FISM Finalist Dennis Kim Returns to The Magic Guys! #224

They're guys. They do magic. They are the magic guys.

Oh yeah, just starting off the episode with a sip of energy. We should be sponsored by One Day, One Day by them, but alas, today joined with me is my fellow shaved head brother in arms. Hello friends, I'm Nick Kay And as always, we have the effervescent Josh Nibido Say hi Josh What is up guys?

This is the Magic Guys podcast Where we introduce you to wonderful guests That was a weird way to start Let me bring that back He's been struggling since before the show He hasn't been able to find his words at all We gotta do some like red leather, yellow leather Red leather, yellow leather I think I'm just fangirling over our guests That's what it is I can't hold it together And I'm trying my best, but I'm excited. And thank you for joining us live in this episode.

I think Doug is in the chat as well. He's had a long week, which I'm excited to hear about his, what he's been up to next week to do with trick supply and things like that. So he is enjoying some lovely time with his wife. What a flex. He's a magician and has a wife. I mean, the man has it all, right? But Nick, how have you been? Good. In this last week, my friend. It's been a great week, friends.

I spent the weekend up on your side of the planet and Josh Nobito and I got to hang out in person, which is a rarity for us. We got to chat magic and share ideas as we were performing on two opposite ends of the Theatre of Magic, which went really, really well. I was in Toowoomba. You were in Brisbane. So we're a couple of hours away whilst performing, but a great time.

The Theatre of Magic is absolutely wonderful. If you are on that side of the planet, please go scope out some shows and see the amazing Josh Nobito as well as other amazing talents perform. Who were you performing alongside that weekend? Were you with Sean Mergaard? I was a bit spoiled. I got to perform next to Mike Tyler and then in the second show, Sean Mergaard. Just amazing.

Brilliant. Some great stuff. Yeah. And what's really fun is seeing the performers come back again and then like they've worked on their routines. And so we get to watch like little iterations improve in our sets. And last week was a great example of that. Yeah. So much fun. Yeah. And more importantly, we'll probably touch upon that next week. But we also want to thank you guys who are here in the chat live.

So of course, if you are listening live, you have the ability to send your questions through. Drop us a line because you can ask Dennis Kim any questions you might have. So big thank you for joining us. We said Thomas Conger. We have May Marino. We have my good friend, Gary Davis. Hope you're in good health, friend. Good to see you here. Drago Tear, Scotty Link, Tim Askin, up them questions.

And Alex Lam. Good to see you, buddy. Oh, got Buster Mike, who we had an awesome jam session on our Discord last week. Alex Lamb is asking me, are you coming up for Eric's lecture? Alex, I will not reason being is that Eric Leclerc is actually going to be down here in Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Magic Festival, which starts on Saturday. So he and I will be going to muck. I'm not even sure if I can see his lecture due to performances that I'll be doing over the weekend.

So we will see how that goes. And of course, we have Herbert. Thank you for joining us, friends, to be part of what's going to be a very interesting interview.

We've already had an amazing chat backstage before it begins but before we begin josh i i just want to say eric leclerc alex alex is in brisbane so he's going to be the lecturer i can't believe this as well eric is coming to brisbane and on the one thursday of that month that he's lecturing i'm doing a theater show with showman i can't where's my where's my where's my i i can't believe it it is absolute. Is what it is.

And so I'm going to miss his lecture, but luckily through the podcast, Eric and I are friends. He's been on the podcast twice. So we got chatting and we're like, you know what? Why don't we just catch up the next day and let's do a show. So Eric, for one night, two shows on one night on the 18th of July, if you're in Brisbane, he's going to be doing his show at the theater of magic. So I'll be opening. he'll be doing his main show it's gonna be so goddamn good.

But like potentially it's more valuable than the lecture because you're seeing the real world stuff and how he handles an actual audience, you know, I say that to make myself feel better. I obviously go to the lecture because he can learn and buy stuff from him. But yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be heaps of fun.

Well, yeah. Speaking of, look, our person we're about to introduce folks, he has some things he's going to share from his lecture today, as well as his journey going through FISM. For those of you that don't know, he is currently in the running to win FISM's online performance, which I was chatting to him, totally fanboying as we do, saying that I think it's one of the best pieces of social media magic I have ever, ever seen. Let's just get him on the show. We're all dying to ask him questions.

We're all dying to meet this handsome, handsome creature.

Friends, please join us in welcoming the amazing Mr. Dennis Kim. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Dennis, Kim in the house. How are you doing, Dennis? I'm good. How are you? Good to see you guys. We're so happy to have you back on the podcast since two years ago. Can't believe it's already been two years. Yeah. Let's be back, though.

It's great to have you here man and obviously we all know who you are but if you were to like synopsisize dennis kim give us the give us give the five people who've never heard of you before the lowdown sure well my name is dennis i i'm out in new york i do magic full-time i do performances i consult as well i work with theory 11 on dan white's magic shows and productions.

As well as my own private events i consult other people in new york i guess and all around wherever it's needed and whoever just calls me for help. That's about it yeah that's amazing and that's enough to keep you bloody busy from what we see yeah sometimes it's too busy for my liking but that's work right it's work now and somehow amongst all of that you had time to enter the fizz and content category this year video content creator category before we get.

Into your actual video like what were your thoughts on it when you saw it announced sure uh i was actually pretty surprised i was wondering like is this gonna be a really cool evil fools joke like deadline was originally you know like a month prior from what actually was and i thought you know for schism to come up with like this new category for like online magic where i don't have to go in person this year it's in italy to go in person and compete with like

the top magicians of the whole world this just seems like why wouldn't you want to submit something you know and i think i was really happy with it because during covid during the whole pandemic all we could do is virtual magic and i think everybody came up with so many incredible ideas for literally this kind of format whereas before that it was just like social media which was a completely different beast from what it is today and i developed so much magic and concepts for specifically

virtual magic stuff that you cannot do in person i just wouldn't make sense to and it kind of felt like it went to waste once like the world kind of opened up again and it was just kind of this awkward transition back to the reality but seeing this was another opportunity. For me to kind of showcase what i had worked on in previous years i'm like oh here's you know i can actually use this thing again and put something out there you know so.

Yeah well that's one of the things i'm most in awe of when i say i generally mean it that i think it's one of the best pieces of social media magic i've ever seen because you're using these amazing forced perspectives that aren't really touched upon in many forms of magic books and whatever else. So the moment I saw that and just went, damn, that's brilliant. The first thing I thought to myself is like, where do you even learn that? Where do you even like, what material could you even go?

Oh, okay. What I mean is that you're not looking at your routine going like, oh, it's just, that's in Tarbell chapter six.

Like, it's not like that. So my question to you, friend is that like where did this knowledge come from like how did you go about even figuring this out like it's so original and so unique right right i distinctly remember when i first came up with this whole concept and for those of you who haven't seen it it's okay if i mention this kind of detail but like stuff with like mirrors with the perspective of like the camera being framed

in a specific way i remember distinctly i was we're at the height of the pandemic the world just shut.

All the shows have canceled everywhere and we're all just stuck at home and i was helping i was helping dan with some things like there's an upcoming kind of a spot he was doing for for jimmy fallon and it was like a it was a virtual one like everyone was scrabbling to try to figure out what to do while we're all stuck at home and so everything went virtual and we're jamming in like so many ideas i mean this whole time crunch and so it was just like all day every day i was

trying to come up with like answering the question of how do you take advantage of this thing that's otherwise perceived as a limitation right because everyone's thinking oh like virtual magic is just not as good as live and for the most part that's true you'd rather see it in person but with that in mind how do you now create something brand new that can only be watched and enjoyed because you're watching it on a video or on zoom

or whatever virtual format that you're on that you're stuck with and so i had kind of answered that question through having nothing else to do but being stuck at home and like playing around with camera and like trying to think of like.

Video tricks and illusions that can only really be done here and i don't know it just came to me like what if i just put like a mirror in front of the camera that's kind of trippy you don't see the mirror and figure out like how to angle things and whatnot and we ended up not using that for the spot but i kind of took that and ran with it and i think we're all stuck at home for like the better part of that year back in 2020 and that was probably the only thing

that kept me sane was working on this thing with a mirror is scratching my head over like the camera angle relative to the mirror and lighting and what can you do to take advantage of the fact that you're in front of this mirror and yeah it just took months and months of just trial and error and like calling people on like facetime and trying out different tricks that take advantage of it and And fast forward

to this physics submission where I was like, oh, let's use this thing again and figure it out. So you weren't like looking up special effects in, in, in movie terms or anything like that. There wasn't any material that you were like, oh no, I found this book called, you know, how to make a horror movie, for example, or anything like that. You just straight up just went in there and started playing. Yeah, no, it's, there was, there was a couple of inspirations. There was Quirkology on YouTube.

He's got very old videos of all these like perception kind of things and it's like, these are really enjoyable to watch. But if you do it in person, it's like that you're not doing anything because I'm watching a video. And also there's that guy, his name's at the tip of my tongue, but he does all these really trippy videos, albeit they're very edited. I'm sure you guys know who I'm talking about. Like his videos are all like very trippy illusions.

Like a Zach King type of guy? Yes, Zach King. All of his videos are just so trippy. And I know that they're all edited, but it's fantastic. And it's using, again, the same concept of like, I can only do this on video and it's very enjoyable. So it's like, how can we take that and dial it down where I don't have to edit all these things and try to do something practical, you know?

And in fact, I actually ended up writing an e-book about the whole concept and i never put it out because by the time i was kind of like 99 there, live gigs were coming back up again we're working on like a live show and things just got busy so, yeah wow that's insane i just even you know what i appreciate even the little details like down to the clock in the background it's just so nice like you really you can really watch

it and appreciate the art of it because like everything has a reason to be done or moved or positioned which is just so nice yeah absolutely it was actually really fun like i was debating about you know first of all i think you know this this is like the first year of having this fism online.

Category and i'm sure they'll have it in future years but their rules were very vague for those of you who are not in the know they only had two rules which is one the video cannot exceed more than 90 seconds and two your video cannot be edited in post now there were a lot of submissions that technically were edited in like adding captions and things and evidently that's fine but me working on this thing i want to really make sure that i follow all the rules and

for something like this where i'm just married the whole time you could simply just flip the video and now everything looks okay if that makes sense everything's reversed and then let's just flip video thereafter.

But i thought that would be against the rules so we really went above and beyond with like like the countdown on the tv like that's reversed uh we even printed out labels i don't have the milk bottle but i do have the windex bottle like we literally printed out like a reverse image holy crap that on the actual one in the take that i submitted i didn't even show this so i'm like all that worked the t-shirt was reversed just all these little details to kind

of point at like yeah it's not a mirror i mean first of all i don't think that but just the little extra percentage point so when i do reveal it's like where's the camera you know so wow so from concept to kind of first iteration of the routine i'm going to assume that that routine was like it's probably like let's say like seven or eight generations old you know like it started as this and then sort of evolved like what what happens first the concept or the the idea

or you're like oh you know the milk like why why the milk you know like absolutely yeah for sure and i I think this is, this is probably gonna be pretty interesting for everybody watching for like your own routines and like structuring. Things in general for magic. I was jamming with my roommates. I live with also a magician. We've been living together for like the past five years. It was magic too. So like it's already a great position to be in, like to be able to jam at any moment.

And we just kind of sat around for hours. And I'm talking like late through the night, it's like three, four in the morning. We're just trying to like put out any and every idea. But it first started with like, this is what I want for the video, these are the elements that I want for it, which wasn't much in the beginning. All I know is no one else is going to also be doing this thing with a mirror because it's like, I'm the only one doing that. So that has to go in.

And here are all the tricks I've done because I have this mirror thing going on. And there are a number of them I've done in the Zoom show and when I'm FaceTime calling a bunch of people. There's a lot of applications to it. So it's like, what are things I can do that don't need the interaction with the spectator?

Okay, so you start narrowing it down to just a couple of applications and then it's like okay these are the things i want here's the big question mark of like got up to 90 seconds what's the point why am i doing this what's the effect or effects what's the whole routine what's the story right and so it's just trapping a whole bunch of different things and then it just becomes way too late at night where now the wacky ideas are starting to come out where i remember

distinctly like we're just talking about like really funny ways to just start the video okay give us an example yeah and it's like uh i remember matt's my roommate he was like uh we're like talking about milk and cereal for some reason and it's like you know it'd be really funny if like you poured yourself a bowl of cereal with like a gallon jug no words right so it's like intriguing what's he doing right and then you just take a swig off the

entire gallon and then put it down It's like, that would be just so, like, who does that, you know? It would be kind of funny. So we started trying to go down, like, the comedy route of it. And then that evolved to like, okay, we got to do something with milk and cereal now because we're like bouncing ideas off of like trying to do like card tricks that like heavily gimmicked stuff, maybe some coin stuff.

I'm not the most well-averse with coin magics. It's like, ah, here are a number of things I can do. But cards felt like, okay, like almost everyone can do cards. Like how do we do something different? So milk and cereal, what can you do with that? Pour yourself a glass of milk, have cereal, make cereal appear, disappear, make the spoon vanish. We're trying to figure out how to make the spoon appear and vanish.

That didn't work out and next thing you know we have like a video that's going to be four minutes long because we have so many ideas like oh we could do that we could do this and that and here are the methods and it's like okay now we got to pick and choose so you end up jamming so much that you have a video that's going to be way too long and now you got to go through this heartbreaking moment of like these are great ideas but it doesn't cut it because there are some ideas where it's like we

have to have that in and one of those things being the table not being the table anymore. Where you got the screen from far, far away. And actually, if I could show some behind the scenes photos, if I may. We would love to. Yeah. I put some together here. I don't know if you can see this very clearly, but that's what it looks like behind the scenes. These are just a couple of videos, photos, where on the right side you see, that's the table with like a bag.

And then on the floor on the left photo, that's like we took fabric, like duvetyne fabric, and we cut it to size. We were like measuring everything. And it turns out everything was like one to one with just like relative, relatively with the table when we're lining everything up with the camera frame. And yeah, that's my roommate, Matt, they're just working all the measurements and everything because we were looking at the screen far away.

I think it's in here. We had this like little iPad screen off to the side. It's very small in the photo on the left, but on the left of the mirror, we're looking at it from the couches while we're like just completely magicked out. And I looked at the framing of the table, which is like all this black art stuff and i'm like dude you know what that looks like from far away that looks kind of like a rug. So then we looked at each other and we were like, no, we can't do it.

It's like, no, no, no, let's think about this. Now, that would be an amazing finish because the mirror used to be the ending where it's like, ha ha, I'm in front of a mirror. Holy shit. Like, how are you going to expect that, right? But how do we take it a step further? Because at that point, there were a lot of magicians that knew I'd do this mirror thing virtually. And so I was like, I got it. The moment I reveal the mirror, I'm in front of the table, just wiping the mirror.

You pull the table and it's replaced with what's behind me which is this corporate, thing and everything looks one-to-one why would you expect that to be anything else and then just walk backwards and uh we thought that just fit the bill of like you can't do that.

That's virtual so it'll be a great ending so bro like the moment i saw the tape like i did i had to watch it a second time just to be like hang on i didn't watch that properly did that just what just happened and you watch it again and you're like oh my god i mean you still don't understand like because i think also what plays so well in this is that no one expects you to print out a reversible windex sticker you know or make a freaking rug table in the

perspective like that's that's a real superpower that that you'll go to such lengths to make what ends up being you know a less than 90 second video wow when you made it like the first time you guys like watched it back because first of all if there's no editing so you're able to film it and then and literally like watch it back instantly i imagine yes yes that's correct so i guess first of all like did you have to do like how many iterations did you have to do filming it to like

be happy with it because obviously you might change the routine around a bit and fully yeah we dedicated one specific day i remember i was so glad that they had extended the submission deadline by a month, because it was, we set a date for like two days before the deadline. I think it was like the beginning of April was like a deadline and I'm like, dude, it's like March 28th.

We got a film that's like today. I don't care how long it takes. We stay up all night, whatever. But we also had shows on that weekend. She also worked on the show with Dan. So we worked together on the weekends. And so it's like, we literally have just one day to do this thing. And then they extended the deadline. So we're like, thank God, because it was apparent we were not ready. There are so many more question marks. We're trying to make the spoon appear and everything with the cereal.

And then we delayed it by a week. We thought, you know what?

If we have an extra month might as well not feel like we're pressed for time and just film what we had in mind like a few days later let's actually sit on this idea for another week or two weeks because we have time and let's figure out like let's figure out the the methods of refining all the moments let's re-script like what you're going to be saying and uh then we dedicate this one day like a week later to film we took like hours and hours we're on like obs like he's looking at it.

So making sure that i'm not flashing or anything and i'm. Like filming stuff like takes and he would stop me like.

In the middle of a take that i flashed and i think it was like 50 60 70 takes i'm starting to get frustrated because everything just needs to look perfect right that's what makes magic difficult for video like you can't flash and eventually we got a take we're like that might be it that might be the it and so i shared it with a few people got my thoughts about it and it was like this feeling of like you know what like we we can do better or we're gonna get dedicated another day and we have time

for it but i was already tired of like i want to get this thing over with it worked on it since the beginning like mid-february maybe through to march and everything and then we just dedicated another day where it took another almost 100 takes it was probably like 3 30 in the morning by that point and we finally looked over this take and we're like is that it there's no flashing you know because there were some takes where we're like that looks good and we look

at it again like yeah you flashed in this one thing we missed that we have to redo it but we finally got this take it's like no we watched it like 20 times in a row we put it on different devices like ipads on the computer on your phone to see if there's anything you might see that we missed from just seeing it from one screen i don't know and we got this tape finally and it probably was like 150 takes in i think wow that must have been the cleanest mirror in new york by

the end well a lot of windex i mean this this bottle was full man i mean. But yeah it that's what makes it difficult though right about magic on video if you flash even in one frame versus in-person magic. You see in-person magic once even if you flash, people might not catch it but people can watch the video over and over and over until they finally see a thing and they comment, oh, it's so obvious.

It's like a blessing and a curse. You have the ability to re-record it as many times as you want, but then that also means you might get stuck in the it's never perfect and forever filming or not putting stuff out. It is. And sometimes, you know, with, because I try and put out stuff every day or just every day, every time I have a video that I'm like happy, like I'm like, oh, I like this. I'm going to put it out there.

I have learned, I learned this from my buddy Jason Ma that sometimes you just have to let that feeling go a little bit where you're not trying to hit 100% clean. Like 99.9% is okay for online as well. Obviously, when it comes to fizzing, it's got to be you want 100%, but you don't want to get too stuck in that fear perception of like, oh, it's never good enough to put out online.

Like if magicians listening to this or like, I want to share a piece from my show or something, don't feel like, you know, because it's a little bit imperfect, you can't put it out. Sometimes that will actually be more endearing, you know, to learn about the performer. And it's tough too, because as you continue to film this thing and work on this idea, you become so jaded by it that it's not amazing to you anymore. You're so familiar with it.

You work on it for so long that it's like, dude, is this even good?

You start to trip yourself up whereas like people watching it they've never seen this before you know so that's a good thing to keep in mind you know it's so true and the weird thing is is that like it needs to get to a point where it doesn't evoke any sort of like adrenaline like in the adrenaline rush that you get from like stealing a watch for example you know what i mean like you don't want that energy anymore you don't want that nervous energy and that

relief of achieving something anymore like when you have something that's as intricate as a fism act you want to be able to do it with like next to like what do you feel nothing i'm dead inside which sounds sad but it's also so essential to be able to execute it so that the people watching can enjoy it to the to its fullest isn't that the weirdest dichotomy yeah it's it could be very draining but that's performance right that's probably applies to any performance right not just

mergers yeah look we look forward to seeing you win FISM for that category. I just, I mean, the top 20 are all fantastic videos. It's just that I can't stop watching Dennis's. So I've got to think that that is a good sign. And I'm glad we got the pre-interview before that all happens. And you're unavailable. Three weeks from now will be when FISM starts, about two weeks or so, and then the results will come out in a few weeks.

So we shall. Yeah, I mean, we're in there with you. Like, you know, fingers crossed. We're only against four other people, but our podcast is amongst the honorable mentions of like Magic Podcast in that category. But we're all sort of eagerly waiting to see the results. And then like, what does that, what do the results mean? You know, in the real world, but yeah. So I could talk about this all hour, but was there any other notes you wanted to add about your Fizzin video?

No, I think that's about it. Unless anyone in the chat has questions. Otherwise, yeah, we can totally move on and talk about it. Well, I have a question just with regards to creating a routine of this elk. Like whenever someone writes a show, you know, like they write, they say, I'm writing a show. It's going to be called, uh, I don't know.

It's going to be called like green. And then you do this whole show called green and then you finish your tour, you finish your run and then you're like, oh, I'm already writing the next show in my head. It, is it the same sort of process or do you, do you have the same mindset or drive to do it again with a FISM act? Or are you kind of like, glad this is done. I need a break. I'm sure the answer to that question will be different, varying between people, individual and individual.

But for me personally, I think with the kind of work that I do, there's a lot of different projects that I'm called for month to month, whether it's private gigs here and there to somebody wants help on their show or something they're doing for like media or TV or something. It's just so different. For me personally, I'm kind of just glad. I'm just kind of relieved.

And it is this feeling of like, okay, like, you know, once in a while I should be working on something a little bit different from like the usual. And for that period of time, it was this fism thing. Like, I've never done that before. This has never been a thing before. And so to be able to finish it in the first place, I remember telling myself, like, I'll just be happy if I made the top 20. Like, this is, I think, the best work that I could have put out. I couldn't do any better than that.

And I'm proud of myself for that. And let's just move on to the next thing. And even if it's not something that's about me, then if I'm working on somebody else's thing, whatever, that's what it means to be a consultant and let's see what the next project is, you know? So that's, that's me personally. You know, when you create for so many other people, I'm curious what happens to that intellectual piece of property that you produce.

Are you permitted to keep it for yourself or does it become the property of the person you're creating for? That's a fantastic question. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't consider for being a consultant. You know, I've worked with Dan White for a number of years. I've worked with him the longest. It's been about already six years and changed now, which is so long.

And he put it really well one day when he said, you know, it's like you're consulting somebody and really understand like their brain and magic and where they want to go and like the do's and don'ts that they want to see, like attributes in their magic. And you start to work on someone else's thing where you have an answer in your head because you've worked on a very similar problem for this other person, but now you're working on this thing with someone else.

It's like to share that exact same answer, like, yes, that would probably solve it, but it's almost like you're kind of cheating. It's like you're cheating on a relationship a little bit.

Like, oh, that's interesting. And this was, he told me this like early on, like in the pandemic, like I was at his place, we're doing so many Zoom shows and we're working out together and chatting so much but as like the world opened up again and now like i'm involved in like projects with other people and even if it's like informally it's not like formal work just like magic friends who have questions immediately in my head like i have answers to most of their questions but it's

like if i disclose this then that is like cheating because this is stuff that's supposed to be well guarded with the work i've done with like say dan you know and it's like it wouldn't be right for me to disclose this. And so it starts to get a little muddy as it's like a second or third or even fourth person who asks a very similar questions. And now it's like I have to compartmentalize like these are the answers that

would solve your problem. But I cannot disclose these things because that's just how it goes. I'm going to protect the secrets that I've worked on with person A and I cannot disclose to person B or C or D and same with person B to C and so on and so forth. So it gets a little tough. I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, it kind of does. What I'm curious about is that I love that between each part is ABC, that you won't bleed the information between them.

But when you're doing your own performances, are you permitted to take your ideas that you've cultivated between all of the letters of the alphabet? Are you permitted to do it for yourself? Right. Yeah, that's been a tough journey for me because there are some effects I've worked on for these people, right? And I think the correct answer would be that the stuff that you work on for somebody else who's performing, it's kind of their material.

But I think it gets a little bit more into in like a gray area where like, let's say I feel really guilty about doing a certain routine or, you know, my own brain for my own material is directly influenced by the work I've done for somebody else. It's like, am I just going to scratch that for like a private event I'm doing, you know?

And so for me, I realized that doing certain routines that I am capable of doing that I've also worked on for somebody else, if I do it for like a private event or something, I don't see where the harm is in that. If anything, it gives me firsthand experience to now give notes. Because every time that I'm sure you guys too, when you perform and you think about the gig you just did, like you have plenty of notes to improve the routines you've done.

And so if I have firsthand experience in the routine that I've been helping someone else with, then I have notes of my own that I can then share with that person. I think the area falls where it's like, this is a private event with like, it's like a birthday party or a wedding or something. And it's all these lay people. If it's something that's like television, where it's like, oh, like Dennis is coming on to this like big spot that's like publicized.

That's where it gets a little hairy, you know? And I think that's a line that I would rather not cross because it just doesn't feel right. But it's just something that's private. It's like, well, who's stopping me? And how is this going to, you know, just crossing over that boundary, you know? Yeah. What I'm also curious about is that speaking from experience, I help a lot of my friends and it's because we're friends and I know them and I know their style.

And I think to myself, if you're going to do it like this, you're going to do it this way. A lot of times when I'm jamming out of the people, and this happened even most recently, I was doing an effect like a coin through table. And a friend of mine who I adore was just kept saying repeatedly, I wouldn't do that routine. I wouldn't do a coin through table. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. And I was like, you said that. You said that. but I've come to you to help me improve it.

And all you're saying in return is I wouldn't do that. And so it's very interesting because this is what I receive most common when I do have people who want to help me. They want me to do it the way they did. They want me to do what they would do. And I think that's one of the most unhealthy things to do if you are going to be a consultant in any capacity.

So my question with regards to that is how do you get to know the performer and understand them so that you know that the advice you're giving them is appropriate for what like what and how they're supposed to be performing that's a great question you're you're asking great questions nick there's a process especially working with someone new that i have yet to work with you know what let's let's frame it let's work with work with work with me.

Okay like what would the process look like well i want to do my research on you i want to watch all your content i want to watch all your performances i want to see the things that you tend to do i want to see the lines that you kind of say in the offbeat moments that make you you and it's your performance and i want to see the thousand timers the routines that you're really honed in on and then the new material that you've been working on we have this conversation,

and i would just want to watch a lot of your material and then just like just jam with you on like where your head is at for a certain problem and i would never give it's never the answer to be like i wouldn't do that because first of all that's like the worst thing whoever whoever has said that to you like i don't know that's because i'm not you and you're not me and we'll never be each other it's weird right i need to get into your brain i need to see what you excel at.

And I need to see the things that are also shortcomings for you. It's not personal business, but it's not personal, right? We all have strong suits. And so taking that into account, then we make accommodations. Maybe there are limitations to the methods because your sleight of hand is not good enough with the certain props that we're working with. So now we got to go down to gimmick solutions.

You see what I'm saying, right? 100%. I will always work with you and what you can do, what you excel at, what your limitations are, and figure out methods. Because having done this for a long time, there's always a way. There are always workarounds. And if you really do find yourself at a hard stop, a dead end. We can always reroute and restructure the routine. And maybe we have to change the plot a little bit, but it's never going to be the answer of, like, I wouldn't do that.

It just doesn't seem to make sense so that so i'll boil down to i need to do a lot of research on you and where your brain is and how you perform your style and over time because it's it's a relationship you're building it's really hard to just be like doing a one-off thing with somebody and it's like all right i'll talk to you next time you want me to work with you right it's this relationship that you have with these people in the industry where over time you

see the things that they put out and you really see what their eye is like for magic what they like to see for themselves and what the ideal version of magic is for them because i think that's a very subjective answer that we can all give differences for so yeah i i would almost think that helping someone with an act that you wouldn't do is better because then there's no fear of crossing paths of similar techniques like if someone's working on a dove act that i

would never do because i don't do dove work that's almost isn't that better dennis because then it's like you can get in their head and help them do their act and there's going to be no crossover absolutely yeah if anything i'm learning too right just because your consultant doesn't mean yeah yeah knows everything i think there's i was in a jam session with some with some friends online and they were trying to work on sponge balls i don't do sponge balls but i just happened that

weekend to find one on the floor that was. From a magician who works for me in this particular venue i was like oh look at that it's like it's a sponge ball this must be jordan's right so i threw it in my bag and the guys are like i'm trying to work on like different vanishes and stuff but i don't really know much about sponge balls i'm like you know what let me go to my bag and grab one and i used all of my coin techniques and coin ideas and i'm like holding sponge balls and jw grip

and back clipping and doing this type of thing and i was just like are you sure you don't do.

Sponge and i was like i'm very sure but that this help and they're like that's that's insane i would have never thought that and it's like so you're totally right josh by in saying that because you're coming from a different angle it's i wonder if you can i wonder if you can get a dove in jw grip that'd be a great reveal yeah you know but speaking of teaching and giving advice you just recently did a lecture right at the society of american magicians yeah that's

correct that was actually it was online and it was back in december it was really nice that they wanted to have me on for an episode so yeah i taught a number of things on there so that's awesome any any takeaways that you feel like you want to share with the magic guys well while everyone's watching i could i could teach one thing do we have time for that we would love it if you're if you're listening to this, you're going to hear a wonderful performance of objects moving around.

But I do recommend watching it on YouTube for this portion. Yeah. Whilst you're preparing this, buddy, just we have a question here from Tim Askin, just asking whether or not you need to sign NDAs for the folks you work for. 100%. 100%. It goes both ways too. At least for me, I've been starting to send people NDAs and I do sign NDAs. I think that's a really, really important thing because it's like. Anyone can be like, I have my word, but let's get it in writing.

Yeah. So what it means is we can't ask Dennis what magic secrets he's created for people, but we can ask him, how much do they pay you? No, I'm kidding. You know, just off the back of that, before we get into this teaching portion, what I'm curious about is that it seems like you work with more than one person. Let's say I win the lottery on Saturday. I win the Powerball, whatever it is, and I go, finally, some disposable income.

I'm definitely going to hire Dennis Kim to help me with this routine that I've been working on for a while. What's your capacity to work with people? The capacity is, well, it's 24 hours a day. There's seven days in a week, just like anybody else. And honestly, if anyone's watching who also is in the entertainment industry full-time, you would know that when it rains, it pours, right? But it's not going to be raining every single day of your entire life.

I'll be honest, there are a lot of weeks where the workload is very light. And then there are some weeks where it's like, geez, man, I'm not getting enough sleep and this is all I can think about. I'm locked in. There's no breathing room. And that will always happen. but I'm sure you guys will relate to like, there's self or gigs than usual. Like I can't be in three places at the same time. And it's the same feeling with like working on stuff for people.

Thankfully, I only work with one person where, where it's like a recurring regular thing all year round, of course. Right. And then everybody else, there's just projects that are like as needed. You know, if you think about it, like being like a temp worker, so to speak, if that's an equivalent where I'm not on call every single day, every single second, you know, I might be on call where they're texting me throughout, you know, random days and it's like, oh, I got to tend to this.

But yeah, if I, if I was working with like multiple people on a regular basis, I think. I'd have to, I'd have to say no to some, you know, but no, that capacity, there are certain moments where I do feel I'm over capacity. And then some moments where it's like, I have more breathing room. So that's just how it goes. Well, I have more questions off the back of that, but I think that whilst we have some time, we are dying to learn a little something.

Thank you kindly for sharing. The floor is yours, Dennis.

Oh, sure. Okay. So recently I was in LA and I was jamming with a couple of magician friends and we're at one of his places and someone filmed something very candidly like a little transposition i did and he was like oh this is this this is great that i asked him to send me the clip i'm like dude this clip is hilarious your reactions are funny in the back and it's a very short clip and i decided to post it on my instagram and it got more views than i i would like to see i'm not

a content creator by any means i but there are a lot of questions like will you ever like teach this thing or like who came up with it and it's like light it and so i want to take this opportunity well i guess i'll do it for you and then i'll teach you guys because i also get tagged in a lot of videos of people doing this transposition because if you're a magician it's very easy to figure out how it's done but there are certain subtleties that i think everybody

misses so without further ado i'm going to switch over the camera if can can everyone see this yes Oh, look how fancy Dennis is. Take note, guests of the future. This is amazing. OBS action. Dennis, is this the sandwich effect that I was frothing over in your... Is that what you're doing right now? No, it's a transposition. It's a transposition using three. It could really be any. I just wanted to pull out cards that are indifferent.

Doesn't matter what it is, right? But we have two jokers. They're the same as well as a queen of clubs. Three cards. This is completely impromptu. We'll start by separating the different card away from the two jokers If I'm in a frame and the idea is to get the two jokers to switch places with the Queen So it's two cards here and one there. I just give it away like this and. There's the queen. The queen's here, and the two jokers are there. I look at the camera while doing it. Jesus.

It is the routine that I absolutely love. I remember posting on this being like, damn, Dennis, I love this. And then you just replied, me too. Yeah, a lot of people have seen this and asked this question all the time. Like, are you going to teach this, right? So if you're a magician watching, I'm sure you'd surmise how I did this. I'll do a very, very brief overview of all the moves and then go a little more in depth. So you get three cards. If you're doing this in person, just use a pair.

You know, if you keep jokers in the deck, that's your problem. But like the two red kings or whatever, right? But for video, which was my mistake, it should be duplicates, right? Because people watch it a million times and go, oh, that's obvious. So that's two jokers and an indifferent card. Queen of Club in this case. You get three cards. You'll have the indifferent card at the bottom. Then you're going to push off and get a double from the bottom.

Oh, jeez. I'm trying to look here like this. So that's two cards in reality. Turn the double back over, place what they think is the indifferent card on the table. I would say about, not halfway, it might fall over. So like three quarters of the way in and about a third maybe or a quarter off of the table. And it should be a flat surface. It's like rounded. It makes it difficult. And then you'll do a frustration count with the two card left to show seemingly two jokers.

And so once you turn this double over, you're going to see that it's the queen so i keep it off to the side so if i'm in middle grip the top card is going in towards where your your hand is the top card and so what you're doing while shaking like this which is doing this plus your wrist should be a little loose to kind of cover a little more is use your pinky i get this right so you push in as your middle finger and your thumb are also kind of sliding down,

in unison, which will naturally push your pinky in, which will keep it square. So like this, it's square. Now do a Stuart Gordon double lift. Show it, and you're going to re-grip where now your hand comes in.

It's holding it. It's pinching it like this, where most of my thumb is on the face, as just the tip of my index finger is at the bottom of the double, and the other hand is on the other corner because if you hold a double like this, you can see it kind of separates a little bit sometimes, right? But you just kind of hold it there just enough to now you can come over this way. And the reason we hold it like this is because now your index finger can flick, separating that joker from underneath.

And you're doing that at the same time as you're turning this over. Okay? Kind of broken into two separate actions. You want to do it at the same time. And it's hard to do it slow, but I'll guide it with my hand like this.

Going to be like, so in real time it will be that ideally they kind of stay together and glide off but that's that's fine as well some real time that's amazing that's so cool you know what like yes you can try to follow along but it's that last move that i think fools even like the magicians that think they're following along yes absolutely it's like oh well i've done this for magicians like a lot i was really excited to see how you're going to clean up from this position and

that was yeah that was the right way to go right so a couple of things one of the most common mistakes i've seen people do when they like tag me and like oh i can do your trick too is they go there's three cards so we'll take the queen i can't do him and do it right but they they strip one off and then show this as if it's one card if i strip a card off like this i should have two left here so yeah in the drive.

Attempt to feel that this is one is like a huge oversight and that is, like I see that in like. 10 out of 10 videos that I'm tagged in of people doing this. I don't know why this seems to be okay, but it's not, which is why I'll push off the top card to get a break. You could do a pinky count, but it gets a little weird with three cards. It's not necessary. You just do this while you're just brushing the table, whatever. Get a break, and then just flip the bottom two over.

Then everything seems fine, right? So I think the key thing about, if you were to actually do this, if magic was real, you actually had powers, what would it actually look like?

If I'm taking the bottom card from this three, this is not possible this just tips the method so that's the big thing chill here and then just put it down and this frustration count you can do it like this what i like to do though is do the frustration show the first one strip off that top and then do like a stewart gordney kind of thing.

So that it's a little less linear i'm sure it doesn't make that big of a difference but to just do this i don't know i've never been a fan of i wish i could do something a little more convincing but i can't really think of any alternative that's better than this and yeah before i do this move i kind of just build them down so that they're kind of together if they're a little separate from each other like height wise

it might get a little weird you just want to make sure that once they line up they're really going to line up here and even if it's like a little off i wouldn't panic that happens sometimes just keep going you know hopefully by the time you score you do the steward gordon it kind of squares up a little bit and then just go into the move i I would go slow at this because this is kind of a scary moment.

But I would try to go a little slow with it. But practice that move a whole bunch. That's for sure. And yeah, that's about it. That's a very simple transposition I'll have to share with you guys on a couple of the do's and don'ts. But this has been such a fun trick to do. It's not part of my repertoire when I'm doing walk-around gigs and stuff. But it's always nice to be able to know this for particular groups that just want to see more and more and more.

It can lead into sandwich effects and whatever because you've got three cards, three card money, whatever you want to do. So, yeah, that's about it, guys. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that, my friend. Yeah. Yeah. That is lit. They are absolutely loving it. Thank you for sharing that, man. It's, again, yeah, like, in the comments you saw, like, we just, everyone's loving it. I love it, too.

I feel like there's other applications for that end flip that I'm sure you've thought about, but, like, I could imagine, you know, I'm going to predict two cards and sit them on the table, but it's actually one and you can do a one ahead or one behind kind of thing even i don't know i could see that yeah absolutely it was actually inspired from danny garcia a long time ago he came out with this project called five i think with marcus eddie maybe it was on this one

maybe it's for oh yeah right there was a trick called point 44 which is a four four four transposition, and the last phase he does like a paintbrush change and then that segues to showing that a card than a table or a completely different form of a kind but he flips them over like that and I like that move it was a very particular move so I was like what if you also can load a card in that action and that's where I had to come up with this transposition

so yeah I love that I love you know I miss the old Vegas Strip Street Magic Vans.

Videos like performances in 20 times yeah yeah that would yeah that's awesome so daniel if we could circle back to your consulting realm i have a question with regards to that and it is when you're working with certain magicians performers i assume that there is like a couple of entities you got to consider and what i'm most interested in is like you have consulting and helping with shows and also consulting and helping with routines

and i know that they might sound like they're part and parcel but when what are the major differences between someone going i have this one routine help me with this one effect which is effectively you going here's method but when it comes to show is that how much more difficult is that i think it's a lot more involved for so for the past like year and a half right i've been working on this show for somebody who's trying to come

up with like a new immersive theater show it's not a magic show but she wanted magic elements in it, which makes sense. I think magic can be very diverse in being applied to other things like Harry Potter. There's magic consultants on that for Broadway. So I thought that was really interesting, but I've been working with it for the last year and a half.

Month after month after month, we're developing magic. I'm teaching her how to do these things because some slight of hand is involved and it gets very involved and takes a long time. I wouldn't say it's necessarily more difficult, but there's more work to do versus for a certain routine or something. From my experience, it's been pretty easy in the sense that not every magician is coming to me with help for routines.

It's been only a handful of people and they are people who need consultants where they already have a great show or they're already great performers. They know a lot of material. They just want to get thoughts or help or whatever, whether it's formal or informal. And so to be able to fix up certain things with like, oh, what do you think about this? And it's like, well, I think this or that, like they understand what I'm talking about, I guess.

At least from my experience, I haven't never like worked formally with someone who's like not that experienced where it's like, what should I do? I don't know so much, you know, it's always people who like have already been doing this and whether they have their own show in the city or they've been doing this full time.

I think at that point, that's where you get a consultant. Otherwise, like if you're a beginner to intermediate or a hobbyist, like you can answer all your questions by looking online, you know, but very, it's very like specific help that you need from somebody else. Like they're already going to know a lot. Okay. And as far as this specific mind, like skill sets that a consultant would have, what would you say your specific skill set is? Boy, user. That's a tough question. What'd I do, bud?

But they're great questions. And I think it's tough because it's like, I hate always like saying from what my strong suits are. It's like, I don't know. What if I'm mistaken? What if I suck at this thing? And I think I'm great. But well, for one, I think card tricks are definitely a strong suit of mine. If we need to figure out like a method for something, I got it. I'm going to figure it out for you.

Otherwise, I think just like structurally for a routine, sometimes certain routines can get a little more complex with a lot of moving pieces and go much more in detail about that. But structuring things, whether it's like scripting or procedure with the audience and the perception of a layperson, I think that's a big strong suit of mine of like taking into account what an audience member is going to be thinking at every second.

And what's false methods might come to mind that they're mistaken in is that a good thing or a bad thing do we want to lead them down this path or does it hit too close to home of what the actual method is because i and i think that's a strong suit of mind because when magicians show me magic tricks i'm probably one of the best magic spectators that there probably could be like i'll be fooled by so many tricks like if you see me at like a convention like i'm blown

away by like all the things even though maybe i shouldn't have been fooled and it's because i think what's the what's more conducive is to not like watch like like a magician like like you can't fool me it's like what's the point of that yeah watch like some person i have no idea what a magic trick is i've never seen it.

Before and just watch like without being so critical about every moment and making sure that i don't like i don't have any oversights like i just want to watch and i'll end up being fooled and i think that's more conducive because it's like well that you're going to be performing this for lay people how are they going to react to it i kind of want to emulate that you know so i do get fooled by like almost everything because i'm not watching critically

you know and i think that's really important because then now i can take into account lay people who are not so well versed and sometimes i'm in like jams where they get so deep that it's like we start to question like what is that even deceptive. Wouldn't an audience member even would this even fool people? And sometimes you get really deep into magic or you start questioning the things.

Again, like I've said before, you get jaded when you're working on certain things for so long that they start to become these givens and you start assuming everybody thinks that way. And it's good to have me around to remind you like, hey man, people don't know what a double list is. You know, for example.

So I hope that answers your question. yeah and what advice do you have for folks who are working on things for so many years i have routines that i've been dusting off purely because i haven't had the forum to perform them there isn't a lot of opportunities to do parlor style things and so thankfully due to the birth of the theater of magic i've been able to dust those routines off and polish them up again which is a really really wonderful thing i was working on routines and so forth like

in that realm now I guess with regards to the question and time, when you are feeling stuck or when you have been working on something for so long and you don't quite have it yet, what advice do you have? Do you shelve it? Do you seek help immediately or all the above? I think neither of those are the wrong answer. I personally would say, yeah, put it down for a sec or for a while and work on something else or don't work on something else.

You know sometimes we're just always trying to find ways to stay busy and continue developing our own magic and we get all magicked out you know but we tend to forget like over time how much we do just naturally learn versus like six months ago or x amount of time ago and so when you pick that thing up again you might all of a sudden have new ideas for it where it's like this is how i used to do it like here's an easy fix like this is so obvious oftentimes like that's how i feel

about a lot of my routines and i'm not performing like every single week like on a regular basis so sometimes things do get tabled and then i pick them back up again it's like huh, that part kind of sucks i can't believe i've been doing it like that here's and sometimes but you know rarely once in a while like you might not have that light bulb kind of go off for those routines and i think that's okay too i think that's an indication that like well you know you You don't have a big problem

here with this routine that's been working, and that's okay as well. You don't have to constantly be working on every piece. You'll never find that perfection where it's like, okay, this is done, period.

So keeping that in mind is important too but yeah i mean people ask me for help you know sometimes you ask for a consultant to get you know another brain in the mix and they might come up with ideas that you would have never considered and that's why you want to have consultants yeah so neither percent and and as we i like i mean i we said this beforehand before we went live and our dentist was worried like what what should we talk about i'm like this is

going to go so fast and it has because you have so much knowledge within you if people do want to reach out they do have that specific project that that could use the dentist touch how do they get in touch with you for that kind of a thing you can find me on instagram i think i have all of my contact methods on my page itself whether it's like going to my website or like i think my email is probably on there or maybe not i might

get too much spam might have removed it but yeah shoot me a message on Instagram and let's just chat you know I think that's that's where you'll definitely find me, amazing and that is Dennis's Instagram and website are in the link in the description of where you're watching or listening to this on Instagram the close-up artist.

Dennis thank you oh and in the chat excellent we'll put it on the screen here so dude thank you so much for coming on the show we end we end every episode with giving our guest the final word, it's been two years since we last got the final word from you, and we didn't talk about this backstage, but do you have some final words of wisdom if we set up this that you could drop for our fellow viewers? For sure, absolutely. Okay, let me run our stinger.

And we want to thank everyone for jumping on and for Dennis's time working on so many projects and we're cheering on for the FISM announcement.

And that gives me enough time to watch Dennis's video another maybe 20 times and we're going to leave you guys with the final word but nick and i will see you guys next week this is it all right i'm sure most of you watching are magicians whether you're hobbyists or aspiring professional or already doing this full-time i think magic is just such a beautiful thing there's always going to be solutions to all the problems

and sometimes we get so deep and caught up in the magic that we forget, you know, that magic can perform magic for other people and sharing it is such a gift that the reason why we do this in the first place is to make other people happy and wow them, you know, with something that we've practiced in private. Now we get to showcase it in public. It's a beautiful thing.

And if you want to consult as well, it's also, there's many joys in that as well, because you get to work on something that ends up being in a production, whether it's through a media or in person or virtually or whatever, Just never forget that magic is a gift that you have in your hands. Compartmentalize it. It shouldn't bleed so much into your life, of course, but otherwise when you're performing, just commit to the bit, you.

Yeah, like, like really commit to it. I don't know. I know I don't have any magic to perform for you guys in this episode besides this little transposition, but commitment is really important because, well, I've been doing this entire podcast kind of from a mirror. Oh, come on. You know, maybe I'll show you what it looks like from behind the scenes. Oh, come on. I didn't have to say we've got such stuff just to be on brand.

We can't end the episode like that oh my god what that means is that the Windex bottle is a proper one god damn it, are you kidding me oh my word it's fun guys thanks for having me I appreciate it. Music.