinking about his health more than anything.

Constructive criticism is always hard to take if you are insecure of your ability, but we can not further our Art if we sit around and just say nice things to each other.  I try to be as constructive as I can but there are people out there that want to be entertained too.

I guess the only constructive thing I can say about this video is that he has some fucking balls to stick through that trick.  Oh, and he is an amazing actor when it comes to dramas.  My inner child cries every time I see him act.

LINK DEAD

Bring on the trumpets!

This blog used to be about this book, the mecca of hard moves. My inner child cries when I think of the book. It’s coming back ladies and gentlemen. I will again start my documentation of learning every damn thing in this book and helping anyone who has the book along the way. I posted many of them on my old Youtube page but I will re-shoot them and make them a little more official. Coming soon is probably the two moves that people don’t think is even possible, the Broadside steal and the Longitudinal Swivel Steal. Enjoy the old videos and look forward to the new ones.

Proteus

House Guest

Bureau d’Echange

Lets imagine that you practiced sleights to the point of perfection. Angle-proof and nothing to see. You have the mentality that no one will ever suspect anything that you did.  Can the spectator still sense that you did something “fishy”? Think about it. Magicians always stress the perfection of sleights to the point that they don’t see any finger flashes, adjustments of the hand during the move. I agree with this 100%. There is something else that is just as important.

Speed of your actions.

What do I mean? When people do something that is bad, they tend to hide it.  Either by doing it when no one is looking or trying to get the action over as fast as possible. The sleight of hand is suppose to withstand careful eyes, but we as human beings still do the same tendencies as if doing something dirty even though its hidden through the construction of the sleight. So you always see magicians change speed during moments of the move.

A very obvious example of this when false dealing cards.  When you deal a 5 handed game and during the bottom deals you had to slow down to do the move,  even though they don’t see the move, they sense the rhythm is off.  Another example is during a pass.  Your handling of the cards is so smooth and nice and then during the pass you have a fast jerk of the cards.  Then all of a sudden, you are back your old nice ways.  They can sense it.  Trust me.

Now I am faulty for doing this, it is one of those things that you don’t notice until someone tells you.  So I’m telling you.  Figure out a speed that you are confortable performing at and try to stick to it throughout the trick.  A big negative thing that people say about Aaron Fisher’s Gravity Pass is that it takes too long.  It’s the same when going too slow.  All of the sudden the spectator sees you “frozen” in time then resume.

Don’t take this for granted.  You must take your performance speed with as much detail as you do about sleights and patter.  When you watch videos of performances see if you can spot these speed changes.

What is a magician fooler anyways?  We all know its done with sleight of hand.  So what is defined as a magician fooler?  Is it just an unknown principle that your friend performs for you that he read in a 1938 card trick book found in the basement?  How about performing some variation or original sleight of hand that you never seen?

Darwin Ortiz said it best, if you fool a magician for 10% of the trick, you got them.  From that logic, is it true then that magicians aren’t really fooled?  Just puzzled?  Obviously I have no idea how you separated the colors of the cards so fast, but there must be a method or principle that I don’t know about.

We all know that magicians will never say to some magician after a card trick, “What you did there is out of the realm of human physics.  You sir, are performing true magic.”  Unless he was really sarcastic.

So then really, a magician fooler is showcasing something that is beyond their knowledge of the art.  They know that it is something they haven’t read or seen yet.

Here is the question.  Is a magician fooler the same with a laymen fooler?  Where does that line between magician knowledge and laymen knowledge start?  What I mean is that do we really fool laymen?  They get bigger reactions than magicians because they know less about the art, but the mere fact that they know phrases like “The hand is quicker than the eye” makes them acknowledge that it is something they haven’t read up on in a sense.

I’m probably not making any sense, but I guess the point I am making is “Does card magic, in general, have the inherent property of being seen as a puzzle or trick?”  Can we ever get out of the that mold of being just sleight of hand.

Maybe the more important question is “Is card magic being labeled as sleight of hand a bad thing?”  I don’t think so.

I find that one of the most crucial things that magicians take for granted is the process of losing the card back into the deck.  Take the standard selection of the card and putting the card back into the middle and doing a simple pass to control it.  Now between the card coming back into the deck and the control is a very short time.  Does the audience really believe the card is really back in the middle?  Does the fact that the card is in the middle enough to convince them that it is out of the magician’s control?

Maybe the bigger question would be does it increase the impact of the magic?  Depends I guess.  If we use the context of a simple selection/revelation type of card trick then I would say it certainly does.  Examine the way you take the selection back into the deck.  How much do you convince them that it is lost?  Does a simple double undercut really do the trick?

I would say that handing the deck out for shuffling would be one of the strongest.  But maybe your palming isn’t up to par.  I find that a simple confirmation of the losing of the card a huge convincer.  Let’s say while you are doing the cascade control you say, “Your card is somewhere in the middle that even you nor I would know, yes?”.  Now I know many would say that the spectator would always say “yes” in a sense, but the mere fact of him/her saying it themselves is a big thing later on when they reconstruct the effect.

Remember that the magic trick is the “show”, but the most important part is how you color the effect afterwards.  Take the David Blaine levatitation for example.  He really only floats up 2-3 inches, but when he asks the person how high he went, his hands extended 2-3 feet.  The spectator will remember it that way, and tell his friends that down the road.

It’s these little things that make an effect stronger.  So next time try to convince the spectator more then you usually would about losing the card and see if the result is better.