Making Magic Believable

[Mentalizing]

I have been doing mentalism for about 3 years now and the hardest part of doing it is making it come to life, an organic trick of the mind that is believable. I always work on presentation and work on different ways to present and develop the effects.

I usually get great reactions from people I don't know, and of course my friends and family are just like "oh sweet, that was pretty neat" or something along those lines. The random people are always freaked out and the Electric Touch makes it so sweet that my grin sometimes starts to creep out after the effect. If you watch the TA trailer you see some amazing reactions that are so amazing just to watch.

So now that you read through the boring stuff and hopefully understand what I am saying I will now ask a question. How do YOU make your magic believable and how do you define as believable? Whether it be mentalism, cards, or money how do you make it a freak of nature or a miracle?

The reason I ask may be obvious but I want better reactions, I have the drive to make myself better than the next magician. Usually I work hard at what I do and usually have the answer, but this time, after 3 years of working at it, I now must ask other fellow magicians and mentalists the very question that I have been working at for over 3 years.

This is a question that should relate to everybody and hopefully everybody that bothers with this post will get something out of it and also contribute. Thanks.

Drew

 

[LuseifHo]

an interesting question : "How do you make your audience believe"
I find it a tad questionable in itself. Although what we do is magic, I relate half of what i do to real life. I myself do quite a bit of mentalism and I usually tie it in with real life. I mostly explain it in the sense that it is the strength of your mind and how everyone is connected. All that bs. It works fine for me and usually gets sweet reactions. For example I talk about the strength of the mind to stand pain then i go into a needle swallowing, then i go into the physical strength of a mind then do exploding light bulb. It all ties in nicely with a well planned out patter. Just dont give them any too stupid bs such as "and these cards are magical, they have a life of their own. every time you blink they like to eat apples and do a hoedown. So blink 3 times and there we have 3 apples." you get the idea

As for cards and what not, I sometimes to gambling demonstrations, which are self explanatory, but for things which are actually "magical", then I usually go with a patter and a unknowing character. Things seem more magical when even you don't know what is happening. "if we take your card and... wait... whered it go... what...? I... wait... remember before we blah blah blah" you get the flow. If you do it directly "if we take your card and it dissapears and is now in the box" it just doesnt seem as magical. it seems practiced a lot and very "robotic".

As well as this little side gimmicks such as Electric Touch and Smoke Gimmicks also make everything so much cooler. "Take your coin, a little squeeze, *poof of smoke*, and there we go..." you will just get like an amazing reactions

 

[praetoritevong]

Well I suppose the first thing is obviously to believe in what you are doing yourself.

Hmm. I don't think the audience need to believe everything you say literally and unquestioningly though - there's the whole matter of suspending disbelief. If you establish your performance before you go into the actual trick, if you set it up, befriend your audience, etc., they're much more likely and willing to go along with you; it's then much easier to get them to follow along, participate, etc.

 

[FOO:L]

Funny, I was going through Pure Effect before i re-read this thread. Derrens got a pretty good comment about making what we do believeable.

"For my own part, i feel that the audiences belief in my mind reading skills must be engaged at some level in order for some of the effects to take hold and induce a certain responsive attitude. however, what I say that the mind reading skills consist of is another matter. I prefer for my audience to come away with a little more fascination for what may be possible than just wondering whether i was fake or not. herefore, my personal choice ( and the most sensible and congruent option given my performance character) is to suggest that I will be utilising subliminal and hypnotic principles to create the effect of telepathy. Because I am often performing my mind reading alongside hypnotic stunts, this presentaion works well for me."

It all boils down to the presentation.

 

[Mentalizing]

When you present a card trick how would you suspend disbelief? Or better yet how do you make it magical instead of just another trick?

 

[blahblah]

well for invisibal palm (sp.) my patter is like

"yeah so do you know how to play cards?, yeah my grandad taught me, my grandma taught me how to cheat, one of the main things she said about cheating is midirection...

then I go on to the trick.

 

[Steerpike]

So now that you read through the boring stuff and hopefully understand what I am saying I will now ask a question. How do YOU make your magic believable...?

I have a mythos.

 

[Randy]

Depends on how you present yourself and if they knew you before the magic, it is going to make it hard for them to believe you are capable of doing magical things. Tho once you get them to believe, then it's pretty much easy to make them believe what you want.

 

[magic_slave]

well as lee asher said... good magician's own three tricks, but they do it well... a lousy magician own zillions of trick, but they can't do even one...
nowadays creative and presentation are the most important part of a magic routine.... people do get stun and freak out by tricks that they have never seen before.... so to get a better reaction from your spectator, add something that other magician's don have-- your personality!
personality makes your trick different from others.... even they seen a same trick performed by other magician but the audience can tell which one is better!