magic advice Archives

3 Things to Do When Your Magic Tricks Go Wrong

By Dominic Reyes

Opps! The magic tricks gone wrong! You asked them to pick a card and lost it in the deck, then with a sophisticated flourish you proudly revealed completely the wrong card.. Awkward silence..

What to do:

Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. Magic tricks go wrong sometimes and no matter how much you practice, it can happen. The key is to be prepared in advance. You are not pre-recorded, you are doing something LIVE and part of the thrill for the audience is that it’s real, happening before their eyes, and they can interact with you. The audience has not invested in you, and have nothing to risk from you making a mistake. You are there to entertain them, and if something goes a little wrong, but you carry on and DO entertain them, then they get what they want. After all, Tommy Cooper made a living from making his magic tricks go wrong. The important part is the entertainment.
Having said that, there are some things you can do to make it go much better:

1) Always have an ‘out’

As a magician you are one step ahead. You decide how the trick tricks should end and what that ending is going to be. There is no reason your magic tricks need to follow a pattern unless you told the spectators in advance what the ending is going to be. Avoid doing that!

A few easy outs to get you started:

A playing card is picked and lost in the deck. You intended to find it with a flourish, but something didn’t go right. Just change the ending. Ask them what their card was and act confused that it could not possibly be their card as that one is not even in the deck. Go through the deck to show them it’s not even there, before taking off your shoe and letting their card fall out from inside!

Don’t know an impromptu card to shoe? Rus Andrews BOLD teaches a great impromptu version on DVD or Download

OR

Go through the deck of playing cards looking for their card, then take out your wallet and show that the card is inside a sealed envelope in your wallet

Ask them which playing card they chose and show it’s the only face down card in a face up deck that’s been in your pocket the whole time. We are thinking Invisible Deck here folks!

2) The magic trick goes wrong, and you expose the method and it’s a total disaster.

‘Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
But, sadly, it’s true
That Hang-ups
Can happen to you.’ – Dr. Seuss

Sometimes they will spot the coin, the gimmick will fall apart in your hands, you will flash a card or maybe a heckler will expose the method half way through a trick. These things happen to every magician. The secret is…

Don’t worry about it.

Just stay relaxed and confident and don’t ever apologize or make it a big deal. Just end the magic trick and start a new one. Perhaps with a smile and little positive joke comment. If you stop and act embarrassed, your audience will feel embarrassed too. This can express itself as either sympathy for you or they will mock you, neither of these are good!

When magic tricks go wrong, Don’t frame the error.

If you draw attention to the failed magic trick, your audience will pay more attention to it. (Pretty obvious really.) Instead, just move on and perform your next great trick. The impact of the magic tricks that follow and the magic they create will overshadow the bit of ‘nothing’ that happened between the first trick that amazed them and the next trick that impressed them.

For example: You perform a vanish using a pull and a spectator sees a flash of it flying away and comments on it. Simply say ‘oh, did I not throw it quickly enough?! I tell you what though if you reach in here and grab a card…’ By moving straight on to something else it will help blur the moment and you are away and onto another trick, no hang ups, no framing of failure or apology, just more magic tricks!

3) Minimize the chances of error.

Practice, Practice, Practice and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We don’t really need to tell you this do we? Good practice doesn’t just make your magic tricks look good. It irons out the chances of failure and allows you to spot the places the magic tricks could go wrong. You can then build in ‘out’s and be relaxed enough to handle a problem should it spring up.

Do you have a story about when magic tricks go wrong? How did you deal with it? Please share the experience in the comments section below:

Avoid Nasty Surprises At Close Up Magic Bookings

by Merchant of Magic 2 Comments

It doesn’t matter how many close up magic bookings you have done in the past, you simply never can tell what you will find when you arrive at your next booking. Most nights it falls into the same pattern. You arrive, quickly set up and off you go. But every now and then chance throws something at you and which takes you totally by surprise. This happened to Dominic Reyes this week:

‘I took on a booking to help a friend who was away performing overseas and could not do the date. The client was a VIP and had used him before, so he wanted to recommend a magician, he knew would do a great job. Because of this, I did not use a contract and simply agreed to 2 hours walk around and table magic, during a meal for the guests. However, when I arrived, I discovered it was for only 5 people, two of which told me right from the start that they ‘Didn’t know why the host had booked a magician as they hate magic’. Ahhh! The venue was a small room, with no ‘side rooms’ to retreat between courses. On top of this, the client wanted a 2 hour close-up magic show consisting of an hour during drinks and an hour between courses through the meal. That’s a LOT of material for just 3 spectators and 2 hecklers to enjoy! Luckily, I was able to pace the magic, and the client agreed that it was better for me to pop in at points through the evening and perform little sets of magic, so it did not dominate the evening too much. The lesson: Prepare in advance and find out about your audience and the location, BEFORE you actually get there to perform! – Dominic Reyes

Dominic’s experience teaches us that you have to be ready for any eventuality. He’s an established pro and had plenty of material to perform the gig professionally. However, if he had taken the time to ask a few questions FIRST, he would have been able to prepare and start the gig, in a structured and paced way.

You spend a great deal of time preparing your act. Spend time preparing for the situations you will perform in too!

Here are 4 quick tips to help you never have this experience at your close up magic bookings:

1) Get information about the close up magic bookings from the client

It’s vital that you or your agent either ask the client in person or have these questions on your booking form:

The location – The full address and phone number for the venue
Is there parking available?
Are there any special access requirements? – Ferry crossings, security gates, limited access conditions.
Who is the event planner or point of contact at the venue?
How many guests will be attending?
The dress code for the event.
The duration you would like the performance to last
Will the event be walk-around, table magic or a show?
Will other entertainment be running while the magic takes place?

2) Arrive early

Make sure you arrive at the venue an hour before you need to start. That way you have enough time to check out the venue, and deal with any surprises that have popped up.

3) Find a room or screened corner to be your base.

You need a place you can retreat to for resets and the breaks in the evening, so you’re not just standing around. Sometimes you can ask for a room for this, but other times, it may be a ‘chair store’ a screened off area or simply an unused corridor. Stay well away from the serving stations and the routes used by the waiters, as you really don’t want to be in the way.

4) View the room layout

Being forewarned is being forearmed. Taking a look at where you will be performing BEFORE it’s full of guests, will give you a chance to ask for some changes, or to adjust your planned material to fit perfectly with the setting. Look out for these points:

Is there space to access all the tables when the guests are seated?
Which tables have a clear view of your performance?
Will other tables be able to watch the magic tricks, while you perform them to other tables?
Will this need angle adjustment to some of the techniques?
Does the seating allow everyone to see ok?
Is there going to be a lot of room noise?
Will the lighting cause you any problems?

What next:
You may also find this article on mistakes magicians make when getting to a gig useful.

We would love to hear any similar experiences you have had, or any advice on handling close up magic bookings that you would like to share. Please add them to the comments section below:

The Pitfalls of Performing Magic Tricks for Your Family and Friends

by Merchant of Magic 7 Comments

By Dominic Reyes

It’s a cruel trick of nature.. Those that need the most practice and experience

have the least opportunity to receive it.

Those pesky professional magicians, they have hordes of new people to show their magic tricks to every night. Not only that, but they get paid to do it! What about those of us that are starting out, or simply prefer to treat magic as a hobby? How are we supposed to get better if we don’t have access to an ever changing audience to sharpen our classic pass’s on? The answer… our family and friends.

How to bore friends and annoy people

Your friends may love your magic tricks. You may always be asked to show them a trick or about how your magic is going. Being a magician is quite unusual, and you are probably the only magician your friends know. However, many of your friends, and most of your family knew you before you started to learn magic. They like you because.. Well, you’re you! Hanging around with you is not a license for you to constantly show them your latest tricks, or even worse, each stage of development that your current favorite trick has reached. They haven’t decided to go and see a magic show every time they see you, so make sure you don’t ‘magic them to death’

71% of magicians partners reported that they no longer like being shown magic tricks. (Source: Feedback survey MagicShop.co.uk 2009 (Sample size 627)

Pick the right times to show them some magic. Wait to be invited to do so. Thinking that because you have a ‘relationship’ with someone, it’s fair game to make them watch endless card tricks, is a sure fire way to bore and annoy your friends and family. So who do you show your magic to? If you don’t perform to the public, your friends and family are your only audience. However, it’s really easy to avoid these pitfalls. You just need to keep in mind some simple advice.

The dynamic’s are different

The dynamics of performing magic to people who know you is very different to that of the general public. You already have a relationship with these people. Basically, they know you aren’t really magical. This gives them far fewer boundaries than someone who knows you only as a magician, there to entertain. This expresses itself in may different ways. Here are just a few:

They ask more questions
They will grab at props
They try to get the ‘secret’ out of you
They don’t regard you as a professional
They want you to repeat the tricks

Be yourself

Another challenge when performing for people that know you, is that persona’s simply don’t work.
Suddenly switching to the character of a wild west hustler, or a mystic from the middle east, comes across as ridiculous. Your friend may have known you at school or has sat through several dull business meetings with you earlier that week. When you show them a trick and switch personalities to become someone else, it just doesn’t work. The only authentic style you can present these people, is one that fit’s with their knowledge about you. Basically, you have to be yourself!

Doing it right

We have written a free ebook that discusses the pitfalls of performing magic for your family and friends. The book gives you practical ways to:

Improve your presentation
Deal with ‘grabbers’
How to answer ‘ Do another one’
Being the center of attention
How not to reveal the ‘secrets’

The free ebook, written by professional magicians also gives you tips and techniques on the approach, character and timing.

Do you have some advice for magicians performing magic tricks for their family and friends? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below: