- Hi, I'm Ryan Jenkins, and I'm the writer director of "Anomaly."

- I'm Spencer Sherry.

I'm the producer and editor of "Anomaly."

- [Ryan] "Anomaly" is a short film about a magic act that features an inexplicable trick that has attracted the attention of a government auditor.

- It's about the love of magic when you're a child as opposed to an adult and how kind of that wonderment might start to fade.

So this is really a lot about one man's attempt at reclaiming that feeling after seeing this impossible act.

(gentle music) - My final trick is unique in every way to the customs of the magical arts.

- So Eric Mead is one of the premier coin magicians, sleight of hand magicians in the world right now.

We saw him on YouTube performing on the "Penn and Teller Show," and then after the script was complete, I just emailed it to him.

- It wasn't even necessarily that you were asking him for anything, it was more of just, "Hey, this was kind of inspired by you.

We thought of you when we were writing this and we'd just love for you to to read it."

- [Ryan] About two weeks, little after that point, he reached out and he found it very interesting and wanted to have more information.

We really buttoned it up and confirmed that he'd be doing it and he wanted to be in the lead role and all that, which was very, very exciting.

So leading up to the shoot, he was supposed to fly in a couple days before and a blizzard came in, and so he's not super familiar with New York State and he couldn't fly into Albany, which was the plan.

So he decided to fly into Syracuse and anybody in New York state knows you probably don't wanna fly into Syracuse in a blizzard.

So we had the option to put him up in a hotel there and kind of wait it out or go drive and get him.

That was an insane panic drive all the way down 90 to get him.

We get him, we get him back.

- Good bonding experience though for 15 mile an hour car ride back home from Syracuse for just you and Eric, yeah.

- We had our Planes, Trains, and Automobiles moment, where I was driving white knuckle on 90.

There's literally semi-trailers that have fallen over, and I'm trying to get my coat off, and I've just met him.

I dunno him at all, and I get stuck, and he from the passenger side has to help me take my coat off.

So that was a nice icebreaker.

(audience applauding) - We needed to do the scene with the show and we needed audience members for it, and we also needed money for the movie.

So I decided that while we have everyone there to incentivize people to come and be in the theater, and be a part of this, rather than either paying a hundred or so extras or try to trick a couple of our friends into coming and eating pizza for the day, was to throw a show in conjunction with the film shoot, where I gave you five minutes to get each of the seven shots that we needed to have audience in.

And then in between those shots we would have a performer, a magician, or an escape artist come out on stage and entertain the crowd while we were setting up for the next shot.

So it was this weird rolling hybrid film shoot, but they're paying us to see a show.

Eric was also really great about kind of playing around with people while he was out there waiting for us to roll.

It was a really cool experience for everyone.

(audience applauding and cheering)