X Finger by Geoff Weber

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Tom Frame
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X Finger by Geoff Weber

Postby Tom Frame » December 28th, 2008, 1:20 pm

X Finger (DVD or WMV download) Geoff Weber $19.95
Running time: 56 minutes
Available at: www.papercranemagic.com
Dealers purchase from Murphys Magic Supplies, Inc. (916) 853-9292 www.murphysmagicsupplies.com


This is the first of several gifts that I asked for and received on Christmas morn from Jan, my SantaWife.

I got the WMV download, so I cant comment of the properties of the DVD. Here is an excerpt of the advertisement from the website, where you can also view a demonstration:

Imagine being able to show your hand completely empty, then borrow a pen and write the word coin on your finger. With the shake of your hand the word coin transforms into a real coin. Or you approach a group of spectators [and] show your hand to have nothing on it and suddenly your name appears on your finger.

X Finger requires no gimmicks. It is completely impromptu and allows for some of the most beautiful and unusual vanishes, transformations, transpositions and appearances in all of magic.

The show your hand completely empty phrase actually means that, with the fingers of your hand pressed together, you can display an empty hand.

The completely impromptu claim is simply not true. The only effect that is completely impromptu is that of writing something on your finger, then causing it to vanish. All of the other effects require advance preparation.

Geoff Weber states that the inspiration for his creation was Reed McClintocks Stars & Hexes. Mr. McClintock co-stars in the video and offers a number of his own applications of the principle. For the most part, our hosts do a good job of performing and teaching the effects.

Mr. Webers patter is purely descriptive. This is yet another unfortunate example of what I call Patter for the Blind. Mr. McClintock has actual presentations. His patter is often dark and tormented. I like dark and tormented.

The production quality of the video is good. The opening and closing segments feature the shaky, hand-held camera work and thrash guitar soundtrack that the kids all love. The remainder of the video has no musical accompaniment and the camera is calm.

The video begins with Mr. Weber and Mr. McClintock discussing the history of X Finger. Our hosts then teach the basic handling.

At the conclusion of every effect, except one, you end dirty. The guys meager advice on how to surreptitiously clean up is to do so when no one is looking, or when you have the crowd transfixed by your post-effect patter.

Our hosts acknowledge that people may grab your hand to look for clues. But they assure us that they wont want to examine your individual fingers.

Come on, now. Lets not delude ourselves. Unless you possess a formidable personality and supreme audience management skills, people will want to closely examine your fingers immediately after the transformation. This is not possible. You need to buy yourself several seconds to clean up prior to the examination. Good luck.

Lets check out the effects. Unless otherwise noted, I think that all of the following applications are fair to good.

X Finger (Weber)
Mr. Weber draws an X on his finger. He waves a hanky in front of his hand and the X vanishes from his finger and is found on the hanky. I dont like this effect. The crowd is likely to believe that the ink was not dry, or that it was erasable. Because the hand is quicker than the eye, they will believe that the performer simply transferred the ink off of his finger onto the hanky during the flourish. This explanation, though incorrect, will satisfy them, and thus destroy the magic.

Card Devinition (Weber)
The identity of a forced card instantly appears written on your finger.

Serial Number Devination (McClintock)
The serial number of a borrowed (switched) bill suddenly appears written on your finger.

Etch-A-Sketch (Weber)
Weber describes his childhood fascination with an Etch-A-Sketch toy. He draws a series of lines on his finger, shakes his hand, and just like an Etch-A-Sketch, the lines disappear.

Boomerang Toss (Weber)
The performer draws a boomerang on his finger. He throws the boomerang and the image disappears from his finger. The boomerang returns, he catches it and the image returns to his finger.

Blister Vanish (McClintock)
The performer burns himself, causing a blister on his finger. With a gentle wave of the hand, the blister disappears. You end clean. McClintock credits Jack Tillar for the Blister concept, and received his permission to explain it.

Live/Evil (McClintock)
In the course of a dark, provocative presentation, LIVE written on the performers finger transforms to EVIL.

Arrow Switch (Weber)
An arrow pointed to the left transforms into an arrow pointed to the right.

Bullet (McClintock)
Accompanied by a very somber presentation, a bullet draw on the finger changes into a real bullet. I commend McClintock for his passionate presentation, but I dont like the effect. His technique is a bit clumsy, and he produces a very small .22 caliber bullet. I fear that the crowd may correctly deduce that such a small object can be rather easily concealed in the hand. Buy a bigger gun.

Coin Production (McClintock)
Two vertical lines and an S on the finger transform into a $. McClintock suggests that the viewer use the Sylvester Pitch to produce a handful of coins.

Scribble String (Weber)
The performer draws some squiggly lines on his finger then pulls the ink off of his finger, in the form of a long piece of thread.

Houdinis Needle (McClintock)
While pattering about Houdini, a needle appears, piercing the meat of the performers finger. In another effect, the performer swallows a needle, which his body expels, not via the traditional route, but by squirting it out of his finger, resulting in it piercing the finger meat. This is geek magic forced to wear an ill-fitting Houdini suit. I dont like it.

Jumping Flies (Weber)
The performer catches a fly, which appears drawn on the finger of one hand. Then it flies over to his other hand. Another fly appears and they frolic and fly back and forth before flying away. With his arms stretched out to his sides, Mr. Weber resembles a creepy caricature of the Scales of Justice. I dont like this effect.

X Throw (McClintock & Weber)
Our hosts demonstrate how two people who are hip to the X Finger principle can play catch with ink images. I dont like this effect.

The advance preparation required for X Finger makes it difficult to perform other effects before it, lest the secret be exposed. The fact that you end dirty limits your ability to perform other effects after it. Thus, it seems best suited as a one-off effect. Get in. Get out. Wash up.

After proper preparation, I performed the effect for Jan. I walked into the room and displayed NAJ written on my finger.

Why are you holding your hand like that, Puppy Boy?

Uh. Its an acute case of Carpal Tunnel syndrome. Its nothing. Its not important. Watch.

With a wave of my hand, NAJ morphed into JAN.

Wow! Thats cool. Why are you holding your hand like that? Let me examine your paw.

No! You cant! Uh. It hurts.


Not recommended.

reed mcclintock
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Re: X Finger by Geoff Weber

Postby reed mcclintock » December 28th, 2008, 4:47 pm

I just read this review by Mr. Frame and the review I think was very fair and well written by one of the most amazing card magicians in todays magic world.

I am reminded of current events in the media, when we listen to a particular politician speak. The huge rounds of applause he garners when delivering speeches which sound so moving, wonderful, and inspiring. We find ourselves reflecting on the words that were so moving and yet as we think about what has been said we realize he is the man for the job because we dont dive further into the content of what was said. It is all surface feel good programming but what is really being said?

What has the lack of questioning caused us to miss?

What if what wasnt said is that the timing of when to do something?

We all know what needs to be done , we know how to do it, but do we know when the time to do it is?

This particular piece is and should be performed as an interlude moment, what do I mean?

You do dazzling magic, your audience needs to recover from the potency of the precision sleight of hand just executed. The audience is reeling from the a magical moments just experienced. As they come down from the high, you're able to stop performing for a minute and actually TALK with the people as human beings and you share a story that requires you to stand back a moment and gain focus on topic.

Not acting as if to be gettting ready to do another fine piece of precision sleight of hand, but a thought or a strange occurrence. Perhaps a quick diagram is needed to make the focus of the topic more clear, a point to illustrate your human interaction with a visual enhancement that oddly occurs.

What's this? he says doing magic when they are unaware of you're doing magic. I know this is an interesting thought, performing when the audience guard is down because the ego and modern train of thought in today's training of the magician should be to always demand credit of how great they are.

This is where you realize now that you can create rapport with an audience, sharing with them not a trick but a moment, an interlude intertwining your tricks with a piece of magic that occurred as you were explaining a focused moment.

What is it I have just said here? I HAVE NEVER HAD ONE PERSON WANT TO SEE MY HAND AFTER I HAVE PERFROMED X-FINGER AND HERE IS WHY:

I perform my pieces and wow the audience. Unlike other magicians I want rapport and a relationship of substance more than I want deep rapport. I am looking and establishing wide rapport. The difference is when I am out (another venue, the vetrinarian's office, gas station or even the market), my audience can walk up to me and greet me as their friend and not feel the same awkwardness one might feel if you were to see a teacher, or co-worker, at a personal friend's party. You know the teacher, or co-worker or anyone in one frame of referance ONLY in that way, of that particular environment and that is as far as the relationship goes forgetting that they are people too after the school day is over.

I discovered by talking with people about multiple things more than just magic that I establish and create a relationship with people. I can never have that feeling of being in that forced awkward politeness in a an environment outside of the perfroming arena. LIKE IS LIKE: thats how relationships begin and stay unless the relationship is no longer wanted. Then you change the direction of the relationship with a matter of uncommon interest.

LOL with the market the way it is today, I am all about keeping and maintaining rapport with everyone I meet in real life. Anyway back to the topic here.

X-Finger is an interlude piece that you would do in between moments, not a throw away but an unexpected aside. I know as the skilled performer that you are, that is why you are on the Genii board and you made this distinction already.

Remember that people who know you know your body language and the tonality of your voice patterns. Unless that is all you perform for, then no, this trick would not work well. If you have an already well established rapport, then why would you do it anyway? lol.

The reason no one goes for wanting to look at your fingers is because their guard is down. Something unexpected happened when they werent ready. After the moment of change on the finger they are in a state of hypnosis for lack of better words and they have no program of what to do next. This is the moment you take advantage of that and go into your next piece of magic smoothly and unrushed but paced well.

I think more than anything the best term for this would be called a segue. Only experience will give you the right timing. Shouldnt magic happen even when your not doing magic, since you are a real magician?

One more point of interest here to make this thing really pop, even though you know how to do it, I would recommend several hours of practice in front of the mirror and camera. This way you can get the fingers from an uncramped unnatural position, by finding the distance one should stand to illogically but logically in a magical way motivate why you're drawing a diagram on the fingers. Its all attitude baby, perform each piece in the right form without ego, not just "hey look at this, what do you think of me now, ha ha."

I am so grateful to Mr. Frame for taking the time to write a review of his honesty, pride, and spending a few minutes to share with all of us his valued and respected opinions of magic and welcome many more reviews of magic. I find them valuable, enlightning, highly entertaining and helpful for our next magical X purchases.

Reed McClintock

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Tom Frame
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Re: X Finger by Geoff Weber

Postby Tom Frame » December 29th, 2008, 4:47 pm

Thanks to Reed for describing how he overcomes the potential obstacles I cited in my review. I spent some thoroughly enjoyable time with Reed several years ago at 4F. Given his persona and performing style, I have no doubt that X Finger brings him much success.

Geoff Weber sent me an email addressing some of my concerns. With his permission, I have included the email, which I have edited for security purposes. Hopefully, it will assist you in making your purchasing decision. If you have questions for Geoff, you can contact him at gweber@gmail.com

Hi Tom,

Thanks for taking the time to write a review. I see that your initial attempts at performing this for your wife were not met with great success which probably was discouraging. But I hope I can persuade you to stick with it a little longer and perhaps offer you some additional suggestions to make it work better for you.

You mentioned that your hand looked like you were suffering from carpal tunnel. Perhaps that is the first area that can be improved on. One thing I've noticed among people that are having issues with getting the "xfinger" position to not look so suspicious is that they are trying to force their hand to be flat, and they are primarily applying upward pressure from their ring finger.

My first recommendation would be to allow your hand to curl inward as if you are try to cup water in it, and when holding your fingers together, they should not be tense, if there is any pressure at all, it should be downward from the index finger. If you really are feeling guilty about that ending position, it will be conveyed to your audience.

Regarding the clean up, you could hand your spectator the pen at the conclusion of the effect to check out that its a regular pen. This would give you a moment of misdirection to clean up.

Another option is to clean up as soon as the trick is over. Usually they would need to a little time to process what they've seen. By immediately cleaning up, you pre-empt their questions. Keep in mind, when done well this should look simply inexplicable, so I only clean up as precaution which I rarely ever needed to show.

Because you end dirty in many of the presentations, this is not a bulletproof piece of magic suited for a lot of high stakes performance conditions. But keep practicing for your friends and neighbors and I think as you get the handling more natural you will find that rewards outweigh the risks. I really want everyone to have the kind of success with this piece of magic that I've had, so I am willing to offer my help to anyone who asks for it... and even a few who didn't :)

Geoff

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Richard Kaufman
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Re: X Finger by Geoff Weber

Postby Richard Kaufman » December 29th, 2008, 5:10 pm

This is exactly the type of exchange I hope will occur with Light from the Lamp Online.

Bravo, gents.
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