theory11 — Magic Tricks & the World's Finest Playing Cards
Critique my new trick
- Thread starter irishtwin
- Start date
First, I'd have to say it's not inspired by Angle Z ... it is Angle Z. Your method may not be exactly the same but it's near enough as makes no difference.
I'm a bit frazzled at the moment so I'm going to be blunt:
You move too quickly for almost everything. You give the effect no room to breath, it's like you're trying to get it done as fast as possible. Your patter is .. bad. You're just sportscasting. It would be better to be silent than to just say what you're doing.
Physically you're ok. The switch at the beginning was fishy and you hold the deck like you're hiding something so that telegraphs that you're being sneaky. You need to work on being more natural. The way you tear it isn't realistic and it's done so quickly that it can't sink in. You gave no time for the vanish, just "Rip rip gone!"
Slow down. Come up with a script. Practice more. Watch yourself perform and look for things that seem unnatural.
I'm a bit frazzled at the moment so I'm going to be blunt:
You move too quickly for almost everything. You give the effect no room to breath, it's like you're trying to get it done as fast as possible. Your patter is .. bad. You're just sportscasting. It would be better to be silent than to just say what you're doing.
Physically you're ok. The switch at the beginning was fishy and you hold the deck like you're hiding something so that telegraphs that you're being sneaky. You need to work on being more natural. The way you tear it isn't realistic and it's done so quickly that it can't sink in. You gave no time for the vanish, just "Rip rip gone!"
Slow down. Come up with a script. Practice more. Watch yourself perform and look for things that seem unnatural.
Thanks for the feedback it really helps in retrospect I should have slowed down making it more natural looking. When you talk about patter what do you mean eg. Should I say what im doing or should I tell a story along with the trick?
Patter is your script. What you say during the trick. It doesn't have to be a story, but it should have some kind of meaning. If you just say what you're doing (ie: I take the card, I place it here, I snap my fingers .. etc) you're hurting yourself more than helping. People have nothing in the words you say to 'hook' them, so they ignore you and stare at your hands.
In your video you basically said, "I'll have a card selected and it happens to be the King of Spades, which is my favorite card. Now most magicians would lose your card and find it but I'm actually going to rip the card and I hope you can hear it. There, I've ripped the card and the corner just vanishes! Just like that! But it's not gone forever. I've been skiing lately and I think it's in my hat! It's not! But look, there's a statue with a similar hat! Maybe it's in there? Oh look! It is! Inside this plastic baggie!"
Also - why the baggie? That makes no sense. Either you put the corner in the bag in the hat ahead of time, or there was a baggie under the hat before hand and the card corner appeared inside that. Why? Makes no sense.
Sometimes it's better to say nothing, than to talk for no reason. Narrating what you're doing detracts from the performance. Come up with something better than that, or be silent.
In your video you basically said, "I'll have a card selected and it happens to be the King of Spades, which is my favorite card. Now most magicians would lose your card and find it but I'm actually going to rip the card and I hope you can hear it. There, I've ripped the card and the corner just vanishes! Just like that! But it's not gone forever. I've been skiing lately and I think it's in my hat! It's not! But look, there's a statue with a similar hat! Maybe it's in there? Oh look! It is! Inside this plastic baggie!"
Also - why the baggie? That makes no sense. Either you put the corner in the bag in the hat ahead of time, or there was a baggie under the hat before hand and the card corner appeared inside that. Why? Makes no sense.
Sometimes it's better to say nothing, than to talk for no reason. Narrating what you're doing detracts from the performance. Come up with something better than that, or be silent.
My advice to you if you have only been doing magic for a few months then you should concentrate on your foundations rather than trying to 'create' your own material. There were a few moments that looked out of place and suspicious , your get ready for your DL could be spotted a mile off. It's wasn't bad but at the same time it needs a lot of polishing, but that comes from get your foundations down properly. What books do you own on magic?
In my opinion, the direct route to good patter and presentation is to answer the question, "What does this mean?" Your current presentation is, essentially, talking through the process. It's answering the question, "What are you doing?" not "What does this mean?" Think about if you were writing a film. The scene is that a guy walks in, pulls a gun and shoots another guy. The dialogue wouldn't be:
MAN 1: I'm walking into a room and I'm looking angrily at another man then I'm pulling out a gun and shooting him.
MAN 2: I have been hit with a bullet and I'm dying in a pool of blood.
We can all see that on the screen, so it doesn't need to be said out loud as well. As a writer, though, we might want to take this opportunity to tell a bit more of our story, and make the scene richer, especially if we haven't seen these characters before (as is the case with a one-off magic trick, i.e., our audience don't know anything about our character). So, maybe the dialogue could be:
MAN 1: This is for John.
MAN 2: Your brother deserved what he got.
The same scene is being played out, but now we know more, the scene has more resonance and meaning. We understand something of the motivations of the people involved and get a sense of their relationship and back-story.
So, what does your trick mean? Does it mean that it's genuinely possible to invisibly teleport objects through space and into small woollen hats? Does it mean that it's possible to create the illusion of dematerialisation using sleight-of-hand? Does it mean you're a nice guy who is just trying to have some fun? Decide what it means and then tell that story because otherwise you're leaving it up to the audience to decide and they're always going to default to "it's just a trick" and either try and solve it like a puzzle or write it off as unimportant.
Thanks for the feedback but I watched many other magicians preform tricks including renowned ones, a lot of the time they say what they are exactly doing in that moment in time without giving a meaning for the trick. However I understand if you create a meaning misdirection is easier and the spectators view the trick not just as a trick but something else.
Can you find a video you can link me to of a renowned magician doing that kind of presentation? I was thinking that maybe if you find an example of what you're talking about it would be easier to discern whether there is something else at work which isn't immediately obvious or whether they're falling into the same trap as you.
Unfortunately, even some of the most well known magicians in the world actually give pretty lackluster performances geared more toward magicians than spectators.
Agreed! I was thinking maybe if the OP finds some videos of the kind of thing he's talking about we could maybe do a "presentation workshop" type thing where we all have a chance to break it down and look at what's good and bad about it. In fact, even if the OP doesn't respond on this thread, I might do that anyway in General Discussion as this issue of presentation comes up quite a lot.