Which handling would be better?

[Ibimania]

I created a trick about a week ago where I can ask a spectator to keep hold of right hand and choose between any two words (kings or queens, heads or tails, black or white etc.) and they name it, and then i open my hand to show the prediction in it.

Spectators try to make sense of what happens. and we as magicians misdirect them. I think if I try to sell this off as magic to spectators, they would rather accept it as very very lucky guess. What makes more sense? A guy made an accurate guess or a guy knows magic? See, even if a trick is amazing, the patter with it is equally important. If I do an "I find the card you picked trick" and then tell them, I stopped the time, went behind your back, saw your card and resumed time...they will call me on my BS.


So for the effect i mentioned, prediction in hand one, I have two possible routines:

One, I tell them that it is a psychological formula, that allows a man to determine what choices a person will make. and that it is used in courts and by the FBI to determine if a person will go back to crime when released from custody. it basically relies on your childhood based choices. then I make you choose between three sets "twinkle twinkle" or "Old Mc Donalds", "Your mother or your father", "Ice cream or salty chips" and after that I say, these are some choices that become permanent when you are a child, it is really hard to hide them. And once I know what you choose, I now, know exactly what you would choose if I were to ask you to choose between a table and a chair.


The other routine is to say, let me show you how advertising works, we dont tell you to choose certain things, to buy them, but we advertisers, make you buy them without you even realising where the influence comes from. in the last few moments, I used certain word combinations to force you to think in a certain way. and when I make you choose between chair or a table, I know what you will choose coz I am making you choose it without you knowing. and your choice is already in my right hand. think hard and tell me, table or chair?

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

We can't tell you what would be better for you. That's down to your character and performance style.

I can tell you that neither of those would work for me at all. I take a more mysterious approach.

What I recommend, honestly, is to try both presentations and see which one gets the reaction you want. You'll probably be making a lot of adjustments to how you present it anyway, so you might as well get started on that now.

 

[WyattSB]

Having recently read Pure Effect, Derren Brown certainly comes to mind. He says magic is more believable and powerful when you give them an idea of how you could be doing things, but that solution is still not really possible, specifically to Derren, a lot of his stuff is based around giving them the idea that he can influence them with the power of suggestion, and also 'read' them from subconscious physical cues. He gives an example where using a gimmicked dice with a transmitter and buzzing receivers in his jacket he would know what the dice landed on without looking at it, by subtly pretending that he was 'reading' the answer from the specs reactions to the dice roll. At one point the dice actually fell apart revealing its mechanism in the specs hands, however Derren reassembled it and kept going, with the failure as a non event. He asked them later on what they though and they said they assumed that the electronics inside didn't actually do anything and was there to steer him away from the actual method.

But it all comes down to if thats how you want to present it. So you can take that as you will, but Christopher said it perfectly, pay more attention to what he said.