How the world has changed since we launched the Video Chat Magic book. Will performed a run of his online show The Secret Connection, and he’s since worked as a consultant on shows such as The Prince of Egypt (West End), 2:22 (West End), The Cherry Orchard (featuring Ian McKellan) and A Christmas Carol (Adapted by Mark Gatiss). Steve has co-founded a new charity based on the principles of Effective Altruism and has been working with Charity Entrepreneurship to support the growth of evidence-based nonprofits. 

We’ve been very careful to not spam our users or use our mailing list to push out mediocre content, but as VCM no longer posts frequently, we thought it might be nice to bring your attention to another magic-oriented Substack, One Ahead by Rory Adams. Rory’s weekly newsletter breaks down TV magic shortcuts and reveals what really goes on behind the scenes of your favourite magic shows… he’s well placed to do so, having produced shows like Netflix’s Magic For Humans, ITV’s The Next Great Magician, and JSBC’s The Amazing Magicians. Rory is joined by some of the guest writers that contributed to VCM, as well as many others including Nate Staniforth, Lee Warren, Richard Young, Matt Pritchard, Christian Grace, and Archie Manners.

Below, as a taster, you’ll find a fun example of one of the many tricks taught in his newsletter. If you enjoy insights and tutorials like these, and you’re missing that feeling of a VCM newsletter arriving in your inbox, consider subscribing at www.oneahead.com

This Book Test Works With ANY Book: Learn it now!

STENO: No app, no memory work, & no peeking 👀

Lloyd Barnes had this to say about Steno:

When Rory told me how this worked on FaceTime, I literally hung up immediately and excitedly set it up to start performing — ANY book, GENUINE books, ANY page, ALWAYS ready; just incredible.”

Christian Grace said this about Steno:

This is one of the best new book test methods I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. Absolute gold!”

Here’s the Trick

You invite friends over for dinner because you’re a lovely sociable person with at least two friends. After they pester you to perform a trick for an appropriate amount of time, you give in and open the notes app on your phone — typing in the heading, Prediction, you then place the phone face-up on the table.

You can read minds. Your friends, Liam and Lucy, know this. It’s one of your main talents besides your ability to cook up a banging risotto — the one you dished up earlier that night. Mind reading works best with big long words because they’re much easier to decipher. But let’s make sure we choose a completely random big word.

You ask Lucy to choose a book from your bookshelf and ask Liam to pick any page number. Lucy decides upon the book Normal People and turns to page 53 as selected by Liam. After Lucy reads the first line of the page a few times in their head, you ask them to zone in on the longest word, repeating it over and over in their mind.

You focus intently before lifting the phone from the table and quickly typing in the word. You’re excited. You immediately turn the phone to Liam, letting them in on your prediction and locking it in by handing it to them.

You can’t change your mind.

This is it.

You ask Lucy to say aloud…

…for the first time…

…the random word she freely chose…

Cheering, she says.

Liam, holding your phone, leaps up in shock.

He turns the screen to Lucy.

It’s an exact match.

You wrote down Cheering.

Learn Steno: The Any Book Book Test.

That’s right; it’s got a name — Steno.

I usually show a friend a trick, and they tell me I’m crazy and need to put it out through magic shops instead of in a post for a few bucks. That’s not my style. So I’ll teach you lovely lot some tricks, and I’ll trust you to keep them a closely guarded secret forever.

There are three reasons Steno makes sense:

We note things on our phones. When I need to make a note, I instinctively go for my phone — this would not have been the case a decade ago. Don’t panic; there are no unique apps needed for this trick, and you do not need an internet connection. Once you set this up, it’ll work with regular books and always be ready. If you get this right, you’ll be able to borrow a book from a mates bookshelf.

There are two spectators. To achieve the effect, the performer must know the page number to achieve the effect. There are some sly ways to accomplish this. I’m a big believer that the best method is the one that works. The one that works, in this case, is to get them to tell you the page number. Sure, If you can read minds, why do you need to ask them to tell you the number? Well, they can’t read minds, so it’s perfectly justified to ask one participant to tell the other participant the page number they choose aloud.

The switch happens so fast. The Steno input occurs as you write down the word they’re thinking about. It does make sense for you to turn the phone screen to face yourself to type, the switch happens instantly, and you can display the prediction long before the hero spectator says it aloud. You can also use Steno to peak the word as you write the first letter of the word they’re thinking about.

An honorary mention goes to Teller’s “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” A quote I thought about many times as I spent days preparing this post for you.

Here’s the switch:

When Lucy picks the book Normal People and Liam names page number 53, as you go to type the word they’re thinking about, you type instead code np053. This input will automatically switch out for the longest word on the top line of page 53 from the corresponding book, which happens to be Cheering. See the GIF below:

You’re not limited to your Notes app. Steno works across devices and apps which means you can send your prediction in an Instagram DM, in a tweet, via email, and you can even type it out on your laptop/computer. Here’s a look at it as a text message with Normal People and a page 133 input:

Here’s How it Works:

This trick relies on Text Replacements, which are a standard feature on most phones and computers. If you head to your settings app, you’ll find it possible to provide keywords and replacements. Once set up, they’ll apply to anywhere you type across your linked devices. You tap the space bar to accept the replacement, and you can tap the “x” if you do not wish to use the replacement — this is nice because it means your fingers never leave the keyboard during the input.

Me struggling to spell sovereign.Some info from Apple:

You can create text replacements to automatically replace certain text with other text or symbols. For example, you can replace (c) with ©. You can export your text replacements as a file to back them up or share them with other Mac users.

Note: If you want to use your text replacements on another device (using the same Apple ID), you can use iCloud. Just set up iCloud Drive on your Mac, iOS and iPadOS devices, and sign in everywhere using the same Apple ID. When you add a text replacement on your Mac, it appears automatically on your other devices (and vice versa).

The above means you can import an index to one device, and it’ll sync across your existing and future Apple devices. It also means you can download an index of mine at the end of this post, and you can happily build your own.

Every index works with genuine books, so the books are legitimate, and you can even borrow them. I set my indexes up to swap for the most prominent word on the top line of the page.

You can use any book, so long as you download or create its corresponding Steno index. As the first part of the input code relates to the book name, you can easily add multiple Steno indexes to your devices for as many real books as you wish.

Steno works on Android too!

Take a look at some instructions here.

Some Performance Notes:

Before you start the routine, I recommend opening your phone and placing the phone face up, the screen on, on the table to lock in the idea that it’s a standard screen (it is) and that the entry starts blank. This note applies to predicting inside the Notes app and anywhere else, like in Messages or tweets.

I think this is important so when you lift the phone to type, the spectator trusts the screen starts blank. It also means you spend far less time writing the prediction because you don’t need to unlock your phone, find the right app and create a blank entry, for example, during the moment of pressure.

Next, I suggest asking if there’s an obvious longest word on the top line and if they look at all confused, ask them to check the opposing page. Every properly formatted book features odd pages on the right and even on the left — worth checking with the books you use.

So if they look confused and find a word on the opposite page, you’ll know it’s the page lower number if they started with an odd page number, and it’ll be a higher page number if they began with an even page number. This note is primarily for people who want to look away as the participant opens the book. Otherwise, you can watch to see if their eyes move to the higher or lower page.

I ask participants to avoid choosing character names if they happen to be the long word. Names repeat a lot in the book, which can make them easy to guess. I set up my indexes to skip character names, but you do not need to do the same. I genuinely think it’s less impressive if someone chooses a Harry Potter book and the lengthy word ends up being Dumbledore as opposed to something like frighteningly.

The vast majority of top lines have an obvious longest word. For the few pages with multiple long words, I add all of them to my index like this option/example. I also input these in the correct order, so the first word in the book is the first word in the index. Asking them to switch pages avoids them ending up on a page without an obvious long word.

They rarely end up on a page without an obvious long word. On the rare occasion they do, and they do not move to another page, you can proceed in different ways.

• You can ask them to focus on the first or last long word on the line.

• You can ask them to choose the word from the options freely, and then when you go to write your prediction, you get to peek at all of the possibilities. At this point, you can ask if the word contains certain letters, etc., to cut down to the word they chose. Delete the unnecessary words from the prediction.

• Alternatively, you could mind-read and include all of the long words.

My note is that if you get all the way to writing down your prediction and are not expecting to see multiple words appear from the index, is to continue as though convicted to writing down just one word.

Type it out, then place the phone face down, content. Then suddenly change your mind, “no, wait — I’m getting multiple words coming through, and it’s really tough. Did you almost go with another word? I think I know the one you chose, but maybe… hmmm… is there the letter Y in your word?”

Regardless of how they answer this question, you appear to need to change your mind. Pick up the phone and delete the extra word when you seem to be changing your prediction. I think this delay between seeing multiple words and fishing for letters is essential. It can’t seem as though looking at your phone is what prompted you to ask another question.

Some Index Notes:

It takes a few hours to set up an index. I find it easier to do on a computer, but you can also do this directly in your phone settings. It’s effortless, and you can do it with a podcast/music/film in the background. All in, I found that it took less time than it might take to practice a sleight before performing for the first time.

I suggest your input codes are a reasonable length. I combine the book title and three-digit page number such that the entire input is pretty close to the size of a standard long word. The goal is that the amount of typing seems justifiable. It would be weird if you only tapped a few keys.

Use input codes you are not going to type out in everyday life. This way, you avoid the agony of having words in your everyday documents and messages suddenly change to random long words, like choking or education.

Suppose you do not wish to index an entire book. You can limit the choice. Asking someone to name a page somewhere in the middle of the book, for example, might make it, so it is not necessary to index the first and last 50-100 pages. It doesn’t take long to set this up, though.

Trust your eye. Some short words look more prolonged than others because of the characters used. When this happens, don’t be afraid to add multiple words to your index. People are only human, and they won’t be counting out the characters. They’ll look for what seems to be the longest word, even if it’s one or two letters shorter than a word with lots of narrow i’s or l’s in it.

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to One Ahead. You’ll get instant access to the entire archive of articles plus more like this every week.

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The Secret Connection

“This looks like real magic” - Sky News

A brand new Zoom show, The Secret Connection features some of our favourite magic from the collection, as well as some astonishing new items, all wrapped up into a high quality 75 minute online experience. Performances are happening every week, and every attendee will receive a special box of props, including a custom pack of cards, that are used during the show. If you want to find out a little more, you can read a review here.

“Our minds are putty in the magician's skilled hands.” - Lyn Gardner, Stagedoor

To say thank you for supporting Video Chat Magic we are offering you an exclusive discount on tickets for the show. As VCM supporters, if you book two or more tickets, and enter the code “VCM” on checkout, you will get 50% off your booking!

Buy Your Discount Tickets

Hope to see you at a show soon,

Will & Steve

Well, would you look at that? It took a little longer than we had hoped but we are delighted to announce that we are releasing the Video Chat Magic collection as a beautiful hardbound book and as an e-book with Vanishing Inc. The very first copy just arrived!

All the content has been laid out in thematic chapters making it more of a journey and easier to explore. We’re very proud of this content and we hope that it will now reach an even wider audience and raise a little more money for Givewell.org.

We have brokered a deal with Vanishing Inc so that every one of you who had an active (paid) subscription with us on October 31 will receive a copy of the e-book absolutely free. We will be in touch shortly to let you know how this will work. And if you didn’t have an active subscription in October or you’d prefer a beautiful hardbound copy, you will be able to pick one up in a couple of weeks from Vanishing Inc.

Again, we really appreciate your patience and support, and many thanks again to you and to all of our incredibly generous contributors.

If anybody is in a position to help us promote the launch of the book, we’d love to hear from you.

All good wishes

Will and Steve

As we round the corner into 2021 we (Steve and Will) wanted to reconnect with you and reflect briefly on the year just gone. 

We started Video Chat Magic with a lot of unknowns. Initially, we didn’t even intend on running the project for more than a couple of months. We also had no idea that the response would be so positive or that our material would find its way into the repertoires of so many performers and into so many big-budget productions. It has been a rewarding experience and has opened many more doors for us with consultancy work and more. 

Furthermore, we certainly had no idea that with the support of our subscribers, and the generosity of our contributors, we would raise over $35,000 and help change the lives of so many living in extreme poverty. 

We’ve been talking to many of you in recent months and it’s been interesting to watch as some who were resisting performing over Zoom have become adopters and then, quite quickly and reliably, advocates. We’ve yet to find someone who, after investing the time and thought into crafting a show, has felt it wasn’t worthwhile.  

For those of you who subscribed we’ve been delighted to be able to keep the content alive and available for you right through November and December. We plan to continue making it available to you, so we do hope you are enjoying it.

In our last email to you, we mentioned a big announcement. After a lot of time and work, we had to completely change partners and we are really excited now to be on track for an announcement very soon. Apologies for the delay, but like so much of 2020, things didn’t quite go to plan. :-) 

Also, looking forward, we’ve started giving lectures to magic clubs around the world and so far the reviews have been excellent. You can find out a bit more about the lecture here and please do get in touch if you would like to book a lecture for your magic club or with a group of friends. 

“Harry and Will’s lecture was the best one I've seen using Zoom... if not the best overall on any subject. The lecture was on magic for video chat, but even those who don't and never will use Zoom will love it. Recommended!” - Martin Duffy

We hope you had a wonderful and safe holiday season and that the New Year finds you well.

All good wishes

Will and Steve

As the project comes to a close, we (Steve and Will) wanted to send you a final e-mail, containing by far the most valuable information we have to share.

Thanks to your generous support, Video Chat Magic has raised a whopping…

Not a bad way to spend lockdown. We are confident that this money, donated with precision through www.GiveWell.org, will do at least the equivalent of the following:

At least 3,500 children in Sub-Saharan Africa will receive 22,000 months of additional schooling. They will be protected from chronically sick stomachs and, within a few years their consumption, (i.e. the amount they spend, eat, and enjoy) will increase by an average of 12%. This increase will be maintained for their entire adult lives. That’s 3,500 parents putting extra meals on the table every week for a generation!

We never expected to generate such impact. We feel pretty good about it, and we hope you do too. You should. Perhaps it will inspire you to do even more...

The astonishing thing, to us, is just how much can be achieved when we donate according to the available data. This works for two reasons.

If you have an income of $60,000 per year, then globally speaking, believe it or not, you are in the top few percent. We – you, I, us – we are the rich. Yes, there are the Bezos of the world, and huge reform is needed there, but there is still a lot you can do. Being ‘rich,’ in this sense, is a privilege and puts us in a powerful position. For many of us, lucky enough to be living in economically developed regions, even a significant reduction in income wouldn’t really change our lives in any identifiable way. We might buy fewer gadgets or designer clothes, but our lives, our relationships, our joy, would not be diminished.

Contrast this with what that money could mean to those at the other end of the donation chain, the recipients, the extremely poor. Nearly 1 in 10 people alive today live below the poverty line, on less per day than what $2 could buy you in a city like Lisbon, London or Los Angeles. This is truly shocking. But given that they live on so little, the opportunity for us to help is enormous.

If you give a donation to some of the poorest people in the world, your money is estimated to go 100 times further than it would if you spent it on yourself. It is literally the case that you can forgo a Starbucks coffee and muffin and instead use the money to inoculate a child against a host of diseases. You can choose between a fleeting tasty treat and a child running around and healthy thanks to your actions.

Obviously, this is just a drop in the ocean, but that’s all an ocean is... millions and millions of drops, collected together. Over the last few months, Video Chat Magic has been collecting those drops from you and using them to help thousands, in a meaningful way. Now, if you want, you can continue to make a real difference.

Please read Doing Good Better, or watch this, and then get in touch with Steve for a chat or visit www.GiveWell.org and show your support.

We sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed Video Chat Magic and that you continue to explore and experiment with the content. We also hope that you will continue to explore and experiment with effective giving.

Steve and Will

A Reminder

On October 31 we will stop taking payments and accepting new subscribers to Video Chat Magic. As long as your subscription is current at that time the entire collection will remain accessible to you throughout November, so you have plenty of time to read it all, and then we’ll have a big announcement…

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What Happens on October 31?

On October 31 we will stop taking payments and accepting new subscribers to Video Chat Magic. As long as your subscription is current at that time the entire collection will remain accessible to you throughout November, so you have plenty of time to…

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First up we have Andrew Evans, from the Magic Patio, who shares a full routine complete with a very clever alignment jig for your masked predictions. 

The Magic Patio Presents…

Andrew Evans is an experienced performer, a two-…

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Effect

The magician claims they can predict what playing card an audience member will select based on how they respond to a series of “calibration questions.” In the end, not only is the playing card co…

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“Why reinvent the wheel when you’ve already been given a rocket ship and an iPhone?”

When developing a show for a new medium it’s tempting to try to develop all-new material. But perhaps there is a far better way. Perhaps you can take an exceptional existing routine and modify it to suit the new medium. 

Step 1: Take a pre-existing stonker of a performanc…

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Revelations are the Name of the Game

By Jon Armstrong

Within the world of in per…

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Strong September

September saw another very strong line up for Video Chat Magic. Paul Draper, probably the most experienced Zoom magician on the planet, shared his wisdom in an interview…

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Thank You

First, we’d like to take a moment to publicly say a few thank…

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