I worked with Calen Morelli years ago when he showed me a trick he sometimes performs for laypeople. It absolutely blew my mind. Calen sure does know when to play for magicians and when to play for laypeople. The trick did not fool me, not at all. But it knocked my socks off and left me totally delighted. There was undeniable skill involved, and he’d clearly spent months, if not years, practicing the little stunt, and I was quite in awe. I still think about it every now and then and remind myself of how incredibly creative you can be without filling that urge to fool magicians.

It was smart, funny, and unexpected. Here’s the trick…

1. The Set-Up

First, Calen borrowed my phone and did something to it that weirded everyone in the room out. Everyone in the room. Even the people at the back busy doing something else. It was weird enough for people who didn’t see or hear it to pay attention too.

2. The Force

Next up, Calen did a simple card force. Nothing special, but it didn’t need to be. Remember, the majority of laypeople believe the cross-cut force to be a Christmas miracle. Sure, I’m so incredibly proud of you for being able to classic force as well as Eric Leclerc, but at the end of the day, a one-way deck does wonders.

3. The Reveal

Calen got me to open my phone and do something to the weird thing, and I was utterly delighted. The entire room was. He’d managed to reveal the card in a way I’d never seen and never knew was possible. Not only was he making incredible use of the technology on my phone, but he’d also clearly spent months training himself to do the trick.

I’m not going to tell you what he did, and here’s why…

Everyone Needs Their Own Reveal

I really love how Calen has the capacity to pitch differently for laypeople. He understands what’s powerful to an everyday audience. People forget Calen started working with Copperfield and has plenty of experience creating magic for the real world and the TV world.

I find it fascinating how magicians are obsessed with methods—I know, I write about it a lot. Magicians usually get into magic because they want to know a secret. That’s the first domino in a long old obsession with method after method until eventually, you fool Penn and Teller.

If I asked you right now to show me five ways to force a card, could you do to? How about ten? What about twenty card forces? Great, now show me five ways to reveal a card.

It should be easy, and there’s often no skill required in revealing a card. You could probably improvise your way through a couple now. And yet, while we all know so many card forces, we’ve happily sat and learned and rehearsed. None of us knows many ways to reveal a card.

Why don’t magicians all have their own unique card reveal? Surely it’s not that hard for everyone to come up with a totally original playing card reveal.

The irony is that if you performed the same reveal with ten different card forces, you would likely bore your audience. If you perform ten different card reveals with the same force, you’d likely delight them.

The whole point of a force is that it goes unnoticed. It seems strange that magicians do not put more effort into the card reveals. That’s the part of the trick the audience will retell the next day. Spectators are bored of pick a card tricks, so the reveal needs to be wonderful.

We all spend so much time learning forces and switches when we only really need to know one of them. Honestly, does the spectator care if it was a freely thought-of card or a forced card… probably not if you do it right.

Some magicians get it. In fact, let me quickly go and find three examples of popular magicians performing a card force with an original reveal.

That was a fun ride, huh. Hold on one sec while I make a controversial statement.

AN ON CAMERA CARD FORCE IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN ANY OFF-CAMERA PRE-SHOW FORCE.

I feel like a weight has been lifted. Magicians are all obsessed with pre-show at the moment; that’s when you basically do something like a force before the show or earlier than what’s shown on the telly. Pre-show is brilliant for A LOT of things, and we’ll cover them at some point. What it’s terrible at are card forces. If you ask a spectator to name a card freely, it’ll look like they’re in on the trick, and it’ll almost always look disastrously boring. A friend of mine is about to be on America’s Got Talent, and he wanted to do a trick with a freely named item, and the producers said that would look boring and asked him to write them all down on a pad instead… if only there were an easy way to force things on a pad, eh.

Look, I’ll kick things off by throwing up a bunch of card reveals. You can then leave your ideas in the comments or keep them in your head and one day perform them all forevermore.

1. Send a live photo to a friend before the trick. In the end, get them to press and hold it to see the live video of you turning around the card to reveal it’s there’s.

2. Spill a drink at the start of the trick, then at the end, notice that the liquid landed in the shape of the card.

3. Turn off your digital zoom background to reveal the card is painted on the wall behind you.

4. Perform the trick while a drone films you from above. After a card is chosen, you lower the drone, and the card is attached.

5. Force a card and a location, then look it up on Google Maps, and you’re stood there holding their card.

6. The playing card is the bookmark of the book you happen to be carrying around.

7. Print the card on the bonnet of your Tesla, then get it to drive to you by itself.

8. Place the card in your friend’s wallet, then wait five years.

9. Print the design of a vape on the back of a playing card, then fold it into a vape shape. Switch it in from a real vape and unfold it to reveal their card.

10. One of these things, with the final answer being the playing card: Cootie Catcher

I Give You, Eric Leclerc…