How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Magicians being Double Booked – Being Professional

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Organised Magicians

By Dominic Reyes

Tony writes: 'Today I arrived at a gig with all my gear, went inside and it felt pretty quiet considering I was there to perform at a party. It turned out I had arrived a week early!

I laughed it off and told I'd be back next week and they didn't make a big fuss of my mistake. But the problem I have now is that I'm double booked for next week because I already have a gig next week in the same time slot. So what do I do now? Ask them to change time so I can fit in both gigs? Cancel the other gig? Arrive late for one of them? I don't know how to deal with this without looking thoroughly unprofessional.'
 

Getting double booked

You wouldn't be the first or last entertainer to make this mistake. However, It's vital that you keep an active system going to track your bookings. Getting the date of a gig wrong can not only make you look unprofessional, but it can reflect badly on your client too, especially if they had advertised you being at their event.


Mistakes with gigs can happen, so don't give yourself too hard a time about it, but you need to make sure both clients are happy, even if that is at your expense. It's your fault that you got double booked, so find a replacement magician to cover for one of the events. You may have to subsidize their fee, but it's worth it to keep your commitments and your good name.

The phone call before the magic gig

Around a week before a gig, I recommend that you phone the client to double check the details and confirm any last minute changes or issues. This is a perfect safety net, for mistakes like the one you encountered. 

Use an online calander or booking system

Set up a dedicated calendar for bookings using an online service which will allow you to access it both from your office and when you are on the road. Apple or Google have excellent calendar services that you can use for free. Make sure you take a photo of your contract for each booking, and clip it into the calendar for that date, so you always have all the details of the gig at hand. There are also commercially available booking and contact systems for magicians that you can use. Although they can be expensive, as you get busy, they may be a great option to keep track of everything. Booking systems also help with recontact reminders, which can bring you much more work.

 

Magicians Patter – How to Avoid Being Boring

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Magicians Patter - Obvious statements

By Dominic Reyes

Why your magicians patter should only tell the spectators things they don't know already.

What makes up a good magicians patter? It should be interesting, entertaining, and move the plot of the magic trick along. There's one thing that magicians love to add into their patter and scripts. We just can't help ourselves.. but we don't need to tell our spectators things they already know.

'I have a deck of cards in my hand.'

'I'll place the lid back on the sharpie pen.'

'I'm going to cut the rope in half, at the middle.'

Your audience already knows this. They can see it! Resist the temptation to fill up your presentation with a running commentary of things that should already be obvious. It's boring and looks like you are giving yourself instructions as you perform. Stating the obvious as a form of magician's patter is lazy. It doesn't move the magic trick forward and does nothing to entertain the spectators.

When you give a commentary about the magic tricks you perform, it should be to highlight unusual objects, create a story or setting, or focus attention on a part of the tricks mechanics that is important for the spectators to remember.

'The three coins in my hand are very, very old…'

'The blade will enter the deck to pierce it's heart..'

'You must hold the playing card tightly as if your life depended on it..'

 

 

Magic Secrets Revealed – WOW Factor & 3 Rules of Thumb

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The parties to a magic performance

By Stephen Gwillam Hill

The role of any performer is to ENTERTAIN, nothing else. There are three parties to a performance: the artist (with a support team), the individual spectator and the audience; which party matters most?

The audience – without whom there would be no performance. Yet too many ‘artists’ seem to regard themselves as the most important party. It really does matter a jot how good you are at ____________ (insert your art) if your audience doesn’t feel entertained. Far too many performers regard a performance as an ego trip for them and them alone. It’s called ‘vanity’.

The WOW factor

The key to a successful illusion isn't how it looks but the impression it makes AND LEAVES on the minds of the audience. The “Wow!” factor.

Remember, there is no such thing as “magic” or a “trick”, there is ONLY “illusion” and how all those minds perceive and respond to it. Let’s face it, the magical arts are really no more than a subtle form of blatant (but legal, hopefully!) forgery and fraud; please don’t give them a mystique they just don’t have. I’ve seen far too many magicians who are brilliant at the most expert, well-rehearsed, manipulation routine but who have bored me to distraction. There was no “wow”; it was merely a scientific demonstration of a particular skill with no entertainment value. David Copperfield did his famous illusion of vanishing the Statue of Liberty, and yet – conceptually anyway – how it was done is almost embarrassingly simple. What made it a memorable illusion which people talked about for years afterwards was its PRESENTATION. Stephen Frayne succeeds as Dynamo Magician Impossible not just because of the mechanics or visuals of what he does but how, when and where it is PRESENTED, and – ultimately – how it is received.

The elements of preparation

Not only is proper preparation vital for ANY performance but even more vital are the elements of that preparation and the relative importance given to each element. Einstein is credited with saying that scientific inventions were “10% inspiration, 90% perspiration”; I suggest that magic can be looked at similarly – what percentage is skill, what percentage is presentation?

3 magic secrets revealed in the 3 rules of thumb

1) Never look at what YOU are doing. What are your spectators doing?

2) Stuff the magic, think of Einstein!

3) If you are enjoying your performance, that’s great; if you are REALLY enjoying your performance, STOP!

 

A note from Dominic Reyes about this blog post

The title of this blog post starts with the keywords 'Magic Secrets Revealed' I personally hate that term, as it seems to exist simply to attract visitors that are searching for magic secrets and methods to the tricks they have seen on TV. As you know from reading this blog, that's not what you will find here. However, I picked it for a specific reason. Stephen posted the content of this post as a reply to a post about visual magic by Ben Williams, and I really liked the message he was making. I wanted to turn it into a full post, rather than have it buried in the comments section of another post. I also think the message is very important to exactly the people that would be searching online for the term MAGIC SECRETS REVEALED. Hopefully a few of them will take the time to read this short post and pick up a TRUE magic secret they might actually get some use from.

Good luck with your magic

Dominic Reyes