Concerning..Magic (shocker)

[matthewmikell]

I'm a street magician. I've only been doing magic for three years, and I still have some questions about performance and handling myself as a magician. Say I have a gimmicked trick, and someone asks to hold it? What should I do then?


Also, What are some intermediate mentalism tricks, and where can I learn/buy them?

 

[matthewmikell]

Or mental magic, that is.

 

[WyattSB]

Well that depends very much on the situation. It could be a gimmick that can be handled by a spectator, anything could happen. Apply some problem solving, see what you can come up with.

 

[Khaleel Olaiky]

I was in the same situation many many times

switch,
doing another trick,
or acting you didn't hear them asking (especially in a big group of audience)

if there is NOWAY to do one of the solutions above so it's a choice between the bad and the worse ... either you say NO and they will be like OOH you are trying to hide something OR give it to them and they will figure it out and sometimes ruin the gimmick ... for me i prefer the first option, they know i'm hiding something now ... so what ?

 

[RealityOne]

Your question shouldn't only apply to gimmicked tricks. Rather, it should apply to all of your props.

Let me explain.

Rule 1. The performer must be in control of your performance. A spectator should only touch props when you want them to touch the props and in the manner you dictate.

Rule 2. Perform in a way that shows the audience that your props are normal. Note, I said "show" not "tell." You don't need to hand them a deck and say "please go through the deck and verify it is a perfectly normal deck that has all of its cards, no duplicates, is not marked in any way, does not have rough or smooth edges and does not have any one way cards or tapered sides or ends." A simple, please shuffle the deck is fine. Treat the prop as being normal and they will not raise suspicion. In one effect, I use a one way deck. I have the spectator shuffle the deck, add a packet to the bottom when they hand it back, spread the packet and comment "looks like you shuffled them pretty good." Another spectator then selects a card from a table spread. The spectators have seen the deck shuffled and seen that the cards are different. They won't ask to see the deck because you have established the (apparant) fairness of the procedure. Don't make a big deal about it either. If you make a big deal about it, someone will ask to shuffle in a way that won't work.

Rule 3. Don't create a challenge. Most magic is designed as "look what I can do and you can't." Add a layer of nonsensical patter ("the sound of your fingers snapping makes the card come to the top of the deck") and spectators can't help but want to knock the performer off their pedastal by trying to figure it out. If your present magic with "say-do-see" presentation (where you say what your are going to do, do it and then tell the audience to see the result) the focus is on what you are doing with the props so is it any surprise that the audience focuses on HOW you are doing what you are doing with the props?

Rule 4. Set up and eliminate all possible explanations. This is Tamaritz's theory in the Magic Way. If you presentation leads toward one explanation and then you disprove that explanation the audience is left amazed. This goes to how you structure your performance and is very much in line with Rule 1 and Rule 2 (you show props when you want to).

Rule 5. Be entertaining. If you are entertaining, nobody cares how you did it. They just enjoy the illusion.

 

[RealityOne]

Or mental magic, that is.

Get Anneman's Practical Mental Magic and Fulves Self-Working Mental Magic. Also, the mental magic section in Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic has some great routines.

If you want to go the DVD route, check out Rich Furgeuson's This is Mentalism 1 & 2 and Nate Kranzo's Boondock Mentalism.

 

[mclintock]

Rule 3. Don't create a challenge. Most magic is designed as "look what I can do and you can't." Add a layer of nonsensical patter ("the sound of your fingers snapping makes the card come to the top of the deck") and spectators can't help but want to knock the performer off their pedastal by trying to figure it out. If your present magic with "say-do-see" presentation (where you say what your are going to do, do it and then tell the audience to see the result) the focus is on what you are doing with the props so is it any surprise that the audience focuses on HOW you are doing what you are doing with the props?

Curious, I was looking around some in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley and it was talking about telling them what you are going to do and then doing but telling them only so much as to not reveal the secret of the trick.

 

[RealityOne]

Curious, I was looking around some in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley and it was talking about telling them what you are going to do and then doing but telling them only so much as to not reveal the secret of the trick.

There are different schools of thought on this. John Bannon very much advocates just saying what you are doing - even while acknowledging that Eugene Burger calls that style "narrating the adventures of the props in the magician's hands."

If all you talk about is what you are doing, what is the audience going to focus on? Exactly, what you are doing. If they do that, what is the first question that comes to their mind? Yep, "how did you do that?"

Darwin Ortiz talks about "challenge magic" in his book Strong Magic. He uses Slydini as an example (which I disagree with in that Slydini's performances were very much dependent on his personality and his admonishment of his spectators --"you look but you no see" -- was part of the presentation) but I think that the say-do-see patter is a very subtle and unintentional form of challenge magic.

Maybe there are other factors at play (age, experience, performing parlor rather than street, prestige), but I've never had a spectator ask to see or touch anything. I think my rules are the best explanation for that.

A different way of looking at it is to ask this question, "What do you want your spectators to be thinking about when you are performing?" My answer is that I want them to be associating what I'm talking about (be it a personal story, an interesting historical or scientific fact, or just sheer nonesense) and how it relates to what I am doing. When spectators talk to me about my performance, they talk about "the one where you were telling us about..." not "the card trick where the deck disappeared."

 

[DavidL11229]

Say I have a gimmicked trick, and someone asks to hold it? What should I do then?

I'd say that if you are in a situation where there is no good answer then that was just not an appropriate trick to be doing at that time. Not all tricks should be performed in all situations no matter how good they are. Having said that, I'd likely explain, truthfully, that I have that deck (or whatever) broken in, adjusted, polished etc just the way I like it and I prefer that other people not handle it, but this really should not be necessary. If something like that or 'let me show you another trick' won't cut it then it just wasn't the right effect for that moment.

If I had something that was particularly susceptible to having this arise I'd look for a trick that I could transition into almost immediately without there being a stop in the action to give people the opportunity to ask unwanted questions.