Change How You Think About Changes

When I’m consulting on a project, and a client tells me they intend to make something huge disappear, my first question is, “Can we just make it appear instead?” Method-wise, it’s much easier to make something invisible when no one is looking for it.

When you vanish an object, an audience’s first thought is…

…and then they will proceed to look for where the object could have ended up.

You’re leaving them with a question, an unsatisfying conclusion.

When you make an object appear, you’re giving them a button. A clear ending and something to focus on, which is usually a delight. Even if they do think…

…it’s too late for them to look for where it was hiding, and the moment has passed.

Vanishes can be as astonishing as appearances and sometimes stronger. But it’s worth asking the question, could this be as powerful as an appearance instead?

There’s a similar question you should apply to changes (any trick that involves a magical change). That question is… should we be doing this the other way around?

We hear the term “ends clean” in magic trick trailers, so we’re all pretty up to speed with the concept. If you’re changing a blue object into a red one, the red object must be fully examinable, and it matters far less if the spectator can closely inspect the blue one. There are ways for both objects to be examinable, but we can agree it’s more important that the second object is examinable.

You want that continuous shot from the moment the magic color change happens to the moment it’s in the spectator’s hands being examined.

Surprisingly, I still see tricks that start ungimmicked and end gimmicked. This tends to be because the final object in most magical changes tends to be unusual. So, that object needs to be fabricated. Perhaps you’re changing the internals of one fruit for another or making a regular apple become jumbo-sized. The second object is likely going to be human-made, so many magicians will make it unexaminable.

A plain brick wall changing to a wall filled with colorful graffiti is a good example. The final form of a graffitied wall isn’t that unusual, but many magicians, when working on a method, will be asking this question…

Whereas the question consultants would ask is…

Perhaps a fake brick wall layer printed on fabric that an accomplice can quickly pull away to reveal the graffiti.

What’s amazing about this is most magicians already apply this thinking idea to restorations. Working hard to make a signed playing card appear ripped when it isn’t, for example.

But now that you’re changing how you think about changes, you can push that thinking to an extreme….

Let’s examine a concept and principle used by successful consultants called the Never Change principle. And the concept is simple; what if the object you’re changing never actually changes and was always impossible from the start?

When you wrap your head around the never changes principle, you can take it to extraordinary lengths. You can create change magic tricks that are 10x more powerful, universal and permanent. The key is to find final form objects that feel unusual or impossible but are not at all — objects we are familiar with but have elements we’ve never actually paid attention to.

I can sense I’m having difficulty explaining the principle, so here are five examples. These are only ideas. They’re unfinished and only here to illustrate the concept.

Never-Change The Water Level

Do you know what’s very difficult to change permanently? The level of a river or ocean. What’s easier to change? The level of a river meter stick. Instead of focusing on that as the problem, do the opposite and apply the never-change principle.

By creating a gimmick that lowers the reader into the water. You’re creating the illusion that the river level has permanently shifted. When, in fact, the reading was wrong to start with, and you corrected it.

Never-Change The Time For Everyone

Now that you’re more up to speed with the never-change principle. You can start to expand its horizons. Find something that’s already universally permanent, and make this your ending. For example, 99% of watch images and marketing are set to 10:10.

So, perform a trick in which you make the time on a watch in a magazine ad change from 12:30 to 10:10, but not only does it change there, but it also changes for every clock photographed anywhere in the world. The spectator can even take out their phone and search for watch photos or look in the window of a nearby watch shop to confirm.

Never-Change The Moon

It’s difficult to change a half moon into a full moon for everyone. But what if the original half-moon was just a prop? Switching that out in the sky for the full moon behind it could be a Christmas miracle.

You’ll leave your audience driving home and looking up at the moon thinking how the hell did the magician do that…

Never-Change A Tattoo

Changing a tattoo might appear like an impossible challenge. But when you apply this concept, you only need to change a tattoo back to the way it was originally.

Have an artist give the spectator a tattoo, and during that process, they can add a fake top layer tattoo you remove during the performance. For the spectator, you just permanently changed their tattoo for the rest of their life.

Never-Change Someone’s PIN Code

It’s much easier to hypnotize someone than to hack into a bank and change someone’s PIN. Start by hypnotizing someone into recalling their pin incorrectly out loud. Then make a magical gesture and change their pin for their card to be a four-digit number that the other spectators “randomly” generated.

You could probably do a careful audience-managed version of this in which the spectator writes down their pin, and you switch that for a different handwritten pin. Though this is a very half-thought-out idea…

Change the way you think about changes.

Instead of coming up with impossible objects, start looking for them in the real world. Keep an eye out for weird shaped fruits and album artwork with interesting graphics.

Consider the objects we handle every day and rarely pay attention to. Do you know exactly where the Nike logo is on your clothing, which side of your credit card the chip sits on the number plate on your neighbor’s car, and which playing card is printed on the bicycle box?

• Add a fake Nike logo elsewhere on the clothing.

• Add a fake credit card chip to the opposite side.

• Add a fake number plate above the original.

• Add a different card to the bicycle playing card box.

Then, never change them all back to the way they always were.

The possibilities are endless.