Con­scious Selection

One of the inter­est­ing things for me is to ana­lyze my buy­ing habits. As most of us, I went through the tedi­ous pro­cess of being remote con­trolled by the deal­ers’ cata­logues, the ads in the magazines and, of course, the inter­net and their online shops.

After being into magic act­ively for more than 35 years, many of my buy­ing habits changed out of neces­sity for the bet­ter. I hope this little ram­bling will do for you the same. I focus only on get­ting the right props, as opposed to what are the really good and import­ant sources of know­ledge (which alone would cov­er some blog articles).

At some times in our career, we make a decision to add a cer­tain routine to our per­form­ing rep­er­toire. We are facing the acquis­i­tion of the neces­sary appar­at­us, which can be a real chal­lenge and pain.

I will take the example of the mul­tiply­ing bottles effect, because, right now, I do have a pupil (or a per­son will­ing to be instruc­ted by me, if you want) and we decided to merge this effect into his act­ive per­form­ing rep­er­toire. He is already a pro­fes­sion­al, work­ing gigs for money. No ama­teur busi­ness here.

Luck­ily, this effect has a long his­tory in my exper­i­ence. In 1982, when I was work­ing in the ZZM (Zauberzen­t­rale Munich), which sold the Ger­man edi­tion of the whole Ken Brooke Series, I was exposed to Ken’s Mul­tiply­ing Mar­tini Bottles very early in my career. The advant­age was that I was involved in trans­lat­ing the whole routine from Eng­lish into Ger­man, which gave me an advant­age in learn­ing that beast.

Of course, the magic shop also lis­ted bottle sets, and soon I saw myself demon­strat­ing the mul­tiply­ing bottles (and also the passé passé bottles) to poten­tial cus­tom­ers. In that phase, I was able to actu­ally ‚feel’ the Ken Brooke routine, des­pite the fact that my per­form­ances must have been a night­mare! In these young­ster times, I felt‚ appar­at­us magic’ to be inferi­or. The real stuff (I thought) at these times were the clev­er sleight-of-hand moves …

In the course of the years, count­less routines for the trick passed through my hands. I read dozens of ‚new’ ideas, present­a­tions, con­cepts, and so on. Not only for the MP, but also for the PPB. Due to the fact that I was also work­ing a lot of con­ven­tions, I was exposed to dozens of dif­fer­ent brands and makes of bottle sets (although curi­ously only to two or three suit­able tables to per­form that trick on).

Now we faced the chal­lenge of find­ing the prop­er bottle set, which is easi­er to do, if you have a couple of restric­tions and pre­cise require­ments. This would determ­ine of what is use­ful and what is not. We needed a real work­ing per­formers set.

He came into the les­sons, equipped already with that won­der­ful Hanada bottles from Japan! I was amazed about the qual­ity and the work­man­ship. I was also amazed about the decept­ive­ness of these bottles on a close range – they do look like real whine bottles and there is noth­ing that com­pares to it on the mar­ket. Period.

But there are reas­ons, why we are not going to use this bottle set. The first reas­on is that exquis­ite whine bottles do not really fit his per­form­ance char­ac­ter. His stage char­ac­ter cries for beer, whis­key or more mod­ern bottles. The oth­er reas­on has to do with the spe­cif­ic routine I want to teach him: Ken Brooke’s routine. I don’t want to say that you can­not do Ken Brooke’s routine with these bottles (sure you can), but in our case (and con­sid­er­ing the work­ing con­di­tions he is going to face) I had to look more in depth. Good thing is, he has now at least three sets for the passé passé bottle.

Ken Brooke devised his routine to be the clos­ing routine for his cabaret/​stage act. It had to be short, enter­tain­ing, flashy and spec­tac­u­lar. He spent months in fig­ur­ing out the cor­rect table plan/​layout to put the bottles onto the table after the pro­duc­tion. Not only to guar­an­tee that all the bottles could be seen from almost all angles on the table (a require­ment for mod­ern per­form­ing con­di­tions) but also to avoid that the spec­tat­ors could notice the dif­fer­ence in size of the bottles. No need to rein­vent the wheel here, I just wanted to fol­low what has been work­ing per­fectly for decades.

Ken Brooke even designed his own set of bottles, which are clas­sics: The Mul­tiply­ing Mar­tini Bottles. These bottles were optim­ised for sta­bil­ity, dur­ab­il­ity and cred­ib­il­ity. In the 60s and 70s nearly every­body was aware of Mar­tini (although most of the people very rarely drank one). Ken Brooke’s choice was a wise one, because every­body would instantly recog­nise the brand and assume the alu­min­um shells on the per­formers table were the real thing. Add to that the fine work­man­ship of the Ken Brooke bottles and you have the ‚per­fect’ set. A set that is inten­ded to be per­formed in the con­di­tions of a Cab­aret of the 60s and 70s or on small plat­forms and stages–NOT close-up!

(Ken Brooke Bottles from Pop Haydn. Note how per­spect­ive helps to hide the smal­ler bottles in the rear. Dis­tance of the labels to the bot­tom of the bottle is not optimal.)

The down­side is that these bottles today are a collector’s item. Very hard to find them in good con­di­tion. If so, then the price usu­ally is exorbitant.

So, first of all, I made a list of what require­ments the bottles must meet:

They should look like real­ist­ic bottles and not plastic or met­al tubes with a neck.

The bottle shape should be sort of squashy. The Ken Brooke routine demands a quick pace (it is only four or five minutes). The quick pace and rhythm is an essen­tial part of the Ken Brooke routine and a chal­lenge in the handling.

The Hanada Bottles are very nice, but due to the fact that they are exact cop­ies of whine bottles, which are quite tall and have a smal­ler dia­met­er, the COG (cen­ter of grav­ity) is much high­er, which in turn makes them tumble a bit easi­er. The hand­ling has to be much more care­ful and there­fore slows down the Ken Brooke routine quite a bit. Like­wise, the act of set­ting a bottle set inside a tube over the glass has to be done much more care­ful, due to the smal­ler inside dia­met­er of the bottles.

The bottles I had in mind for my stu­dent are a bit lar­ger in dia­met­er and not that high, which makes for a slightly bet­ter COG.

It must be a set con­sist­ing of three nest­ing sets of three bottles each. Not only is Ken Brooke’s routine designed for that, but the dif­fer­ence in bottle size is not so easy to see. If you take a four (or even five) bottle set, you will see the small size of the last bottle set immediately.

Anoth­er detail is the rim at the open­ing of the bottle neck. Good bottle sets do have that (at least the two out­er bottles). It not only makes the bottle look more real, but it is essen­tial (at least in the Ken Brooke routine) in pick­ing up the two out­er bottles from a set of three inside the tube.

The Ken Brooke Bottles met all the above men­tioned require­ments in a per­fect way. You can see a set here, which was ‚refur­bished’. It was giv­en a dark­er col­or of high glossy paint and the Mar­tinis were con­ver­ted into whine bottles. This set looks good on stage and has all the tech­nic­al advant­ages of the Brooke bottles.

(Refur­bished Ken Brooke bottles, pic­ture taken from a blog entry in the magic café. Mar­vel­lous set. Note the prop­er dis­tance of the labels to the bot­tom of the bottle.)

(A bottle set of mar​tinsma​gic​.com which seems to be a work­er. Maybe the COG could cause some trouble.)

(Reg Don­nelly bottles which – in my opin­ion – are the next best thing to Ken Brooke’s Mar­tinis. Note the prop­er dis­tance of the labels to the bot­tom of the bottle.)

(Very inter­est­ing vari­ation on the Reg Don­nelly bottles. I like the dif­fer­ent designs, but nev­er tried how it would affect the routine.)

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(Bottles from India, from Uday, which look prom­ising, if the labels would be changed into a recog­niz­able whis­key brand and a neck dec­or­a­tion added.)

So in my buy­ing decision, this is the list of ques­tions to ask when I see a bottle set:

• Do the bottles look real­ist­ic (on distance)?
• Do they have a squashy design?
• Set of 3 x 3 bottles?
• Are they robust?
• Do the labels match the bottle shape?
• Do they have the rim at the opening?
• Can I redesign/​replace the label if necessary?

Espe­cially the last point is an import­ant one. Many times there are sets offered with fantasy labels people don’t know. Cheaply (home prin­ted) com­puter labels. Labels that nev­er fit the type of bottle. Labels that are too long and almost reach the bot­tom of the bottle (espe­cially the smal­lest of the set).

So here: the labels should be real ones, eas­ily recog­nis­able and fit the type of bottle. Luck­ily, it is very easy these days to have them prop­erly designed and off­set-prin­ted in smal­ler amounts.

With this ‚shop­ping list’ in mind the selec­tion of a suit­able set will be much easi­er. A search in the inter­net will reveal not only the mul­ti­tude of bottle sets in all dif­fer­ent shapes, sizes, set con­fig­ur­a­tions and designs, but also what NOT to buy.

Very soon you will see what set is OK and what to avoid. Mak­ing the decision by the price and going for the cheapest one is use­less and you just throw your money out of the win­dow. A good bottle set will last a life­time, if you care for it. So did the Ken Brooke Mar­tini Bottles.

The whole point with my sys­tem is this: I don’t go for the new­est, most real­ist­ic, whatever they have, Rolls Royce of any­thing. I make my decision based on the import­ant fea­tures that the prop must have, and which are dic­tated by effect, the per­form­ing con­di­tions and the inten­ded use of the prop in the effect.

I work with this sys­tem with every prop I buy, con­struct or acquire:

1. Set the con­di­tions you will per­form in.

2. Learn what the best methods/​routines are available.

3. Find out the require­ments for those.

4. Find the prop that meets the requirements.

5. Stick to this and for­get all the oth­er fancy stuff. Con­cen­trate on work­ing with the new found apparatus.

Hope this little essay will be help­ful for you in finding/​constructing your props.