Approach Archives - Page 11 of 14 - How to do Magic Tricks

Magician worried about his first impression before his first magic trick.

Within just a few seconds of meeting magician, the average spectator will have formed a first impression of the magician and decided if they are interested in paying attention. You only get one chance at a first impression. The first impression is very hard to change.

Psychologists at Princeton University showed people video’s of politicians. They found that people were able to predict who would win an election over 70% of the time, just from viewing a microsecond of footage about the politician. Just from one first impression. In just a fraction of a second, people were able to make highly accurate predictions about another person.

As a magician, you can use magic tricks that are good openers to win the attention of your audience. However, spectators will have drawn assumptions about you before you even get them to ‘pick a card’.

Let’s look at some techniques magicians can use.

1. Communicate a magicians purpose.

From the first moment, before you perform any magic tricks, it’s important for your spectators to understand what you magicians can offer through the interaction, and the benefit to them in watching magicians doing magic tricks.

Your opening lines and/or introduction to your magic tricks needs to be perfect, defining you as a magician, competent at the magic tricks you will perform, and a positive event, rather than a threat.

2. Think about what clothes magicians should wear.

How are you dressed?
Do you have tattoo’s?
Are you immaculately presented?
What make-up, jewelry, watches and shoes are you wearing?
Does your suit or ‘outfit’ match the style of event?
Does your suit perfectly fit you?
Are you well groomed?

We can often be very bad judges of our own appearance. As magicians, we can often spend more time thinking about how are magic tricks look, than how we ourselves come across. It’s a good idea to ask trusted friends what they REALLY think of the clothes you wear when you perform your magic to the public. Men often don’t realise how much their watch can say about them. For women, purses and large earrings or jewellery can also communicate a great deal to your spectators. Make sure that what you are wear when performing your magic tricks, says what you want it to say to your audience.

If you are unsure about this or feel that you need help getting it right, there are personal style consultants that will assess this for a fee. It may be worth investing in this if you intend to market yourself commercially as a professional magician.

3. Think about your body language.

Body language is one of the most important factors magicians can use to create good first impressions. Your posture, how you carry yourself, even the way you position your body when you perform your magic tricks, creates an impression. Careful routine construction and practice can allow you to ‘standardise’ your body language throughout your performance. Just being aware of your body language can be enough to radically improve it. It’s important to at least video yourself performing all your magic tricks, so you can identify and correct any body language that may be unwanted. For the seriously committed, drama class’s or having a few sessions with a theatrical director would be the ideal.

Think about the position of your feet as you perform your magic tricks
How you hold your shoulders.
How you smile
The way you shake hands

4. Project being interested and interesting.

One of the worst things that a magician can do, when he or she approaches a new group of spectators, it to appear bored or uninterested. Spectators will pick up on this very easily and will mimic the mood the magician presents.

When you are joining a new group of spectators, approach them with a genuine interest in who they are. Showing that you are happy to meet them and are enjoying their company will reflect back to you.

Close Up Magic Vs. Stage Magic – Problems All Magicians Deal With

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

Close up magic and stage magic have several different problems. Let’s look at a few of the differences:

Choice

The audience in a stage show has chosen to see you perform your magic tricks. With close up magic, the audience does not know who you are and often that you will be performing.

Location

The audience visits a theatre to watch a magic show. They make the decision to come to you to watch your show. With close up magic, you go to them. Because of this, the locations are very different. With a stage show, you create the environment that the magic tricks are ‘staged’ within. Close up magicians fit in to a larger event, so your magic needs to be designed to complement an existing event. You need to be prepared for location surprises at close up magic gigs.

Lighting

Stage magicians can ensure that the lighting for the show is perfect for the magic tricks they will present. If you need a ‘dark’ area you can make sure that happens at just the right moment. If you need the lighting to focus attention away from an object or from you, for a few moments, this can be easily built into the show.

The main disadvantage for stage magicians is that the lighting makes it hard for them to engage with the audience. Lights can stop you from seeing the audience. Because of this, careful rehearsal needs to be done, to ensure the act is engaging without as much of the personal contact that close up magicians can create.

Close up magic happens in random locations, often in restaurants and busy bars. The lighting can be too dark, or very bright, and you will have no control over it. You need to make sure that the magic tricks you can perform are suitable for as many lighting set ups as possible.

Sound

Stage magic is supported by a PA system so the whole room can hear you. Sound effects can be added, as well as backing music. This can be used to change the mood and attention of your spectators when you need that to happen.

Close up magic takes place inside a larger event. It’s social in nature and happens in and around conversations. A band or loud music may be the background to your magic tricks, so you can’t assume that your audience will even be able to hear you. This creates a real challenge for you as a close up magician. You need to engage with the spectators and entertain them, but at the same time, you need to make sure that your magic can be understood, even if the spectator can’t hear you very well.

Good close up magic is presented in designed sets of magic tricks for different sound conditions. You should have at least 5 or 6 magic tricks ready to perform, should you find yourself in a situation where nobody can hear what you are saying. If you don’t do this, you may find you are limited in locations that you can work at a gig. You really don’t want to be forced to be positioned in the bar area away from the ‘action’ simply because the magic tricks you do, requires people to listen to you.

Set

Stage magic has the advantage of being able to control the environment to reinforce the magic or the presentation within a particular magic show. Everything can be arranged exactly how you want it, to present your magic tricks for maximum impact close up magic has no set. It may be the street, a bar or restaurant. However, this doesn’t need to be a disadvantage. The restaurant has objects, rituals and a structure that can be used to your advantage. Choosing magic tricks that compliment the situations you perform in, can turn the restaurant or bar into a perfect set. You need to be much more flexible and design your magic tricks to use the settings you have access too, in a way that will strengthen and highlight your magic tricks. Part of your job as a close up magician is to define your performing area, and communicate that to the spectators very quickly when you join each group.

Costume

Stage magicians can tell a story as much through their costumes as the magic itself. From a Chinese 19th century royal court, through to a sinister torture chamber. The act is set in a theme that communicated the story of the show.

Magicians that perform close up magic either wear a suit or dress down for street performances. They match the costumes that their spectators wear. The goal is to integrate, rather than stand out. It’s important that you think about what is best for a close up magicians to wear.

Seating

When a stage audience is seated, they have been arranged in a position to pay full attention to the show. Close up magic is often performed strolling magic, or magic at restaurant tables. The audience isn’t going to be seated so everyone can see you. When you perform close up magic, you need to move around. You need to engage different groups and capture peoples attention. It’s very important that you take some time to practice this and examine how your magic will work when your audience is not all sat directly in front of you.

Beginners often struggle with this, as they practice their magic tricks as if the audience is watching a stage show. When it comes to performing in a real world situation, they become confused and unsure how to present their magic tricks as people move around or are seated in a way that could expose their magic secrets.

Attention

The moment the lights go down at a stage magic show, everyone is paying attention. The stage magicians job is to keep that attention and stop the audience either leaving or falling asleep.

Close up magicians need to win the attention of the group, and then keep it. Spectators can be interrupted, become distracted by everything else happening. The food could be just about to arrive, an argument could be simmering between the group. Your spectators could be in deep conversation or even simply show no interest in your table magic at all. Social skills are very important for close up magicians, probably more so than good technique. The audience has no obligation to pay you any attention, so you need to give them as many reasons to like you and find your magic entertaining as you possibly can.

Misdirection

Stage magicians are being watched from the moment they arrive on stage. Many of the techniques of misdirection are different from those of magicians doing close up magic. Close up magicians, by definition, are closer to the audience. You will need to use misdirection techniques specifically designed for this situation. Tactics like eye contact, crossing gaze, positioning and questioning can all be used much more effectively in a close up magic setting.

Applause

We have all been trained from an early age to clap at the end of a stage performance. This is not so much the case for close up shows. Because close up magic is much more intimate, spectators tend not to use applause. They simply tell you how much they liked the magic trick they just say.

Unlike stage magicians, close up magicians need to train their audience to give them applause.

Do This:

Take a moment to think about these differences. List the magic you currently perform and next to each trick or ‘set’ answer these questions:

1) What practical steps can you build into the magic tricks you already perform that can communicate the need to clap after you show a group your magic tricks?2) Which environmental conditions would be ideal for each trick?

3) How can you adapt various performing conditions to enhance the magic?

4) What could you say or do, to capture attention and keep the spectators engaged?

5) How could each magic trick be adapted to increase the amount of participation and connection from the spectators?

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Nervous and Scared Magicians – Fear of Doing Magic Tricks to Strangers

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

The following is a transcription from a conversation on the MoM Podcast between Dominic Reyes, Ben Williams and Paul Knight. They discuss problems magicians often encounter. This transcript is an abridged, cleaned up version of the conversation. If you prefer, you can listen to the full podcast.

Dominic Reyes: Today, we’re gonna start off with a question that’s been sent into the Magic Shop, Ben do you wanna start?

Ben Williams: Yeah, sure. This is actually one of the most common questions that we get asked. I’ll shorten the question because everyone asks it in a slightly different way:

“Whenever I go to perform, I get the shakes.” Have you got any advice?”

Now, this is something that I actually had to deal with when I began performing magic because I’m not really that outrageous a person, except of when I’m in magic mode. When I first started performing, it was very unnatural for me to be the center of attention. I was scared. It would cause me to get really nervous, begin shaking and I visibly shake when having people select playing cards and things like that. Now, obviously you wanna not have that, because you want to exude confidence when you perform.

There’s a few little tips that really helped me that I’m sure will help you too:

The first one is just be prepared. Learn your tricks inside out, so that you know where you are at any point during any routine. Also I’ll have some patter, just back up if I need it. Because It can help you get through the routine very easily.

Secondly, I would say to try not to, it sounds silly, but, try not to think about performing too much. The more you think about it, going to perform, the more you’re gonna put fears in your own mind. The more fear you have, the worse it will become. So you have to accept that you’re gonna perform for some people, and not think about it. Try to put it out of your mind, so that it’s not a focus.

The third tip: it’s probably the most important one, is to control your breathing. Because I don’t know if you realize this, but when you’re feeling nervous or scared you’re not breathing properly. You’re not breathing right. You’re taking much shallower breathes. So the amount of actual oxygen in your blood stream is decreased and that makes your heart pump even harder to get the blood around your body. It wants to milk as much oxygen out of it as possible.
When you shallow breath, this it is a vicious circle. Because you lose confidence, you shake during a performance. That puts you off doing it again, which in turn gives you more fear. The more fear you have, the more tense and stress your body gets, the less you breathe properly, the more nervous you get, the more you shake, and it’s a circle that you just go round and round in.

When you go to perform, accept that you are about to do some magic. Know what you are about to do and just spend 30 seconds to a minute, taking some really deep breaths. Breathing in and out. It’s almost like self-hypnosis. You’re just relaxing your body and you feel your heart rate decrease and everything relax a bit. Try to monitor yourself in that sort of way. Realize that feeling scared and nervous is physiological, this issue, as much as it is mental, and I’m sure if you start to control your breathing, that will be 70% of the battle over. So those are the three things that really, really helped me.

Dominic Reyes: Do you think part of it is adrenaline?

Ben Williams: Yeah, there’s adrenaline in there as well, which will never help the shakes. What you’ll find though is once you get more comfortable with performing, the adrenaline is just a bit more of a buzz. And it can actually serve well to push you to do things which you might not usually do.

When I perform and I’m having a good time. I get a bit of a buzz of adrenaline when steal someone’s watch. As opposed to just doing, a static card trick, something like that.

Paul Knight: You actually find it pushes you further.

Ben Williams: You need to understand the difference between what the adrenaline is and what the fear is. When you first start out, it’s all cloudy, it’s all just nerves, it’s all just a massive fear to do anything. You don’t want to get something wrong. There are so many things flying through your mind, so that’s why I say prepare yourself and try not to think about what the performance is going to be like. If you know what you’re doing and you’ve studied the tricks, then you have nothing to worry about. You have nothing to be scared or nervous about. The old saying, you know, “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Dominic Reyes: So do you think rehearsal, as well as practice can help?

Ben Williams: Yes, rehearsals definitely help. Though there’s only so far you can go with rehearsal. If you find you are getting nerves when you are going up to people, you’ll find that rehearsing to absolutely perfection will help. But as soon as you go to perform for somebody, the nerves or scary feelings will kick in, and you’ll feel you’ve been knocked back to square one. You need to perform to people and just accept the fact that you’re going to perform. It sounds bizarre, but you have to accept the situation and try to let go mentally.

Paul Knight: I would pick my time to do it for people, if people ask to see some magic. I would say later if I wasn’t ready.

When you first start showing people you don’t know, some magic. After you have gone through the whole friends and family process, and you want more, you can often feel, when in you’re in a public situation, that you feel brave enough to show somebody some magic. But then there’s always these nerves that really hold you back.

When I started performing professionally, I had all the fears and thoughts about what the venues going to be like. I was worried about it being too loud, light, dark, and how many people were going be there. I worried about if they would receive me well. There are a billion and one reasons to feel scared and nervous, like that going through your mind when you start performing professionally.

The solution to worry, is to be prepared. If you are worried about venue, contact them. Find out what room you are going to be in. Ask if there’s going to be DJ playing music at the time. Just ask as many questions as you can, so you have as much knowledge about what you’re embarking on as possible. We all fear the unknown. But if you know what’s going to happen, then there’s no reason to fear it.

To be honest, I still get nervous even going to gigs now. Before I’ve gone to the first group. But the reaction of the first group always eradicates all that nervousness straight away, it settles you and brings all of the confidence back.

Ben Williams: I quite regularly use Chicago Opener as an opening card trick. It’s on the Michael Ammar, Easy To Master Card Miracles Vol 1 DVD titled Red Hot Mamas. Because the first phase is pretty much self- working. It’s a free selection, there’s no controls that you have to do, it’s very fair. So by the time you’ve done the first reveal and you’ve got the great response, you’ve not really had to do anything. You’ve not had to think about any hard slight of hand or anything like that. And it’s always a very fair display.

Dominic Reyes: Then you have the second phase which blows their socks off. That’s one of the great things about Chicago opener, it goes wrong, well apparently goes wrong. You’ve got that sort, awkward moment you can play with It’s your first trick, so they feel bad for you as well. They feel embarrassed for you, and then it goes right and gives them a release. The result is a big round of applause, nice!

Ben Williams: Yeah, try and pick something like Chicago Opener as your first trick. Something you are confident using and doesn’t require too much work.

Dominic Reyes: Do you still find you feel nervous when preforming?

Ben Williams: Yeah I still get the butterflies sometimes. Especially at very important gigs, or gigs in certain parts of the country.

Dominic Reyes: A gig outside of your comfort zone.

Ben Williams: Exactly. I’ve been doing this so long, I know what I’m doing and that my material works. So, there’s no reason for me to start implanting new fears into my own mind. Every human being at their core is the same. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Try not to scare yourself too much.

Paul Knight: You only make yourself nervous, nobody else is doing it.

Dominic Reyes: If you are finding that you are shaking. Try do something that doesn’t require you to use your hands. Performing a mentalism trick as an opener may help you. You get the reaction and you can relax.

Paul Knight: For example. Say a magazine test or something like that. The focus is more on the spectator looking in the magazine. So you’re not the main focus. You get the reaction and you relaxed and then, you can work into it now.

Ben Williams: It’s important to drink lots of water, as well. I’ve noticed many times I’ve been performing for two, two and a half, three hours maybe. And suddenly stop to realize that I’m feeling really tired. The real reason is that I haven’t had anything to drink. I haven’t stopped and had a glass of water.

Dominic Reyes: It’s vital to keep hydrated. Have a bottle of water in your close up case. Whenever you return to it to get some more cards or to set up a trick, take a swig.

Ben Williams: I recommend you also read the post about overcoming nervousness.

Dominic Reyes: It’s in one of the popular posts at the moment.

QUESTION: How do you overcome your fear of performing? Share your thoughts in the comments section below:

Magicians Can Give a Good First Impression Without Doing Magic Tricks