Cardistry - Virtuoso : RISE feat. the FW17 Virtuoso deck

Published on Dec 8, 2017 thevirts

"The new FW17 Virtuoso deck is launching soon.
Learn more about this deck and Cardistry at https://thevirts.com/

A note from The Virts about "RISE":

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from shuffling cards over the past 14 years, it’s that you only get better at Cardistry as you repeatedly push yourself beyond your limits. The byproduct of that, of course, is dropping cards - again, and again, and again.

Today, after 14 years... we still drop our cards all the time. Sure, we now drop our cards less frequently; but no matter how much better we’ve gotten, bending to the floor and repeatedly picking cards up covered in dust (and hair) never gets any less frustrating.

Over the years, we’ve come to establish a bit of a love-hate relationship with failure. We still don’t like it, yet we’ve also come to recognize that if we’re not dropping our cards enough, we’re also not going to get any better at Cardistry. And in that sense, we’ve come to find failure rather beautiful.

RISE was birthed from a vision of ours to capture this intriguing beauty of failure.

Envisioning a juxtaposition between clean forms and abstract swirls, we pictured cards being manipulated with impeccable technique - abruptly interrupted and exploding out of the very hands that shuffled them.

We imagined them rising from the ground; the cards fluttering through the air in slow motion, dancing like the leaves in the Fall... and returning to our hands - perhaps forming imperfectly at first, then progressing with each step taken, and finally, displayed in all their glory.

Yet our stubbornness as Cardists doubling as filmmakers resulted in a few interesting restrictions that we imposed upon ourselves:

If this “Fall” vision were to be captured, it would have to be done with no CG. Everything had to be filmed in-camera and performed by ourselves with with a real deck of cards.

Next, there would be no use of green screen, compositing, or other camera trickery. The furthest we agreed upon was the reversal of several scenes - and only if they genuinely added to the story we wanted to tell.

And finally, the cards used could not be gimmicked in anyway - no strings, magnets or anything of the sort. If what we envisioned could not be accomplished by our technique, then the idea was scrapped.

Thankfully, after months of planning, testing, and of course...failing, we finally had the opportunity to transform our vision into a reality.

Through the use of a Phantom high-speed camera mounted on a Bolt Cinebot (thank you Shooting Gallery Asia), and the help of a leaf blower or two... Rise was born.

We truly hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it for you.

- The Virts"