im still not very confident to perform this live..the quality of the cards and the performing surface seems to play a very important role..anyone has any advice?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TcVZocd0YQ

ZiAn

Hmm From the video, nothing seems to be the problem. Maybe you should target your camera to be the audience view, around 2 o'clock of that angle will be the best audience side.

The person that i seen perform life in SMC is Nick. So maybe he can help.

One thing for straight about invisible palm is that. The thought of the 'd' in your mind when you perform it. You can be very good in your handling, but when you face an audience, you start to think whether he will see it or not, then it breaks your nerve.

I think that is the hardest to learn and the onli way to do it, is to do it for people, if people saw it, don't be discourage, and keep on with it. You succeed eventually.

2 cent worths.

nice rub-a-dub

what can I say.... NICE!

:)

thank you all for your input.

Larry i agree with you about the D..it's nerve wrecking..i once performed it live and i flashed it...so i was damn demoralised and did not dare to perform it live ever again..but i must admit that some parts of this trick require a little bit of misdirection so i was pondering whether to put this on video. you said you saw nick perform it live?how close were u from him?was he on stage or close up?bright lighting and normal table surface?

Last time he performed is at the old gathering place at kevon. Its a palour somehow more close up. Another person that performed before is Kevin, he got a unqiue way of handling the different steps using a presentation of his own. In short, let say you thought its done, but its not, then its done. He psycology way of misdirection to people is to me, very impressive.

Hmm, Back to your question, Nick performed on the close up mat and the table is those normal cafe table that you see, not the super low one. Another way of controlling the D is to use rough smooth. But alot of people wont recommend it because it just make everything gimmicked, where invisible palm suppose to be a impromtu effect.

I also found out a way to make controlling the D better. Hmm, in the past, I thought that doing D control is, the faster you can do, the better you are. In fact it works reverse, the slower you do it, the smoother you are. And when you can throw it out without looking and its intact, then you know you are good enough le. I not telling you to do super slow, let say your routine is a tempo of music, you won't have a sudden increase of tempo in the middle of it, people will be suspicious, second, it will be more obvious. So control the tempo and make more eye contact to the audience than your cards, then you know you are working well.

My 2 cents worth.

i have never seen this routine live..only on youtube. the way you said it, i am really keen to see kevin or nick perform it live.

for me, i think it should take me a few more month before i will take this routine to a live audience.

handling the D would be the hardest part of this routine. The first D and the last D. As you can see in the vid i bent the cards a little so that it will hopefully stay.

I love this routine cos it's so visual and has great impact. but i am also a skeptic as to whether this routine should be performed live as much i would like it to be.

And larry i really cant agree with you more that this routine is all about tempo. Now that i watch my own vid i feel that some parts have been done too quickly. Hopefully more people will watch this and give me their advice on this too.

One last qns. Is it better to perform with patter or no patter?

ZiAn

With Patter, It is meaningless to see a routine that doesnt make sense in the beginning. Example: It is okie to show 4 aces in the beginning, and then u hold on your other hand, then did something, then hey, it appears.

So audience wont understand, the did something part. What is so great about it? Without patter, they will only keep seeing Aces appear on the table, and if you dun say anything, for close up, it is very dangerous as since you din say anything, the audience much just hand itchy and flip the cards on the table.

lastly, it is okie to bend the card, not too much, but just a bit will do, another way of controlling the D is holding it with your middle finger and thumb, and pushing it onto the table using your thumb while your middle finger open, its like dropping the card while pushing.

The only routine that I know using Aces that is without patter is the Grandfather aces, without patter is fine in that routine due to the structure of it, that create no suspicious thoughts to the audience. :)

I do not agree with Larry at all.

Quote: "It is meaningless to see a routine that doesnt make sense in the beginning. Example: It is okie to show 4 aces in the beginning, and then u hold on your other hand, then did something, then hey, it appears."

Such direct magic, who wouldnt understand? If layman is unable to understand this, I do not see why they'll understand Grandfather Aces. In grandfather aces, you show 3 indifferent cards and 1 ace, in which the ace changes into a indifferent card, creating the illusion that 'the ace has vanished'. In fact, I find the invisible palm more direct than grandfather aces; palm the card, show it vanish, and appear.

Thus, there are alot alot of routines that do not require patter, if you come to think about it. Even ACR, colour changes routines, sandwich routines, coin routines/matrixes, triumph effects, rubber bands like CMH etc, in my opinion, do not require patter. Of course, you must do and deliver it properly to the audiences lah.. :lol:

Sometimes, I find that it is the patter that destroys the trick, because the patter brings the attention of the audience AWAY, in other words, misdirect them, which is NOT required in some routines. Do you need misdirection in ACR? CMH? Triumph routines? For me, I do not. I rather them to focus on whatever I'm doing, so at the end of the trick, they'll have nothing to say but: "Wah.. Really is magic, I never look away at all lor.." instead of "Aiya, he misdirected us just now lah.." :wacko:

Still not convinced? Check out Apollo and Shoot Ogawa's Cultural Xchange series. 2 fantastic DVDs of SPEECHLESS performances. The routines inside are all done without saying a single word, and yes, they're FANTASTIC effects, doubtless. :lol:

No offense thou, everyone's got their performing style, maybe you're those type who can talk very well one? Haha.. :P Cheers! :)

I think with the standard Invisible Palm routines, there is a substantial amount of risk involved, such that I would not personally perform it in a live situation.

What I would suggest is experimenting with other similar routines which have more or less the same effect to the audience. I believe Larry Jennings have a pretty good version where there are transpositions between the pack and the in-hand packet, reducing a lot of risk since cards aren't left singly on the table. You may also want to consider effects which uses the 'invisible palm' presentation to make cards transpose to the pocket, my favorite being 51 cards to the pocket.

Agree with dtjk.

Its up to individual when everything beat down to earth. Ya. So in short, if you know you can handle without patter, do it. If you know you cannot handle without patter, do it with patter.

CheeRS
Larry
P.S Everyone got different views, thats why the forum is formed.