Book Test Mentalism
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The book test has always been a source of frustration for me. I like the trick - but I've rarely seen a presentation that really hooked me into thinking it was anything other than a clever trick. As Teller puts it, (paraphrased) "You're just saying nouns."
This presentation is very clean - but ultimately I find it lacking. It may be a language barrier thing, but what I see is you introduce the book, he picks a word, you have him think about the word, you tell him the word. Done. Clean, but boring. Yeah, he's puzzled, but does it really resonate at all? Does it mean anything?
This presentation is very clean - but ultimately I find it lacking. It may be a language barrier thing, but what I see is you introduce the book, he picks a word, you have him think about the word, you tell him the word. Done. Clean, but boring. Yeah, he's puzzled, but does it really resonate at all? Does it mean anything?
Mechanically sound, but it runs into the problem a lot of mentalism does in there doesn't appear to be any real motivation behind it. What was the mechanism through which the telepathy worked? Was it familiarity with the book itself? Was it a vibe that the participant gave? What's driving this? The opening talks about intuition. Well how do you define intuition? How was this a demonstration of intuition? What does it prove?
Also, not enough buildup for my liking. The guy is asked to think of the word and the mentalist writes it down almost immediately. There's no dramatic tension, there's no buildup. The audience isn't given the time to really digest and mull over what's going on here. The reveal was similarly too quick. Slow it down, stretch it out.
Also, not enough buildup for my liking. The guy is asked to think of the word and the mentalist writes it down almost immediately. There's no dramatic tension, there's no buildup. The audience isn't given the time to really digest and mull over what's going on here. The reveal was similarly too quick. Slow it down, stretch it out.
Thank you for your thoughts guys, these kind of things help to polish the effect and make it more meaningful. My initial idea was to leave the premise of intuition and deliberately not to explain too much, so that everyone watching and the spectator will fill the gaps according to his/her own experience. But I see that maybe I should have developed the presentation a bit more.
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