(dramatic music)
(car door clicking) (car door slamming) - James E. Woo, FBI.
- James E. Woo, FBI. (groovy electronic music) I think that's enough. - What's up everyone, my name is Bao, I am a professional magician, and I am about to teach you
how to do the card trick that you might have seen
from "Ant-Man and the Wasp" and "WandaVision" episode four. Now, not only I will teach you how to make the card vanish and reappear, I will also show you how
to show both sides empty before making it reappear. Now, that might be where
you'll get a little more value from this tutorial. Now, the backpalm has first been seen in the Marvel universe in
"Ant-Man and the Wasp," where Scott Lang has been
trying to learn how to do magic. Now, Jimmy Woo was really
puzzled on how Scott was able to make cards appear from thin air, so Jimmy went on his own and learned the card trick by himself. It was only until
"WandaVision" episode four where we could see Jimmy
finally do the card trick. I personally think that was
the greatest character arc of all time in the Marvel
universe, and we could also say that Jimmy was trying to woo
Monica with his card trick. Okay, that was really bad. In this video, I'll be
using my own playing cards, the Instant Noodles Playing Cards, and they're actually borderless, which is perfect for the backpalm. If you find any value at
any point in this video, please remember to hit the like button, and that will really be helpful. Now, before I teach you this card trick, let me get into more comfortable clothes, (Bao vocalizing whooshing) Okay, we're back in a comfortable hoodie. If you are still watching, that means that you want to
learn how to do the backpalm. So let's break down this
tutorial into four sections, first, it will be the vanish itself, second will be the
reappearance of the card, now, the third section is the motion where I will show you the
best way, the best motion to make the card vanish and the best way to make
it reappear, I think that's where some of the other
tutorials I've seen is lacking. The fourth section is
where I think you'll get the most value out of this tutorial, it is where I show you how to show your hand's
empty from the back and in the front before
making the card reappear. Stick around until the end for that, and let's get this tutorial started. Section number one is the
vanish, where you will learn how to make the card
vanish, just like that. That's what it looked like. Let me show you what it
looks like from the back, so we're gonna go like this. Boom. Card's gone, and then make
it reappear, like that. To do the vanish, your thumb
is gonna be placed right here, in the middle of the card, and your other fingers will
be right on top of the thumb. You'll be mostly holding it with the middle and ring finger for now. As soon as you'd want to do the vanish, you're gonna bring the first and the pinky towards the edge of the card. And then once you're able to grip the card with the pinky and the first finger, your two fingers, here,
will start curling down, kind of like Spider-Man, right here, okay? They'll be curling down the card here so that, eventually, you'll be able to bring the first finger and the pinkie down and your first and middle
finger will be able to extend to make the card vanish. From the front, it'll look like this. And keep in mind it's okay when you start to see the little edges here, over time, you'll learn how
to make it a lot more minimal. But first, you gotta learn
how to make the motion of the vanish of the card. So it is clipped between
the first and pinky, and you press it down like that. And with speed, it'll look like this. It'll look like a completely,
very quick vanish, as if it just completely
vanished into thin air, that's what, that's what
we're trying to go for, okay? So that is the vanish. (mellow hip-hop music) I think that's enough. Section number two is after the vanish, you will need to learn
how to make it reappear. So I will teach you two good
ways to make it reappear. So first, you make the card vanish, right? Now, you want to make it reappear. The common mistake that
I see is this right here, where it reappears just like this, the fingers all curled in like that. I say that this looks terrible. In order to avoid that,
I would do either this, or I would even do this. So first one is usually used when you have multiple,
multiple cards in the backpalm. You would have your thumb
contact the card here, pull it back, and your
other fingers will extend. So from the other side,
it looks like this, your thumb will grab the
corner of the card here, and as soon as the thumb grabs it back, your other fingers will
flick out like that. You don't want your fingers
to remain curled in. You want them to extend
as soon as possible so that it looks like you just grabbed it, you didn't grab them like
this, you grabbed it like this. So this will look a lot cleaner, it makes a lot more sense. You don't look like you just
grab the card like this, in a very awkward manner. You want the card to, make it
reappear at your fingertips. The second way to make it
reappear, slightly more elegant, is to catch it at the tip of your
fingers like this, okay? So you're going to reach for the card and it reappears between
your first and middle finger at the very edge, as if
you were to, you caught it with the two fingers here. So to make the card reappear, it is the middle finger that
will do most of the action. You'll see the middle finger will curl in and then it will attempt to
clip the card, right here, and as soon as you have a
firm grip, you can let go and the card can be
reappeared in this manner. So in full speed, right there. So the second method, I
find it a lot more elegant because it looks as if,
like you just grabbed it with the tip of your fingers. But I should look like
this, a lot more elegant, and I don't see a lot of people do that, not, at least not in the beginning. So if you're a beginner and you learn how to make
a card reappear like this, you are already way ahead
in the backpalm game. (mellow hip-hop music) So you learned the mechanics
on how to make the card vanish and how to make it reappear. Now, one thing to put all of
this together is the motion, this is something that you
absolutely need to understand in order to make your
backpalm look very good. Now, picture this. The, in an ideal world, if we were to actually
have magical powers, you would hold the card, and in order to make it vanish, it will just look like (Bao vocalizing popping) this, it would just, (Bao vocalizing popping) vanish like that, completely vanish, your fingers are out, you throw
in the air, and it vanishes. And I'm in order to make it reappear, you would reach to grab
the card again, and (Bao vocalizing whooshing) reappears like that, or (Bao vocalizing popping) reappears like this, okay? In this case, we are in the real world, we are limited with our
real world's physics, and we cannot be as clean as that, but we want to get as close as possible. The motions I'm about to teach
you will be very important. We want to get as close to this vanish and as close to this
reappearance as much as we can. The closest way we can get there
is by the motion like this, okay? Now, one thing you want to avoid is to have a very unnatural motion because whenever the performer does it, they only think about the movement, the slight of hand, the mechanics, but they don't think about
how it would actually look when it's presented. So the motion would look more like this. You're going to flick the card up, you would throw the card up, and that's where the card vanishes. And then once it vanishes,
you would make it reappear by catching it in the air, like that. How it would look like with the backpalm, it would look like this. You go up, down, and up, completely vanish, and
then you make it reappear by reaching in the air, like that. You can see my arm goes up, like that, and it's at the up motion
that the card vanishes. So once we make the card
vanish up in the air, you can grab it like this. Another thing is that you can
also look at the direction where the card vanishes, so
let's say it goes up like that. You would look at the imaginary card that would be invisible somewhere here, okay, you wanna believe
in the actual magic that you're, you're doing,
so it goes up like this, make it reappear, and there you go. So it goes there and then you will make
it reappear like that. I hope that you now understand that the backpalm isn't
simply the mechanics of hiding the card and
making the card reappear, but it is much more than that. It is also in the motion and
the intent of the execution, and that will make your performance
much, much, much better. We are now at section number four, not only do you now understand
how to make the card vanish, to make it reappear with a nice motion, and understand the psychology behind it, you will now learn how to do the pivot. This is a little more advanced. Maybe you want to come back
to this section in the future. But let me show you how
the pivot looks like. This version, you can actually
show the back of your hand as well as the front, and then you can make it
reappear just like that. How cool is that? That is the cleanest
way to do the backpalm, and this is something that I don't see a lot of magicians do. Now, you might recognize
this from "Now You See Me 2," where they show the hand
like this and like that. Now, what are you're gonna try to do is a little bit of the
same thing, but right here. So you're gonna start where
the card's clipped like this. And you want to make sure that the bottom of the
card can reach the base of your thumb. So that is important
because what's gonna happen is that your thumb will
serve to push the card up, your fingers will go all the way back here to catch the card like that. You have to make sure
that the fingers can go as far as they can down here because if you only reach, let's say here, your backpalm will look like this, it's gonna flash a lot. So you wanna make sure to get as far as you can back here, and the only way to do that
is for the base of your thumb to push the card a little higher up so that it can actually
do a proper backpalm. So now that you understand
how to do the transfer, you have to do the pivot. So everything is gonna happen
as you rotate your hand from the back to the front. So from the back, it looks like this. I'll do it very slowly. So, you see, everything is
happening here right now. Everything is happening as soon as my hand goes back like that, everything is happening there, right here, (subdued mellow hip-hop music) I can extend my fingers
and show the front. So from the back to the front, like this. So I show the back like this, like that. So this is what the motion
looks like from the back. So I do agree this is
a little harder to do, but you have to do it slowly
to understand your angles, like that. So you can use a bigger
motion like this as well to do the move. (subdued mellow hip-hop music) That'll give you a little more
time to do the motion here, instead of just this. A knuckle-buster, I tell you. (Bao hissing) So from here all the way there,
and make the card reappear. And that's it! (mellow hip-hop music) Woo, my arm is sore. (Bao exhaling) So my shoulder is super
sore from all this teaching, but I hope that you learned
something from this, and make sure that you
practice because this is, this takes a lot of practice. (Bao vocalizing whooshing) I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial, and you're now on your way
to master the backpalm. Be sure to practice
because slight of hand, this kind of slight of
hand is not forgiving. If you liked this tutorial, I have many other videos like
this on my channel as well. Be sure to consider to subscribe and hit the bell notification right below. Also, just so that I know
that you watched this video until the very end, just make sure to comment
backpalm in the comments section. If you haven't liked this
video yet, be sure to like, and I hope to see you in the next video. See you next time, peace.
