Chris Philpott - Hundredth Monkey Vol 1
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Chris Felpott and this is The 100th Monkey.
00:04 There are three effects on this DVD, including The 100th Monkey, where a volunteer from the audience mind reads someone else.
00:25 The more people concentrate on this, the better.
00:28 [music]
00:30 It's also speechless, where you take away someone's ability to read.
00:43 Right here, okay. This will be temporary, you will get it back, don't worry.
00:49 One, two, three.
00:55 [reading]
00:58 That doesn't make sense.
01:19 It doesn't make sense. Sound it out for me, if you could.
01:24 Co-sisting.
01:25 Co-sisting, that's really close. That's actually really close.
01:29 Just sound it out.
01:32 Low-I.
01:34 Pyrrhony.
01:36 [laughter]
01:39 That was a cool mock-up.
01:48 That's a cool mock-up.
01:50 That's how I make it look pretty.
01:52 That's creosine.
01:53 Co-sist.
01:55 That's so weird.
01:59 Oh my gosh.
02:01 Applause.
02:11 Applause.
02:12 I'm trying to figure out what you did to me.
02:16 That was awesome, you heard me? This guy is incredible.
02:20 Ship me out with that.
02:22 Hi, I'm Chris Philpott and this is The 100th Monkey
02:33 slash Speechless slash The 6th Scent.
02:37 So what's in this package?
02:38 Number one, postcards.
02:40 Number two, a couple of DVDs.
02:42 One you've obviously found that has verbal instructions on it.
02:48 The other one has JPEG artwork and a PDF of the written instructions.
02:56 The labels may say everything's on one.
02:59 They were a little last minute switcheroo.
03:03 So it was just so much easier to navigate with all the material on two DVDs.
03:10 So you have two now.
03:12 I'm going to try to keep these brief.
03:15 It may mean that I'll have to edit the crap out of this.
03:19 Maybe not.
03:20 I've ordered these instructions a little differently than the written ones.
03:24 With these, I'm going to start with the easiest, simplest, most straightforward effect.
03:30 I do exactly the opposite in the written instructions because, you know,
03:33 the people who prefer written instructions, they want to get into all the details and meat.
03:39 So that's what I do.
03:41 There are a lot of different methods used for these effects.
03:44 But the central one used in everything here is something called hybrid images.
03:50 Hybrid images, it's two images superimposed on each other.
03:56 One using long wavelengths, one using short wavelengths.
04:00 But basically, it looks different whether you view it close up versus far away.
04:04 So you may have seen on the Internet Marilyn Monroe,
04:07 or if you go to Albert Einstein, that's a hybrid image.
04:11 Hybrid images look cool, but it's not convincing.
04:15 I mean, you look at that one, she doesn't all totally switch over to him.
04:21 I spent a lot of time playing around with it and discovered that it actually works really well with words.
04:27 Especially words that look similar.
04:31 The same number of letters, the same first and last letters.
04:37 Then all of a sudden, the illusion just becomes so convincing.
04:42 So this opened up a lot of possibilities.
04:46 The effects on this DVD, there are some others I'll be releasing shortly.
04:50 Sometimes the illusion is so perfect it looks like real magic.
04:54 But it is a light-based illusion, so you have to be aware of the lighting.
04:59 It doesn't really work in a really dim room, unless you just happen to be under a spot.
05:05 In which case, it'll work fine.
05:07 It doesn't work, for example, with someone who has terrible vision.
05:11 So, as you would with a book test, don't choose someone who has terrible vision to be your on-stage volunteer.
05:19 I'm going to need someone who doesn't need reading glasses to help me up on stage.
05:25 Done. No one thinks of anything because there's reading involved.
05:29 The relative lighting, in really bright light, you have to make sure the audience is seated a little farther back.
05:38 Fortunately, you can test all these things beforehand, but I'm just saying, just be aware of them.
05:44 Just do a little test, you know, 30 seconds before you perform is more than enough time to see the relative distance you need.
05:55 To make the illusion perfect for both the on-stage volunteer and for the people out in the audience.
06:04 One other thing that affects the illusion is whether you're filming it or not.
06:09 Cameras almost always tend to see the far away version, even if they're quite close.
06:16 So, that's going to make this tutorial a little awkward, because I'm going to be showing you cards and you're going to be seeing one thing.
06:25 I see quite something different. Just be aware of that going in.
06:29 Now, this will affect television performances, if you want to do this on television.
06:34 By the way, you are totally free to do that. I do encourage you to give me a call.
06:41 Joe Skilton did my Tossed Up Book test on Masteries of Illusion. Joe contacted me and I worked with him.
06:48 As magic creators, we all want our effects to be just perfect, especially on television, where a lot of people are going to see it.
06:57 So, feel free to contact me. You have the rights to do it.
07:00 If you want to do it on TV, by all means, but I perhaps can help in that regard.
07:06 Your package comes with 12 cards. Let me talk about the cards for a moment.
07:12 10 of them are for Speechless. 2 are for The Hundredth Monkey.
07:19 You'll notice when you look at the files to make these that some are labeled bright, some are labeled dim, and some are labeled mid.
07:28 These give you an idea of the kind of light levels that is appropriate to use that card in.
07:35 I tried to give you a selection here. The ones on top are cards intended for bright light.
07:43 The ones on the bottom are intended for low light.
07:46 Notice also the wording is much smaller on the cards meant for bright light.
07:52 That helps with the illusion in really bright light. They're larger in dim light.
08:01 The ones in the middle are appropriate for most lights in between.
08:06 You'll also notice that some of them have duplicates.
08:10 These are not duplicates when you examine them closely. One is gimmicked and one is not.
08:17 So, this will say maintenance whether you're really close up or really far away.
08:23 The two other cards are both examples of something I call the Subtle Monkey. We'll get to that shortly.
08:31 Speechless. In this you take away a person's ability to read.
08:36 How you frame that is up to you. Whether you want to say, "I'm going to hypnotize you."
08:41 You'll go into a pre-verbal state, which is nice.
08:43 I mean, I think there's a really nice point in a person's life when they can speak, but they can't read.
08:52 It's like they're aware of the world, but they can't really analyze it.
08:57 I think in some ways that's the moment of childlike wonder that we're trying, as magicians and mentalists, to instill in our audience.
09:07 So, to play this up, I think it is quite poetic and beautiful.
09:13 Or you can just play the Spengali and I touch their forehead and take away their ability to read.
09:21 You can cast a spell. You can do it any way you want.
09:27 The cards in this effect are designed so that they look one way.
09:34 They look like words, slightly long words, words that are prone to be mispronounced.
09:41 Words that a five-year-old would have trouble pronouncing.
09:46 But when you look at them close up, can you see that? You probably can't.
09:50 They're not any recognizable words. They might tease you into, "Oh, I recognize that word."
09:57 So, "indispensable," you see at the beginning of it, "Indiana."
10:02 So, your mind just sort of jumps to that. You go, "Indiana-spo-blah."
10:08 "Conscience" becomes "coo-chis-nee."
10:13 The double "c" is common in Italian.
10:18 So, we have some familiarity with it, but no one really knows how to pronounce it.
10:23 It's meant to baffle people a bit.
10:26 Other words are, you know, they very directly tie into the theme or whatever themes you want to play up.
10:34 "Education," for example.
10:36 Now, there's quite a lot of comic potential in this.
10:41 I mean, there's a Monty Python sketch, all based on people unable to pronounce words.
10:49 It is a funny thing to see someone losing their ability to read.
10:54 Let's talk about how to end the effect.
10:57 One way is with this card, "Applause."
11:00 If you show it to the spectator on stage, and they say, "Apple-sauce, apple-sauce, apple,"
11:07 try to mess with it that way, and then only at the very end, reveal it to the rest of the audience,
11:14 it is a very nice applause cue.
11:17 At the end of the effect, it's a really good idea to give them back their ability to read.
11:22 One nice way of doing that is to say, "I will now give you back your ability to read,
11:27 and I will do it in three, two, one."
11:32 As you count backwards, you step away from them, and now can you read this word?
11:39 They will see the word visually transform, and it can be a really magical moment.
11:45 It can be a moment that they will have themselves that the rest of the audience doesn't share,
11:52 so it shows on their faces, and it can be just beautiful.
11:56 I've talked to some people who love this, and other people think,
12:00 "I don't know, it's coming awfully close to giving away the methodology."
12:05 Those kind of things are really personal decisions.
12:08 I leave that up to you if you like that finish or not.
12:12 It's really pretty. It's very magical-looking, but yeah, it does come a little close
12:17 to revealing the methodology. Your call.
12:21 As you approach them, as you are doing the induction, and walk away,
12:27 as you are releasing them from it, the blocking kind of hides the methodology.
12:33 I think that's more than enough, because it's a lovely moment.
12:37 In 1952, in the jungles of the island of Kojima in Japan,
12:45 scientists made one of the strangest discoveries of all time.
12:49 They were studying a troop of macaque monkeys in the wild,
12:52 when one day they saw one do something they'd never seen before.
12:56 He washed a sweet potato.
12:59 The other monkeys were quite interested in this.
13:02 You see, their sweet potatoes were dirty.
13:05 And pretty soon, another monkey began to wash his potato, and then another, and another,
13:10 and it was all proceeding quite normally until a certain threshold had been reached.
13:16 And suddenly, other macaques in other parts of the island started to wash their sweet potatoes.
13:25 Even monkeys on different islands, living in isolation, began to wash their sweet potatoes.
13:32 It was as if the idea itself was in the air.
13:37 So that's an introduction I used for the 100th monkey effect.
13:43 That's a true story. Supposedly, scientists have since poked some holes in the theory,
13:50 and there are other examples which support and disprove the theory.
13:55 It's pretty controversial.
13:57 But anyways, I always thought it was a really cool idea that if enough people are thinking a thought,
14:01 that thought can travel through the air.
14:04 There are studies which supposedly, if enough people do the New York Times crossword puzzle during the day,
14:10 it's easier for people to do it in the afternoon than in the morning,
14:15 just because a bunch more people have solved it.
14:18 Or maybe because they're wide awake.
14:20 I leave it to you.
14:22 But it's a lovely, very poetic story, and at least a little bit of evidence for a beautiful, magical idea.
14:32 I have wanted to use this in a magic effect for a long time,
14:38 and this was the first thing I thought of when I hit on these hybrid image/word techniques,
14:45 because with this, you can get the entire audience to think of the same thing.
14:52 There are a lot of different techniques that converge to make this effect possible.
14:56 There are two main methodologies.
14:59 One, explored in Chapter 2 of the written text, is called the subtle monkey.
15:04 I'll be dealing with that now.
15:07 And then the slightly more complicated version is in a later section.
15:12 That's in Chapter 1 of the book, because I've switched them.
15:15 The basic setup for all the hundredth monkey effects is this.
15:18 You have someone standing on the stage, you stand behind them, you hold a large card,
15:23 so everyone in the audience can see, large depending on your size of venue,
15:29 and then you ask them to think of a thing, and it should match.
15:36 This is a technique known as dual reality.
15:40 It's something that's hundreds of years old,
15:43 but I think it's going through a little bit of a resurgence right now.
15:46 Very cool stuff can be done with it.
15:49 It basically means that the effect that the volunteer on stage perceives
15:56 is different than what the audience out there perceives.
16:01 It can be very slightly different, it can be quite different, but it's just different.
16:05 So you have to think about your phrasing and how you frame the effect.
16:10 This combines the hundredth monkey principle with psychological subtleties.
16:15 For example, you see the word "cabbage."
16:18 When I look at this, I see "carrots."
16:23 The idea here is you take a well-known psychological force, such as the "carrots" force,
16:29 as in, name any vegetable, the first one that pops into your head.
16:34 It's more than likely going to be "carrots."
16:37 Second choice, "broccoli," so you can always do, name any vegetable.
16:41 First that pops into your head, any vegetable, like "broccoli."
16:44 That cuts down on the chance that anyone's going to pick "broccoli."
16:47 But you usually don't have to do that.
16:49 This is quite well-known. It actually became an internet meme,
16:52 which sucks a bit, because it was a pretty reliable force.
16:57 This, I think, really freshens it up, because you hold this up for the entire audience to see.
17:02 So, if you get everyone in the audience to think of this word,
17:06 you don't say it, because you're behind them and you don't want them to know.
17:09 You get them to think of this word, and you all concentrate on it.
17:12 And then you ask the person on stage, "Think of a vegetable."
17:17 First one that pops into your head.
17:19 Turn around. "Is this it?"
17:22 They will look at this, and they'll go, "Yes, that's it!"
17:26 What the audience thinks is going on is,
17:29 they think they've all been concentrating on "cabbage,"
17:32 and this person just had "cabbage" pop into their head, which is remarkable.
17:35 Who thinks of "cabbage?"
17:37 Close up, it actually says "carrots."
17:40 See the morph?
17:42 As long as you ask it the right way, you say, "Is this what you thought of?"
17:47 And they will say, "Yes, it's the most natural thing in the world."
17:50 It's kind of unusual to say, "Yes, I thought of the word 'carrots.'"
17:54 So, I wouldn't worry about that.
17:56 Another one here, well-known psychological force.
18:01 To the audience, they see the word "begonia."
18:04 You hold it up, you ask them to think of the flower.
18:07 First it pops into your head.
18:09 Imagine everything. Imagine the color.
18:11 Visualize it, and now, "Is this what you're thinking of?"
18:14 "They thought of a begonia!"
18:16 Of course they didn't think of begonia!
18:18 They thought of a rose, and the color red.
18:22 It is, again, a well-known psychological force.
18:25 I think someone's coming home.
18:27 Hello.
18:29 The second most likely choice in that case is "daisy."
18:32 Apparently, according to an effect by Paul Draper in Psychological Subtleties II, I think, by Banaszczyk.
18:39 Brilliant book.
18:41 The second most likely choice is "daisy," especially among younger audience members.
18:46 Again, you can cut that one off at the knees by saying, "Think of any flower like a daisy."
18:52 Then it's like, "I'm not going to think of a daisy. That would be stupid."
18:56 They will think of a rose, and it will more likely be red.
19:00 You've got a very powerful effect, because the rest of the audience thinks, "Wow, begonia. That's crazy."
19:07 What happens if it doesn't hit?
19:09 That's always a possibility with the psychological force.
19:13 Banaszczyk talks about some ways to get out of that.
19:17 One of your big advantages with this is nobody knows in advance how many times you're planning on doing this.
19:25 If you get the begonia right off, you can end right there.
19:32 If you don't hit begonia, nobody can see how many cards you have, so you can go to the next one.
19:39 If by chance you don't hit this one, I would suggest raising the stakes and going for one of the cards with two on it.
19:48 I talk about this technique in my article, "The Joy of Failure."
19:54 This is a technique screenwriters use all the time.
19:57 A character fails at something, and they face an even bigger challenge.
20:02 When they succeed in this one, it seems much more powerful.
20:09 This one from a distance says, "Throne and chest."
20:13 Close up, "table and chair."
20:16 Ask a person to think of any two pieces of furniture.
20:20 This one from a distance, "cat and toad."
20:25 From close up, a person on stage will see, "car and tree."
20:30 In this case, you ask someone to imagine that they are at home, look out the front window, and they see two objects.
20:39 What are they?
20:42 A well-known, very effective psychological force.
20:45 You're probably going to hit one of those.
20:47 Here's something else.
20:50 "Mycosis."
20:53 Hold this word up, and then ask a person to think of a childhood disease.
20:59 Most likely, they're going to say, "Measles."
21:02 That's what it says close up.
21:03 There's one other technique I outline in a text for using psychological forces with the hundredth monkey.
21:12 That's something I call, "The hundredth monkey with two outs."
21:15 For this, you have a card that morphs between the two most likely outs you will get when you ask a question.
21:23 For example, think of a color. The most likely answers are red and blue.
21:30 The way this works is, you hold up a card for the audience to look at.
21:34 It says, "red" on it.
21:36 Everyone concentrates on that word.
21:39 The tricky part of this is that while you have a high likelihood that you're going to hit on one of those two, you're not sure which one.
21:46 You have to introduce one other step.
21:49 What I like to do is to have a photograph, and it has a variety of colors on it.
21:54 It has some red, but it has no blue.
21:57 Then you ask, "Do you see your color in this photograph?"
22:01 If they say, "No," then they probably picked blue.
22:05 Then you say, "Oh, that's good, because I wanted you to pick this," and they will react because they see blue.
22:13 If they say, "Yes, it is," I say, "Okay, we're good. Everybody, tell them what color you were thinking of."
22:19 They will just shout out "red," and your person will say, "Yeah, that's what I thought of."
22:26 There's also a very cool psychological force by Colin McLeod that he allowed me to include on this.
22:33 Check that one out on the written instructions, because you have to get the text just so.
22:39 The 100th Monkey.
22:41 Unlike the versions using psychological forces, these hit all the time.
22:45 There's a trade-off. There's always a trade-off, because we're not real magicians.
22:50 The trade-off is you have to get the spectator to write down their answer.
22:58 Your preference, whichever you like to use.
23:01 You can combine it with psychological forces, but I'll get to that in a minute.
23:07 This version is a little conceptually tricky.
23:10 This is hard to explain.
23:12 Basically, the cards in this have two words.
23:21 One is a category of thing, like "month," and the other is an example of something from that category, like "march."
23:32 The audience sees the word "march."
23:36 The person on stage sees the word "month."
23:39 You see? Category "month," example of that category "march."
23:42 You ask them to think of a month, and they could very well say "march."
23:47 Not always. It's not a psychological force.
23:50 Here, Canada morphs into "country."
23:53 Here, Radiohead morphs into "rock band."
23:59 Here, Oldsmobile morphs into "automobile."
24:05 Okay, so that's how the cards are set up.
24:09 How do we use that?
24:11 Let me run through it.
24:13 Let's say you have one person on stage, and you can have more than one, but let's just say you have one.
24:18 You hold up the card, get everyone in the audience to think up the word "march."
24:25 Then you ask the person on stage to think of a month and write it down.
24:32 Now, you have to figure out what they've written down.
24:37 Fortunately, we mentalists have hundreds of years worth of techniques for figuring out what people have written down.
24:46 If you've got one of those little expensive electronic pads, use that. That's great.
24:52 I like Acidus Novus. Very quick, very efficient, very clean.
24:57 Oh, did I mention you need a pencil?
24:59 A short pencil. You can either finger clip from the beginning or have it in your pocket.
25:04 I like to finger clip because it's really easy to use.
25:06 Once you know which month your volunteer has thought of, you basically just write it down on the card right under the main word.
25:17 You'll notice on all these cards, it's a little bit fainter right underneath.
25:23 This allows you to write their word on it.
25:27 At the end, in the revelation, you say, "Is this your word?"
25:31 They're going to see the word "month" and their month written on here. January, underneath.
25:38 The fact that it has little squiggly lines here or on this card hides the pencil writing from the audience at large.
25:47 You can show it to them at the same time.
25:49 I like to stand behind the volunteer.
25:51 Ask them to turn around and say, "Is this the car you thought up?"
25:55 They will see the word "automobile" and "Hyundai" written down here, and they will say, "Yes."
26:01 The wider audience will see "Oldsmobile," and they'll think, "Holy crap, that's amazing."
26:05 This example, you've asked them to think of a country.
26:08 Everyone in the audience thinks they've chosen Canada.
26:11 The person on stage sees the word "country," and then whatever you've written underneath.
26:15 Uganda, perhaps, or Luxembourg.
26:19 What's your excuse for getting them to write down a word?
26:22 Well, what's your excuse when you get them to write down a word in any mentalist effect?
26:28 In some sense, you don't need one.
26:30 That doesn't mean it's not a valid question.
26:32 It doesn't mean that you can't think about the process a little bit.
26:35 The short answer to that is, "Write it down because I say so.
26:39 I'm in charge. This is my stage. I know how this works. You don't. Just do what I say."
26:45 And it's valid, especially if you have a bit of an authoritative character.
26:49 Other people like to really think it through and say, "Wow, I've just had too many people lie about what they were thinking to make me look bad."
26:59 You could turn that on its head.
27:02 Some people are too nice.
27:06 "This will totally not work," and they will say, "Oh, yeah, that's what I was thinking of, even when I wasn't thinking of that."
27:15 So get them to write it down. I like that.
27:17 If you have several volunteers on stage, you can say to the first one, "Don't say it out loud.
27:21 I don't want to influence the next few people. Just write it down for me."
27:25 And while they're doing that, you can show the word for the second person.
27:29 And then while the second person is writing it down, you can show the word for the third.
27:34 To be logically consistent, you really shouldn't have the third person write down their word then,
27:40 because there's no reason for them to hide it at this point.
27:44 So you may want to do it where the first two, you're using this technique,
27:48 and then on the third, you go to one of the psychological forcing techniques.
27:54 If that is the case, I would do the revelation in reverse order.
28:01 Start with the third person, because there is a chance of failure on this, and you don't want to end with a failure.
28:07 Here's another really interesting way of combining the two techniques.
28:12 Have three people up on stage. The first two, you're going to use psychological forces.
28:17 The third, you're going to use the card that says a long number when viewed from far away,
28:24 but close up, it just says number.
28:26 So the first two people, they do not have to write down their words.
28:30 The third person does. Why?
28:33 Who remembers a six-digit number?
28:37 The reason this is nice is because the first two people, there's a chance of failure,
28:42 but your third one is just remarkable.
28:44 Hitting a six-digit number and having that fail safe, that's a nice build on it.
28:50 And it's relatively easy as you're doing the revelations for the first two spectators
28:57 to scratch the six digits on the third card.
29:02 And then you've got a very strong ending where you nail a six-digit number.
29:08 If you're going to miss one of them, miss the first one.
29:14 Instead of an eight, have a nine.
29:18 And then every number after that, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, strong finish.
29:23 I think everyone's familiar with the concept of an idea just being in the air, the zeitgeist.
29:31 I think it strikes people as intuitively--you don't have to develop it.
29:37 I like to. I like to tell the story of the 100th monkey because I'm geeky that way,
29:42 but you don't have to.
29:44 There are completely other presentations that use these cards.
29:48 For example, if you want to do a mind control or "I'm going to put a thought in your head" kind of effect,
29:57 but you stand behind them and you say, "I'm going to try to put a thought in your head.
30:01 I will let everyone else in the audience know what thought I am going to try to put in your head."
30:06 They see the word "cabbage," and you say, "Now I want you to think of a vegetable.
30:11 Any vegetable, turn around, is this the one you thought of?"
30:13 They will see carrots and say, "Yes!"
30:15 So you put a thought in their head.
30:17 The same basic technique, but an entirely different plot.
30:22 You can use this as an example of a spectator reading your mind.
30:25 The same basic setup as 100th monkey.
30:28 They're facing the audience. You're holding up a card saying, "I am concentrating on something.
30:32 I'm concentrating on this. It is a vegetable.
30:36 Think of a vegetable. First one that pops into your head, turn around.
30:40 Is that the one you were thinking of?"
30:42 They have just read your mind.
30:44 So you don't have to talk about monkeys if you don't want to, but I like monkeys, so you've got to get some monkeys.
30:49 The sixth scent.
30:54 I always think it's nice when an audience leaves a mentalist show
30:57 knowing more about mind reading than when they went in.
31:00 I know it's not real, but we're storytellers, and the audience deserves a full, rich story.
31:07 Even if it's all make-believe, you want it to be real.
31:12 Sometimes small details can create that world, make it more vivid.
31:17 That's where I was coming from when I was doing this effect.
31:21 The thought that, though it's hard to read someone's mind,
31:26 it should be easier to tell what kind of thought they're thinking of.
31:31 I came up with this idea that you could tell generally what kind of thought someone is thinking.
31:38 In the same way that you walk into someone's house,
31:42 and you know if they're cooking Indian food or Italian food or French food.
31:47 You know if they're meat or fish.
31:49 You get the basic type, even though you don't know the exact meal that's on the stove.
31:57 So that's the premise of this piece.
32:01 I called it originally "100 Monkeys Upside Down"
32:05 because it's basically the same cards as the original "100th Monkey" effect,
32:10 but exactly reversed.
32:12 What would happen if I put it the other way around?
32:15 What could I do with that?
32:17 Where the audience sees "month", "automobile", "country", "furniture".
32:25 I've got four cards. I invite four people from the audience.
32:29 I explain to them that these are all different types of thought.
32:33 I hand them the cards. I turn my back.
32:38 They mix up the cards. Each one takes a card and then presses it to their chest.
32:43 You are able to tell very quickly by the aroma of thought which they're thinking of.
32:51 Are they thinking of a unit of time, like "month"?
32:53 Are they thinking of a thing, like a piece of furniture?
32:57 Are they thinking of a country, a place?
33:00 Are they thinking of an emotion?
33:03 Here's another thing for "thing". I printed out the wrong cards.
33:06 Anyway, while your back is turned, they distribute the cards amongst themselves,
33:09 then they hold them to their chest.
33:12 Now you come and unerringly tell who is holding which card.
33:17 The secret of this is...
33:21 I don't want to blow your mind here, but the cards are marked.
33:25 That is it. It is very simple.
33:28 The cards are marked on the back.
33:31 This is not marked. This is photo paper.
33:33 I provided some marking. Here are the marks I provided.
33:37 You'll see that there's a first letter, like an "F" for furniture, an "M" for month.
33:45 You can tell right away which card it is by just looking at the back.
33:51 These are kind of subtle.
33:53 If you want a stronger marking, pinching around the edges of the cards.
33:59 If you want to be really subtle, put a magnet in a piece of foam core board
34:06 and use a PK ring.
34:09 You can use a variety of methods for marking these.
34:12 You speed through this because the point of this is that you can tell this faster
34:17 than you would in normally reading a thought.
34:20 You do this two or three times quickly, you tell who's got which card.
34:24 The thing that really puts this over is the kicker,
34:28 because you tell them exactly what thought they are thinking.
34:33 It's not just a month. You tell them which month they are thinking.
34:37 That's where these cards come in.
34:40 The audience in the seats are going to see the word "month."
34:44 The people handling the card are going to see "March."
34:48 You really should check out the scripting that I have in the written instructions for this,
34:54 because it's nicely worded so that you can say,
35:00 "I want you to be very specific about your thought
35:04 so that there's a dual reality that works for both the people on stage
35:09 and the people in their seats."
35:12 As far as the people on stage are concerned,
35:15 they're passing around a word that says "March,"
35:19 and they're concentrating on "March."
35:21 Only at the very end of the effect do you say to them,
35:24 "You're thinking of a unit of time, a month. The month is March."
35:29 To them, they're thinking, "Yeah, of course. You got it right."
35:33 To the audience, they're thinking, "That's one step beyond.
35:36 You've told them exactly what unit of time."
35:39 There's no question. There's no pre-show. There's no anything else.
35:44 To them, it's an absolute miracle.
35:47 The same with country.
35:49 The people passing this around think they're looking at Canada.
35:54 When you say at the end, "You're thinking of a country, Canada,"
35:57 it's a very, very effective finale,
36:01 and that's what really makes this trick really, really lovely.
36:05 Dual reality is a marvelous technique. You can do miracles with it.
36:10 Some mentalists avoid it because they are concerned about what will happen
36:15 when people talk about the show afterwards,
36:20 the people who are on stage, the people who are in the audience
36:23 who have different recollections of what happened.
36:25 The first time I did this effect was at a group called The Elders,
36:28 a group of mentalists in Los Angeles.
36:31 One of my on-stage volunteers was an excellent mentalist named Alan Gittleson.
36:37 The discussion turned to, "Well, what happens if people compare notes
36:40 after the performance?"
36:42 Alan's take was this.
36:44 The illusion was so perfect for him on stage,
36:49 he just would not have believed the other person.
36:52 No, it said this.
36:55 He would be insistent, and they would each be insistent of their own point of view,
37:00 so much so they might reach the conclusion that the only possible explanation
37:05 was that the on-stage volunteer had been hypnotized,
37:09 which is not, you know, the worst thing.
37:12 You could leave them thinking.
37:14 So I myself am not worried about after-show chatter.
37:19 I think this could lead people into some pretty interesting mazes
37:24 of trying to figure this owl out.
37:26 Just a word about the JPEGs.
37:29 There is a file on your DVD full of artwork to create cards.
37:35 There is, at my last count, 173, I think, different files.
37:44 It can be a little overwhelming.
37:46 You're going, "What the heck? What are all these things?"
37:50 A lot of them are just duplicates of the same artwork for different light levels.
37:55 The mid-range should work pretty well for most purposes.
38:00 The bright works better in bright light or if you're using large cards.
38:07 The dim is better in low-light circumstances.
38:10 The blank, what you can do there is just print it up and then print it through again.
38:17 My parrot's talking.
38:19 Print it--OK, Stevie. That's good. You're a good boy.
38:23 You can print them up any size you want.
38:25 You can put them on electronic devices, laptops, iPads, a phone,
38:32 if it has a reasonably large-sized screen.
38:36 You can go to Walmart and have posters made.
38:42 If you see something like the word "wanton" morphing into the word "weapon"
38:48 and you wonder, "What the heck is that for?"
38:51 go to the written instructions.
38:55 There are some secrets there that I have not included here.
38:59 Let me just give you a brief overview.
39:01 I've got the files here in front of me.
39:05 They are arranged alphabetically, as files will be arranged.
39:09 The sixth cent cards are first.
39:14 Front of the cards, the back of the cards--oh, there's some pretty blue-colored ones.
39:18 After that, there is the hundredth monkey cards.
39:23 Oh, there's elephant morphing into airplane.
39:27 That's good. I'm going to leave you to discover how you can use that
39:31 on the written instructions. That's in Chapter 2, "Children."
39:35 Oh, there's a whole bunch of very pretty little backgrounds that you can add.
39:40 Oh, look at them all. That's crazy.
39:42 Then we get into the speechless cards.
39:46 Then there are, at the end, some speechless cards for the four phones.
39:54 I didn't go overboard on this, because every smartphone has different dimensions.
40:00 Basically, you want it to fill the frame.
40:04 I didn't test what all the brightness levels of every smartphone are.
40:10 You have to do your own tests with your own smartphone to get the right size.
40:16 To choose if you want to use the bright, mid, or dim,
40:21 you could be using them on tablets, which come in a variety of sizes and a variety of brightnesses.
40:27 Once you've got it figured out, you can use it again and again and again.
40:31 You can know automatically, before you go in without any testing,
40:36 which your relative distances are.
40:39 The person looking at it close up, he's good from one foot to three foot.
40:44 There's a sort of gray zone between four and five feet,
40:48 and then six feet to infinity. It's the other word.
40:52 You can just map it out beforehand, and then you're good forever.
40:57 One thing that I'd like to add is, with my last release, Tossed Out Book Test,
41:03 there were a lot of ideas that I had after I released it, and other people had.
41:08 So I encourage you to register by sending an email to me at chris@magicaonline.com
41:21 and as these ideas come in from people, I will, with their permission of course, share them with you.
41:29 Yes, there is a secret password that you should include in the subject line, as you do,
41:36 and the password is possumdixon.
41:41 I hope you enjoy The 100th Monkey and Speechless.
41:44 I hope you get a lot of use out of it.
41:47 Thank you very much.
41:49 [no audio]
42:08 Hi, I'm Chris Vilpott, and this is The 100th Monkey.
42:12 What's in this package?
42:14 Postcards, two DVDs, you've obviously found one of them.
42:19 That's the one with me giving the verbal instructions.
42:23 The label says it also has PDFs and JPEGs.
42:26 Don't believe it.
42:28 It was just such a mess to try to get it all in one, so we put those off on a separate...
42:35 So we put those off on a separate DVD.
42:45 So we put those off on a separate DVD.
42:51 Hi, I'm Chris Vilpott, and this is The 100th Monkey.
42:57 What's in this package?
42:59 Postcards, two DVDs, you've obviously found one of them.
43:07 Hi, I'm Chris Vilpott, and this is The 100th Monkey.
43:12 What's in this package?
43:14 Well, postcards, two DVDs, you've obviously found one of them.
43:19 The other one has JPEG artworks that you will need for the effect,
43:24 and a PDF of written instructions.
43:29 And a PDF of written instructions.
43:33 The label on this DVD says everything's on here.
43:37 It's not exactly true.
43:39 At the last minute, we decided to split the...
43:43 The label on this DVD says everything's on this...
43:49 The label probably says that everything's on this DVD.
43:53 It's not true. At the last minute, we decided to split them.
43:57 It was just much easier to navigate that way.
44:02 [clatter]
44:05 [clatter]
44:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]