Perform Color Match for $5

I rarely suggest electronic methods when I’m TV consulting.

Unless when electronics are the very best method for the trick—like a magic watch or every Marc Kerstein app. Often electronics open up a whole new range of possibilities for the solo performer. Technology may be integral to the trick, like searching for a random word on Wikipedia.

When you shoot telly, the cost of any trick must factor in the location fee, shooting crew, editorial crew, transport, camera hire, contributors (if they’re getting paid), and more. So even an Ambitious Card routine could cost you $10k on a good day. The stakes are high, the entire shoot could be entirely based around one trick and when the "magic isn't ready," it can be a tad stressful.

I learned from the best to always prepare extra gimmicks and backup methods:

• When I started consulting, I wanted to use an electronic reel for a shoot. An older and wiser consultant wanted to fill a closet door with a fake brick wall then hide a human in there for an entire hour to yank fishing line instead. Guess which method failed in rehearsal, and which one we used for the shoot?

• Another time, a performer wanted to use a digital impression pad—a second older, wiser magic consultant set-up a carbon paper layer inside the pad as a back-up. When we made a mistake and incorrectly set up the digital pad on the final take of the evening, the older consultant (in costume) went in to retrieve the pad, and the carbon paper saved us.

• At my first-ever consulting gig, when an older and wiser consultant discovered how easily the non-technology based gimmick could break (after I dropped and smashed it), they decided we would spend the evening making back-ups. We stayed in the office until 3 AM, making back-up gimmicks. The shoot’s call time was 6 AM.

Always prepare a backup.

OK, Let’s do this

The concept of knowing which color pen is selected dates back to Tony Anverdi. It’s now been perfected by ProMystic with their incredible system.

To my mind, the use of this idea was made infamous after my old boss Justin Willman performed the trick on Ellen. Justin has a delightful knack for taking off-the-shelf tricks and making them well and truly his own. In this case, so much so that ProMystic added this disclaimer to their site stating Willman’s routine is not included with your purchase.

ProMystic is a wonderful company, and this is a wonderful and reliable trick. ProMystic’s site also states:

So please, although this post is simply a creative exercise—if you try any of these methods for knowing which colored pen is selected and wish to perform the ProMystic’s Picasso routine, purchase Colormatch. I won’t teach the Picasso routine. I’ll use some basic examples like circling celebrity names or drawing random shapes.

Let’s Find Six Back-Up Methods

A fun way to test the brain and train your creativity. We are unlikely to come up with a better method for the solo performer, but it’s worth exploring. Hopefully, you’ll get a little insight into how a magic consultants brain weirds out because I’m writing these as I think ‘em, then redrafting.

1. Dead Weight

My mind goes straight to off-the-shelf tricks that involve knowing which object has been selected. If I can ever think of a method that already exists off the top of my head, I’d likely buy that and use it for TV.

Chase is right, and the same goes for methods. I’d rather spend a week dressing the method we find on day one than a week looking for a better method.

Oddball by Marc Oberon. Now, that’s a brilliant trick. A bag with several balls in is passed along a row of spectators on stage. One of the balls is black, and the others are white. The magician knows instantly which spectator is holding the black ball.

Much like Willman’s forever ownership of the best ColorMatch presentation. Oddball was best performed, to my memory, by Derren Brown many many years ago. I love Derren’s presentation for a simple reason—you are so focused on working out how the hell he’s doing it, that you never give the props a second glance.

I encourage you to purchase Oddball. I hope I don’t offend anyone by tipping that the method involves weight. It’s a brilliant, satisfying, simple, reliable method.

Can I drop a couple of fishing weights in five colored sharpies?

Will I feel the difference as each one is taken randomly from my open palm?

I reckon the only way this weighted method could ever work is with multiple spectators. The issue is, for the pens to be weighted differently enough for you to tell the difference between each colored pen—your spectator will likely also feel the difference.

This was a fun exploration, but I think the closest we’ll get is a presentation like this:

The magician takes five sharpies, with identical lids, but one of them is actually bright pink below its lid. The magician shuffles the sharpies, and while she looks away, she holds them out in her open palm for each spectator to take one. At this point, the magician knows which spectator has the pink pen, and she can do whatever routine she ruddy well wants.

You can purchase Marc’s trick here before performing this sharpie variation.

2. One Way Force

The simplest, most fooling and most overlooked card force in magic is the one-way deck. Let’s say you want to force the four of hearts, well, grab yourself a deck full of the four of hearts and job’s a goodun.

I think magicians overlook this method because they consider it lazy. Or perhaps its the opposite and they CBA to carry a second deck of cards for one card force, when they could just do a riffle force.

Layman do not expect you to carry two decks of cards, to switch out mid-performance just to get them to pick the four of hearts for one trick. They do expect you to riffle just a little bit further after they say “stop.”

So where does this get us, how could a one-way force look for a colour match?

The magician hands the spectator a list of five celebrity names. The magician takes five colored pens, all with black lids and mixes them. Facing away, she holds the pens behind her back for the spectator to select one. They take one, uncap it and circle a celebrity as instructed by the magician. This repeats four more times until all the celebrities are circled. The colors match the magician’s prediction perfectly, including Lindsay Lohan.

Much like a one-way force deck, this method relies on far more props than expected, but also a stupidly simple method. The magician has five sets of pens.

• Five blue pens with black lids.

• Four red pens with black lids.

• Three yellow pens with black lids.

• Two green pens with black lids.

• One orange pen with a black lid.

The magician begins with the first set of blue pens. They know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the first pen chosen at random will be blue. Then while the spectator is busy circling their first celebrity, the Magician is busy switching the other four blue pens for the next set of four red pens. And so on, and so on.

Side note: Did you realize Lindsay Lohan plays both twins in The Parent Trap? Wild.

3. Blind Luck

Spirit writing is an underperformed and ancient effect. The spectator closes their eyes and scribbles over a blank piece of paper. When they open their eyes, the magician points out that the drawing sort of resembles Lindsay Lohan’s twin from The Parent Trap (also played by Lindsay Lohan). Of course, you’re not restricted to predicting Lindsay Lohan; other actors who play twins are out there, like Armie Hammer.

A childishly simple method to achieve this is to make sure there’s absolutely no ink inside the pen, and then switch the blank paper for one with a drawing when they close their eyelids. And of course, this method is not limited to spirit writing. You can force things—asking spectators to circle a paragraph behind their backs with a pen that’s out of ink, on a page that already has the words “Armie Hammer is the dude who played the twins in The Social Network” circled upon it.

The only downside is that you may need an audience to really sell the effect to the spectator.

The magician leaves the spectator on stage with a tub of coloring pens and a large pad ready to be colored in on an easel. For the outcome to be as random as possible, the spectator will be left alone on stage and blindfolded. One by one they’ll reach down to grab a pen at random, uncap it and draw different shapes on the page (which faces away from the audience).

You could always perform the trick with the lights out which might be fun.

4. Hanging on by a Thread

I will avoid thread at all costs. I did a project once, and we used a method with a lot of thread. The method was a suggestion from Stuart MacLeod. Who happens to be a lovely guy and an incredibly talented human. I hadn’t met him in real life at that point, and I have a strict rule of strongly dodging methods suggested by consultants on the other side of the planet.

You quickly notice that methods are often more impossible to execute when suggested by a consultant who won’t be at the shoot.

Of course, this time, the method worked flawlessly, and it was one of the best reactions I’ve seen. Love you, Stu.

If you hold five pens in your fist and shuffle them, there might be a way to keep track of their order. No, that’s not it. That would require too much mental math at the end of the shuffle. All I need to know is which pen gets picked. So what’s a good way of knowing which pen is selected that doesn't ruin my wonderful fisting sharpie shuffle.

Thread. Four hoops of thread, from the bottom of each pen around one of my four fingers. I can still have a fifth pen in the mix with no thread attached. When the spectator pulls away one of the coloured pens as I hold them behind my back, I’ll feel the thread break on one of my four fingers. The first finger is the red pen, the second could be the blue pen, and I suppose if I don’t feel any thread break, I’ll know it was the orange pen that didn’t have a loop of thread on it.

How refreshing to see a thread method that actually relies on the thread breaking.

5. Second Sight

When in doubt, use an accomplice. The beauty of this is that you can do this tonight, with your friends, in the pub, with scotch eggs (That’s a niche U.K. covid19 scotch egg joke—apologies to international readers, of which there are currently 2).

1. Red

2. Blue

3. Green

4. Purple

Get your pal to sit next to you at the table and stomp on your foot once for red, twice for blue, and so on. Using an accomplice is almost always the fastest, most affordable and reliable method available to you—depending on the kind of friends you keep.

If you do happen to have terrible friends, come up with another way to obtain second sight. Spot the difference….

A. The magician sets up her prediction, she hands over some pens, then she looks away.

B. The magician sets up her prediction, she hands over some pens, then puts on a blindfold.

OK. So we need to sort out the logic of this a little. Why is the magician wearing a blindfold? Perhaps it’s because she wants the audience to see the spectator making the drawing, so she must wear a blindfold. Maybe it’s because she hasn’t made her prediction yet. Now I’m wondering what the justification for looking away is in the original routine… Anyway, when you power through that to find a logical reason to be wearing a blindfold, you might end up with a stronger trick. Who knows.

6. Buy Some Time

Ultimately, two factors determine the seemingly fair outcome.

1. The color of the pen, chosen by the spectator

2. The action taken with the pen, decided by the magician.

The beauty is that the magician supposedly does not know which pen color is suggested when she names the action taken with it. But let’s reverse things up, or maybe give ourselves more time. We just need to make it look like we chose the next action before we knew the color of the pen.

Blake Vogt sells a printable PDF gimmick that allows the magician to display one of four multiple-outs. I can not tell you how much it upsets me that Blake does not yet own a custom domain name for his Shopify store. Blake is lovely though, and you should absolutely check it out. It’s 20 bucks, which is roughly 15 British pounds or 3 custom domain names.

The beauty of this final suggested method is that you can perform it on Zoom, which magicians do now the world has gone to shit.

1. Pin a prediction envelope to the wall behind you.

2. Ensure the spectator has a red, blue, orange, green, and pink pen at their end.

3. Display your four pieces of paper; each one has a shape written upon it.

4. Choose one folded piece of paper at random and hold it up in the frame.

5. Get the spectator to randomly pick a color pen—let’s say they pick red.

6. Unfold your paper; it says “Square.”

7. Get the spectator to draw a square.

8. Repeat five more times for the remaining shapes.

9. Open your prediction envelope; it’s a perfect match.

We did it, congrats.

Let me know which of the six options is your fave? Also, hit me up in the comments with topic suggestions for future posts. This is only post number one! Lots of fun stuff to be explored. 💬

This is a subscriber-only post. Thank you! I’ll use the revenue from the first subscriber to cover the cost of the domain name I just bought;