Chris Pratt Magic Card Trick Explained with Tutorial – from Graham Norton Show
Chris Pratt did a magic card trick on the Graham Norton Show he called “Burn em” a couple of years ago. It’s still pretty popular on the internet. Do you want to know how to do the Chris Pratt magic trick as well?
Well, I’ve watched it, and based on what I know I can tell pretty much how it was done. Plus I know of a video tutorial that will show exactly how to do the end sequence, probably the same way Chris Pratt learned the card trick anyway.
Chris Pratt Magic Card Trick on Graham Norton Show
Here’s a performance of Chris Pratt doing his card trick on the Graham Norton Show. It’s not one of the best card tricks in the world, obviously, he’s not a professional with years of experience, but he does a decent job.
Here’s a performance of him in this video.
My Thoughts on Chris Pratt Magic Trick
The performance isn’t too bad for someone who doesn’t practice magic full time.
He does a very strange procedure of having the spectator select any card and return it, however. It almost has a feel of being something a kid might do in a magic trick.
It’s a procedure I had never seen before, so in a way, it fooled me at first. But after thinking about it for a little, I’m pretty sure I know what he did.
It would have probably been better to do some kind of card control. (You can learn about card magic sleight of hand basics here) The method did seem slightly amateurish, and also it took a lot of time when he was going through the cards and looking at them. The good thing is Chris Pratt is a professional actor, so he’s able to kind of keep the performance up, even during the slow times of the card trick.
Alright, so here is how I’m pretty sure it was done, and here’s how you can do the Chris Pratt Card trick as well.
The sleight used was the Glide. It’s an older and less common sleight that replaces the Double Lift. Kind of like a Double Lift off the bottom of the deck.
For the first procedure, really all he needed to do was have a spectator select a card, and then control it. But here’s what it looks like he did.
You notice that he goes through the deck at first, showing that the cards are shuffled. I think that he looks at the third card from the top.
Then, he does a couple of false shuffles retaining the top stock of the deck. This way the third card is still the third card.
He then has the spectator cut the deck into three piles, and keeps track of the top pile, which goes in the middle. He then has the spectator flip over the top card of this top pile, and then flip over the second card of the top pile.
Finally, the next card becomes the spectator’s chosen card. But Chris already knew this card since he peeked at the deck.
So, he can have the spectator place the card back however he wants and shuffle the deck however he wants. He then goes through the cards, and he places the chosen card, which he knows, fourth from the bottom of the deck.
The next part uses the glide and is pretty much the trick that was taught on Scam School using the glide. I’ll post the video tutorial below.
Basically, you show the bottom card, but then when the deck goes face down, you do the glide move and deal down the second card from the bottom instead.
The first time Chris shows the bottom card, he actually doesn’t do the glide, but he does the same move to condition the audience. He then burns the next card on the bottom.
Next, he shows another bottom card, which is incorrect. But, the spectator’s chosen card is now second to the bottom. So now it’s time to do the glide move for real.
Chris now does the glide move for real, dealing the second card from the bottom, which is actually the chosen card. Chris Pratt then “burns” the bottom card, so that that same card doesn’t get shown when he shows the bottom of the deck again, since it will still be there.
At the same time, the chosen card is now on the table, and everyone thinks it’s the card he originally showed and was the wrong card.
He then does the same thing but without doing the glide move to get two more cards. Then he picks up the packet of four cards, shows the bottom card, which is incorrect, and does the glide move.
This deals the second to bottom card to the table, which is the chosen card. He then takes the bottom card and places it on top of the pile and shows the new bottom card. He deals this card down to the table as normal.
And then, Chris shows the last two cards very quickly, one of them being the same card (the 3 of clubs) that was shown as the first card and was supposed to have gone to the table.
So, it looks like he has gone through the packet and the spectator’s chosen card is not there, but it is on the bottom.
He then does the classic slap card trick where he puts the packet into the spectator’s fist between the fingers and slaps the cards out, leaving the bottom card. This ends up being the spectator’s chosen card since it was on the bottom due to the procedure from before.
Here’s the Scam School video which shows the whole procedure he does at the end.
Final Thoughts on Chris Pratt Magic Card Trick Explained
Hopefully, you were able to learn how to do the Chris Pratt magic trick from this post and videos. It’s a pretty good trick for beginners to intermediate level in card magic to practice and perform.
The magician started magic as a kid and has learned from some of the greats. He loves to share his knowledge with others and help out with the subtleties he’s learned along the way.
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