The Best Magician Performing Speed

To become the best magician, slow down! Magic is not a race!

We had this email sent in from a customer asking for advice about slowing down his performance:

'I'm a 66-year-old magician and to this day I still rush whenever I'm in front of an audience. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it is still apparent. Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated. Cheers' – Don Podlas

Some advice from Ben Williams:

I know what you are experiencing when you rush a performance! It is a very common problem, just as common as being nervous before a performance. The best magician advice I ever had on the subject was from the late Ali Bongo at my Magic Circle exam was 'just slow down!’. That resonated with me and made me look closer at how I appeared while I performed. I actually thought I was going slow!

If you film yourself practicing routines, the chances are, mostly, that you will not be going too quickly. You may speed up when doing sleights like the shuttle pass, (this should be addressed if it does occur) but in general you will be relaxed as the performance is only to the camera. All of this changes when you are in front of an audience. Fear, adrenaline, guilt, excitement, all of these will play a factor in your performance. Rushing your performance is a common result of these feelings.

Something psychological happens; subconsciously you will want the tough part (usually the most important part) of the routine to be over and done with so that you do not have to worry about it. As a result, we speed up our performance at these times.

Here are a few reasons why people may rush during a performance. Remember if you are mindful of these then you can counteract the urge to rush.

1) Fear of being caught performing a magic trick

Fear is a big one, the main reason probably. Most people speed up when doing the dirty work for fear of being busted. It feels more safe to do things at speed as you think maybe a spectator will not see it. You must remember though that true, deceiving sleight of hand must be natural and we do not naturally do things at lightspeed!

If you look at how you would pick a coin up and naturally and legitimately. You place it in your other hand slowly, you do not rush or do some flamboyant over the top action, you simply put it there at a natural and slow pace. Therefore, when you do this action as a feign or sleight for a vanish, it should look exactly like when you do it normally if you want to deceive people badly. If you were to speed up at the moment when you 'place the coin or item into' your other hand, then it could cause alarm bells to ring in the spectator's mind. Alarm bells are the opposite reaction that you wish to receive!

2) Chasing the reaction to magic tricks

Chasing the reaction is another classic reason for rushing a performance. When you get to the end of a routine, and the reaction doesn't burst out immediately, it can leave you feeling like you have to fill in the gap. So you speak and fill in the gap and move on to the next trick too quickly. You don't 'let the magic breathe'.

Sometimes to speak after an effect can kill the magic entirely, sometimes your audience is just gobsmacked or in awe or just in a moment of pure astonishment so they cannot speak. Let the moment sink in, pause, let the magic breathe and the reactions will come, sometimes it takes a few seconds for the spectators to catch their breath!

Do not rush straight into your next performance. Smile and look around at your spectators, maybe comment if they are silent, you can say something like, 'I take it this is stunned silence!' Mostly that will snap them out of it, and they will let you know how good it was. If it was bad, they would also let you know, but in this case at least you know for sure and can work on what may have gone wrong!

3) Magicians not paying attention to your audience

If you do not pay any attention to your audience or spectators, then you will not notice clues like when they aren't following you.

You must remember, when you have practiced your routine hundreds of times, so you know it inside out, your spectators haven't. It will most likely be the first time they have ever encountered a magician in real life.

Things that may be second nature to you are still very alien to your spectators. If you are rushing your performance, your spectators will do things like go glass eyed and phase out or frown slightly, small reactions to their confused state. If you see any of these signs, you must slow down. You may get a poor reaction because they didn't really understand a part of the routine or part of what you did as the performance was rushed.

A reaction could be poor because they feel that there was something dodgy going on due to fast movements. This way your spectators feel like they are being deceived and not amazed as they are kind of following the trail of dodgy motions and not being sucked into your performance.

Slower is better when performing magic tricks

I hope these things help you to understand a bit as to why you may rush your performance. My advice for slowing down in performance is simple. Breath slower, speak slower and move slower. It may seem like silly advice but when I say this. What I mean by this is to be mindful of how quickly you are speaking and actually focus on speaking slower. Breath in-between sentences, pause for dramatic effect and be clear and enunciate your wording. Also, take deeper breaths, this will slow your heart rate down and help you to relax more. If you slow down your breathing you can use that as a kind of metronome for the rest of your performance, or as a regulator to keep reminding you to slow it down.

We hope this helps not only Don but anyone else who reads this. I can promise you, if you slow down your performance will improve.

Magic Podcast 16 – How to Start a Business as a Magician

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

Merchant of Magic Podcast #16 How to Start a Business as a Magician

In this episode of the Merchant of Magic Podcast, Dominic Reyes talks with Elliott Smith about the business side of being a magician.

Elliott Smith is the co-author of Highway to Success – The Entertainers Roadmap to Business

Click here for previous episodes of the podcast on iTunes

Most people get into magic because it is fun and they love learning and performing magic for their family and friends. The majority of people continue developing their magic with that single goal in mind. However, some magicians want to take it a step further and turn their hobby into a business. If you are wondering how to start a business as a magician, it's important to understand that there is as much to learn about the business side of being a magician, as there is with the performance aspects.

About Elliott Smith

For over 40 years as a professional magician, Elliott regularly entertains corporations, television audiences and travelers across Canada, the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and Mexico. Prime Ministers of Canada, international Ambassadors, the late Liberace as well as Jay Leno have experienced Elliott’s special brand of magic and comedy! Elliott was honoured the Order of Merlin Shield, a very prestigious award by the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Elliott Smith writes:

I was six when I saw my first magic show on television. It touched and inspired me greatly. The spark was ignited, the passion was kindled, the goal was set…and the dream began. I wanted to be a MAGICIAN. My parents, seeing this, bought me my first magic set. Back then, all my friends would laugh and make fun of me; they were out playing sports or just hanging around while I was at home playing with my magic set. They’re not laughing now; while many of them are sitting in their nine-to-five jobs, I’m traveling North America, Europe and the Caribbean doing what I love most—performing.

Naturally, when I announced to my parents that I wanted to be magician, their response was, “That’s nice, but go to school, get an education, get a ‘real’ job and then you can do what you want.” But they always supported and encouraged me. They always took me to the magic shop when I asked, brought me to the library to get more books, and every time they traveled, they scoured each city they vis- ited to find a magic store to fill my shopping list of goodies.

Magic followed me through my school years and my early working years, and I took advantage of any opportunity to perform in the evenings and on weekends. Sadly, in those early years, I often felt surrounded by negative people who assured me that this dream of becoming a full-time, professional entertainer would never be fulfilled. That’s why my co-author Ian Quick and I are so deter- mined that our work would give you the tools you need to set your goals, act wisely on them, and make your dream of being an entertainer come true.

An integral ingredient of what I teach is the business “how to.” My work in varied jobs, ranging from the Canadian Federal Government to managing restaurants, marketing and promoting, working in an advertising and marketing company, and in retail sales (selling everything from shoes to phone systems), had honed my business skills. I applied these to “my” business—the business of being a professional entertainer. I attained this knowledge, along with some savvy, from the school of hard knocks, not from the halls of formal education. My way was to try a lot of different things; some worked, and some didn’t. This book is the cul- mination of all the things that did and do (if consistently applied) work.

Live Video Recording of the Podcast

Guessing the Secrets of Magic Tricks

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

By Dominic Reyes

A spectator guessing possible solutions, can be just as bad as spotting the true secrets of magic tricks. How can magicians defend themselves against this?

I have a good friend who is totally obsessed with zombie movies. He must have watched them all. Zombie films are almost as much of an obsession for him as magic is for me. Watching these old zombie flicks with him has taught me two things:

1) Zombies simply shouldn't run.

2) Some of these films are truly terrible.

The weak story I can forgive. After all, there's only so much plot you can build in. The low budget is fine. What gets me is the sloppy lack of attention to detail. Sometimes a sound boom pops into view. Every now and then you see a reflection in a window of the camera crew.. Little details that shouldn't be there. That's also a valuable point in the performance of close up magic:

If your audience becomes distracted by something that shouldn't be there, they lose part of the experience.

When you perform your sleight of hand, it goes without saying that you should have learned to perform the moves to a point where they are automatic, natural and flawless. You should work on your technique until there is very little chance of a something 'flashing' or 'talking' during its execution. A messed up move can pull your spectators out of the 'magical experience' in the blink of an eye. Switching their attention from the theatre of the routine, to an appraisal of your abilities. But what about 'tells' and flashes that don't even exist…

When a move that never happened goes wrong

It's quite possible for an audience member to detect a move, even though it never happened. Even if your technique is flawless, an audience member may think of an explanation for a trick even though it isn't the actual method you used. To the spectator, it doesn't really matter. If the trick COULD be done like that, in their minds, they got it right. Once any explanation is present, the magic is lost.

'It could have gone up his sleeve'
'The playing card could have already been there'
'It could have been wires'
'He could have hidden it in his other hand'

ANY explanation is the right answer to a spectator viewing your magic as a puzzle. Magic needs to be impossible, so it's your job as a magician to make sure you remove the possibility of methods even when they are not present.

Spectators are not chained to technique

Unlike a magician, a spectator is free from the restraints of technique. You may know that it's not possible for the coin to be up your sleeve, because it would be in the wrong place for its production later in the routine. You understand that even if you were to be able to peek at the playing card before it went into the deck, that would not help you, because it changes colour once it's revealed.. You understand what's possible within the context and structure of the trick. Your spectators are free from any of those cares. They don't know any of the secrets of magic tricks. If they find ANY explanation, they have solved the 'puzzle' and that's good enough for them. They don't care about the fine details in the same way.

How do we fight this?

Destroying possibilities

Look through the tricks that you perform. Try to shed all your magical knowledge and see them as a spectator does. How COULD the trick be done, if you could do anything within the laws of Physics?

Could the card be swapped?

If the other hand had the coin, would that be an answer?

Is it possible that the choice wasn't totally fair?

Taking time to come up with an alternative, unlikely, and even apparently silly 'solutions' for the magic tricks you perform is valuable. Once you collect all the 'wrong answers' you can make sure your presentation guides your audience to dismiss them without even giving them attention.

Know your enemy

Work on dispelling possible solutions to your tricks, by identifying them. It's easy to be blind to them because you are so wrapped up in the mechanics of what's really required to make the trick work.

Try to think from the perspective of your spectators. Ask yourself what they would be thinking during each moment of the routine.

If you can, show your magic to some young kids. They will be brutally honest, and surprisingly imaginative. The tricks may go over their heads or fail to hold their attention, but they will probably have quite a few possible solutions you never thought about.

Once you identify all the possible solutions, you can adapt the structure of the trick, and the presentation of the effect, so that you clearly cut off each 'solution' as impossible.

Expose your own magic

You may even draw attention to a few common 'solutions' and point out to the spectators how they would be impossible. It's fine to take a moment during a trick, to recap on the fairness of the conditions, the impossibility of what is about to happen, and to dispell any solutions that the audience may have. You may find this an interesting presentation in and of itself.