Warp Factor Reg Coppicus

The Magic of Card Warp -

Warp Factor

Ideas and Routines for Card Warp

By Reg Coppicus

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 Warp Factor Reg Coppicus

The Magic of Card Warp - Warp Factor

Ideas and Routines for Card Warp

Table of Contents

Foreword
Notes
Routines
Ideas
Resources

_________________

Forward
In the past 15 years this document has been passed on by e-mail to over
300 magicians, all who are enthusiastic over the "Card Warp" effect. Many
magicians contributed their ideas and routines to make it possible. Thanks to all
of them, and to the guys on the old alt.magic newsgroup (there is a time capsule
for you). I am happy to make it more widely available to all magicians.

I use the following sequence of routines for my act:

Card Warp
Completely Torn
Hoodwink

I like this setup because the audience sees you tear and restore the same
cards "over and over". At the end of Card Warp you have the gimmick you need
for Completely Torn right at hand (I highly recommend Completely Torn as one of
the best Torn & Restored Card effects.) After that you can roll straight into
Hoodwink and have 3 powerful effects in 5 minutes. The use of double size cards
make this almost a stage effect.

I hope these thoughts inspire your work.

Reg Coppicus
Regina, SK, Canada, 2017

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Notes
This manuscript does not teach the effect "Card Warp", you must already
know how to perform it.

Roy Walton is credited with the creation of the effect named Card Warp.
I have been told the original idea for the principle came from Jeff Busby.

Card Warp Effect

A folded card turns visibly inside-out. This is a strong visual effect which
may be performed standing while almost surrounded as long as some care is
taken at the beginning.

There is no reset time at the end, since you tear the gaff and give out the
pieces, thus finishing completely clean.

Preparation
You will need two cards from any size of deck. I like to use the cheap
Jumbo cards. These are thin, lightly plastic coated, and fold and tear easily.
This makes a stage or parlour effect out of a card trick. If you are rich (or being
paid) you could use the Jumbo-size Bicycles, but these are expensive and
harder to fold and tear.

I use a face card (suitably prepared) and a contrasting colour, low

numbered, spot card. I carry a stack of these paired off and prepared in
advance, and simply take them out in pairs to perform.

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Routines
1. Witch Hunt

Phase 1

Set up: You have a duplicate of the Queen folded in quarters, or whichever
card represents the witch, in your right pocket, a lighter in your left ...

This idea is from Eugene Burger. It is on the same story line as his Acquisition!

Story basically goes like this!

"When in old Salem you will hear stories of witches and witch hunts. I heard
this story one day and decided to make it visual....

"If there was a woman in Salem" (show the gimmicked card, the Q or whatever
you choose to be the witch) "that everyone" (show the deck & have them choose
any one of the cards from it) "thought was a witch ... they would test her. They
would go to her house and she would scream "No I am not a witch!" (show the
two cards around)

"They took her anyway ... and put her in this torture device!"

(perform the set up moves) "it would go around the witch and it would turn her
inside out and outside in!" (do the push through)

[add anything you want here ].... "but when it was over they wouldn't just bring
her out they would cut her in half with this device!"

(now rip the card in half .... show the pieces .... while they are looking reach
in your right pocket and grab out the duplicate card, unseen)

Phase 2

"When this occurred they would leave the body lying to let the evil spirits come out!
They had never actually found a real witch.... until now ..."

(here you switch the torn card with the folded card by way of just putting the torn
card in the same hand as the folded and reach in your pocket and grab the lighter
from left pocket).

"They would burn the witch for a few hours" (run the lighter on the edges and show
the card has been restored!). "This time the witch was alive!"

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At this point the trick is over. If you want to continue a bit longer I suggest going into a
Torn & Restored Card routine, of which there are many, and use the following patter:

Phase 3

"Well the whole town attacked her and ripped her to pieces! The head was held by a
trusted person in the community" (give the piece to a nearby spectator.... now reach into
your pocket and get the lighter and restore the rest) "they knew that she would not die
by fire so they kept her head from her until they could find something to destroy her!

If she is ever reunited with her head she will live again!!"

____________

2. Physics Class

"What I'm going to show you is a little physics experiment involving

solids and surfaces. We'll be using playing cards because, as
everyone knows, playing cards have two sides... the inside, and the
outside. Also important for our experiment, playing cards are thin
and therefore easy to fold. They can be folded inside out, or they
can just as easily be folded out-side in. And because they remain
thin, even when folded, they can be juxtaposed right up against
each other - putting the outside of the outside-in card tightly
against the inside of the inside-out card. Or, they can be easily
flip-flopped, so that the outside of the inside-out card is now
tightly against the inside of the outside-in card.

"So far, nothing particularly remarkable. But what IS remarkable

is that the molecular relationship between outside-in and inside-out
is so fragile, so tenuous, that the slightest nuclear push, the
slightest cosmic nudge can make outside-in become inside-out. Or
inside-out become outside-in. And what is MOST remarkable, is that
if we are careful, and patient, we can catch the cards in the very
middle of this transformation and stop them, locking them in place
and forever freezing them in this condition - with half the cards
permanently outside-in, and the other half permanently inside-out..."

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3. Batman Unmasked

I begin by asking if anyone is familiar with the movie Batman. I talk

about it for a while... and ask if anyone remembers Batman's real name.
Usually they don't, so I whisper to someone to say Bruce Wayne.

I tell about how Bruce Wayne is a very well educated man, and over
the years has developed ways to effectively leave his home and
arrive at the scene of a crime in just seconds.

One of his secrets is that he changes his clothes while driving his
Batmobile and shooting through the tunnel of his house. That's right, "Bruce
Wayne wastes no time in fighting crime". When he comes out the other side
and enters the real world, he is now fully clothed in the bat costume and ready
for battle.

Sometimes though, if we catch Bruce at just the right second, we

can have physical proof that Bruce is Batman, by catching him with only half
of his costume on...and we can freeze this moment and always keep this
evidence as a souvenir of our time together.

Obviously the card that reverses itself is Batman, and the cover
card is the tunnel. When you catch him half clothed, that is when
you tear it.

_______________

4. Card Warp - 'David Blaine style'

"Hey, man."

"Gonna show you somethin'." (Grabs onlooker)

"Gonna wreck a few cards." (Bends outwards spot and queen)

"No, don't want it that way." (Bend inward to show backs)

"The pretty lady always shows her face." (Pushes through)

(Tears cards. Exits camera left)

_________________

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5. Beat the Challenge

"Would you like to see the most challenging card trick I have ever
performed? I had just finished some card tricks like I showed you
here tonight and this spectator reached into the deck and pulled out
a Queen of Spades and said "Let's see you make this card change."
See, magicians don't really change cards, they "exchange" cards and
this fellow knew that with only one card to work with there was no
way you could make a card change. In fact he was so sure of himself
he reached in his pocket and pulled out a $5 bill and bet me $5
bucks I couldn't make just that one card change. Anyone have a $5
bill I can borrow?

I didn't have a clue how I was going to get out of this one, but I
asked him, "Can I use the money in the trick?" And he said "sure."

So I folded the bill around the card this way....that way...slowly

opened it up...And of course, nothing magical had happened, I was
just stalling hoping I would think of something! And sure enough a
thought did come to mind, so I folded the bill around the card and
folded the card in half so the outside was on the outside and the
face was on the inside, and as I pushed the card through the bill I
transformed it to where the face was on the outside."

Strong points....I set it up as the most challenging situation I

faced as a magician, I make them aware of how impossible it would be
to change just one card, I can tell the story with conviction
because it is a situation that could have really happened to me, I
use their money so they know it isn't fixed (and it frequently results
in a tip for me), and I explain the dead time of folding and unfolding.

___________

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6. Spirit Contact

Start out by talking about how 19th century Spiritualists believed

in a mysterious "4th Dimension" which allowed you to do all kinds of
weird stuff like putting knots in sealed loops of rope and
walk through walls. (Actually there was a Leipzig professor of
physics named Zoellner, who did quite a lot of experiments along
that line and got systematically bamboozled by an American psychic
named Slade.) Anyway, you say, this all takes a lot of advanced math
to understand, so you'll try to demonstrate it with simple means.

Start out by demonstrating that a 2-dimensional - in other words

flat - object like an irregular triangle can be turned into its own
mirror image by simply flipping it over through the 3rd dimension.
Simply use a small cardboard triangle or - much more impressive -
cut out the shape of a glove. Left glove - flip - right glove, see?
Would greatly simplify the making of gloves and shoes, if we could
do that in 3 dimensions. Well, 4 actually, as we need another
spatial dimension to flip the objects in...

Well, let's see if we can't... [This is, where you actually produce
your deck or two cards and start with the well-known Card Warp
moves. Personally I prefer to fold both cards myself, not only the
gimmicked one, as a ham-handed spectator can quite ruin the trick.]
Explain that all this bending and flipping will hopefully have
created a small pocket of 4-dimensional space, and slowly push the
card in with the face showing. Of course it won't come out as its
own mirror image (which the spectator halfway expects by now) but
with the back to the outside. Very carefully pull the card back, try
again. And again, this time only to the middle. Same outcome, of
course.

Act surprised, even a bit alarmed. This is definitely not what you
wanted to do... Never happened before, Oh my... Obviously one twist
too much, and now that bridge through the 4th dimension is warped
and turns things _inside out_ instead of simply producing their
mirror image. Weird, if you come to think of it. Just imagine all
the ugly things that would happen if someone accidentally put a
finger through... Yuck. Let's better destroy that devilish device
before some poor fool gets hurt.... [And you very cautiously tear up
the cards, which of course leaves back only four unsuspicious pieces
the spectators can inspect.] Applause, applause.

__________________________

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Ideas
Following now are several scattered ideas from discussions, contributed by many.

When I have seen others do Card Warp, they already have prepared
the torn card. The way I do it is to hand both of the cards out to
the spectators for examination and when I get them back I start to
fold one of the cards in half from top to bottom and ask the
spectator to do the same. Naturally they start to fold it the same
way I am from top to bottom and I say "Oh, one of them needs to be
folded lengthwise" and I then refold mine lengthwise and it is quite
easy to make the needed tear since it is already creased, and if you have a
good thumbnail. This makes it more of an impromptu effect with any two
cards.

This is also easy to do with business cards; Mike Close does his
version with a playing card and a borrowed business card.

In one version instead of pushing the warped card through the

business card, I hold it still and move the business card back and forth.
Doing it this way to me looks like I am "Zipping and "Unzipping" the
card. The difference is subtle. Sometime I even draw a zipper on
the back of the business card. Then you can finish the tear and
hand out your business card, saying "Even my business card is
magical."

The Card Warp method is simple enough to concentrate on

presentation. I sometimes have prepared the gaff in plain view
perhaps 15 minutes before I've done the effect without anyone making
the connection. I don't know, I think it is one of the ten best
tricks in magic, and takes card tricks into the illusionary status.
Too, the layman likes to destroy playing cards because their parents
told them not to do it as children. I often follow this with "since we've already
ruined this deck, let me show you one more" and we start folding for
Card Warp.

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I use a business card and a dollar bill to do card warp. I borrow

the card and fold it length-wise first. I then ask to borrow a bill.
This usually gets everyone looking around and at each other (of
course I am doing the same) because nobody wants to hand out the
cash. At this point, I just drop the card below the table (or just
lower it) and tear it. The length-wise crease keeps it from going
over half way and keeping your fingers fairly close together will
muffle the sound a little. I usually mutter something about the
money when I do the tear to help cover the noise also. Haven't been
caught (at least that I know of) yet. This is good misdirection. Note this
method would let the audience select a card freely too. I use a card with a
dollar bill and call it "Money Laundering".

To do Card Warp I prepare an entire deck with all face cards pre-
split. The deck can be pulled from the box and fanned allowing the
subject to point to the face card of their choice... as well as the
second card (it should be a number card). By handling the cards
together as you pull them from the deck (number card on top) you
never reveal the split and yet give no hint that there is anything
preset about the deck. It looks completely fair. Of course you have
to replace the missing cards periodically.

If you want a good laugh when you're catching a buzz with your
magician friends do Card Warp using as the torn card a double faced
card, so when it slides through it changes value and suit instead of
going inside out like normal. Watch their eyes bug out for an
instant. Where you go after that I'm not sure, but you'll be
laughing so hard it won't matter. How about a double backed card, red
and blue?

In 1985 or there about Ben Harris of Australia came up with an

idea based around sawing (tearing) a lady (Queen) in half. It sounds similar
some of Burger's ideas. An excellent premise and one that could be used
following Walton's Card Warp if you can avoid tearing the cards in half at the
end and use the gimmicked card as the Lady in Harris' routine. Then tear 'em
in half after the climax... give one half to the key spectator and you keep
half... premise being "...so neither of you will ever forget the
experience," or a memento of the event, or some similar rationale.

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I use patter to misdirect people and focus their attention on

something else while I do something sneaky. For instance I like to
do Card Warp with the victim . . . er, audience member selecting two
cards freely and give me one of them. Then I show them folding the
card, and as I make my tear I talk over the sound, and focus them on
"their" work by saying, "Oh, my card is not straight." They generally
concentrate harder on their card and I complete my tear as I gab and get
in position to accept their card and go into warp mode.

If you're handy with gaffed cards and a little sleight of hand, you
could probably work it so that when you're done you're left with the
spectator holding a half-printed card and you with a half card
that's blank on both sides, and a regular card with half the face
missing (blank).

A nice combination might be Ambitious card (with signature)

into Card Warp.

I ask the spectator to take out one card and hand it to me. I say
that I will bend the card this way (bending it lengthwise). Then I
begin to also bend it across the center saying that I want you to
take another card from the deck and bend it "this" way. At this
point I have two creases in the card in my hand. I look at the
spectator waiting for him to get another card out of the deck and
bend it. Everyone's eyes will also be on the spectator. During
this moment I start tearing the card. If anyone looks over at me it
will look as if I am returning my card to the lengthwise fold.
Misdirection is the key.

I sometimes will do Card Warp after I have done the

Ambitious Card routine because at the end I already end up
with two cards that are bent across the center.

I came up with a routine where I use a Bee backed card & a

Bicycle card. I explain that cards have a built in safety mechanism to
prevent different cards from being used in magic tricks and that if you
do use different cards, one will twist itself around to expose the trick
you're doing.

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Some general thoughts for stories for you to take and develop....

"The Mona Lisa was painted on one side of a panel that has a
completely different painting on the other side." (double face
cards?)

"Did you know that the "holographic" image-shifting security

feature of the new US currency was developed from a characteristic
that playing cards have had for centuries?"

"Are you familiar with the "blue screen" technology that is used in
movie special effects?" (blue backed cards?)

Miscellaneous Notes
According to Mike Close in "Workers No.1," the *effect* in Card
Warp was created by Jeff Busby and published in his "Into the Fourth
Dimension" manuscript. Roy Walton created the *trick* "Card Warp."

And Mike's great CW routine "Dr. Strangetrick" -- with a dollar

bill and face card -- is found in "Workers No. 1," which should be
on your list of sources for good, published CW routines.

The effect in "Fourth Dimension" is essentially that of card warp,

without the second "covering" card. A card is folded face in. Upon
passing through your hand, it turns face out.

Richard Osterlind has published a nice effect using a folded dollar

bill that turns inside out with a wave of the hand. Really similar
to the Busby idea. Richard has an excellent video available too,
"Richard Osterlind's Challenge Magic". The description reads:

"An eye-popping feature routine with paper money, perfect for the
close-up worker, bar magician, or table-hopper. A dollar bill
VISIBLY turns inside out, even though it's locked shut with a paper
clip!"

____________________

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Resources
Books and Videos, by no means a complete listing.

"Richard Osterlind's Challenge Magic" video

Bruce Cervon, Ultra Cervon

Jeff Busby, Into the Fourth Dimension...and Beyond

Eugene Burger, The Experience of Magic - Includes a complete

routine for Card Warp, with Jumbo cards too.

Mike Close, Workers No.1 - see "Dr. Strangetrick"

Darwin Ortiz, Strong Magic

Eugene Burger and Robert E. Neale, Magic & Meaning, contains "Real
Jokers"

J.C. Wagner, Commercial Magic

Jay Sankey, _100% Sankey_ -Includes "Definitely Warped," a card warp,

but you only use ONE card.. You take a card, fold it, and then
proceed to turn it inside out.

Bob Torkova, Torkova's Magic-Includes "Card Warp Completed." Order

from http://torkova.com/products.htm.

The best new material I saw came from Vinni Marini at

http://www.vinnymarini.com/ . He created "Warped and Restored"
which is a Card Warp effect but you use only ONE card. It is quite good.
Vinny is a great guy and has a lot of other great effects, so check him out.

A new effect called "Ultimate Card Warp" allows some new effects
through the use of gaffed cards. You have to replace the cards
periodically. About $15-$20 US.

End
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