How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

How Many Magic Tricks Should You Do? How to Never Run Out of Tricks

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How many magic tricks should a magician perform?

How many magic tricks should I do? That’s an important question for professional magicians.

I was recently emailed by a magician, who was worried about how many magic tricks he should prepare for a small dinner party.

Most often, magicians perform to a large group of people. At weddings or parties there tends to be 100-200 guests. At large events, there many be 500 – 1000 guests standing around, having drinks and chatting. That’s the perfect environment for us strolling magicians. We can mix and mingle with guests, moving from group to group and performing the same sets of magic tricks many times through the course of the event. In these situations 5 or 6 polished and practiced magic tricks will keep most magicians performing through the whole evening.

Sometimes things are very different.

Quite often, we find ourselves booked for a small intimate event. Perhaps only 15 or 20 people having dinner or drinks and looking forward to being entertained by a magician. That’s much more of a challenge to a close up magician. It’s very easy to burn through our normal working set of magic tricks far too quickly. Especially if, the guests stay in one large group, so we are pretty much doing a small parlor magic show rather than walk around. Performing 2 hours of none stop magic to the same small group can be a real challenge.

Michael Fairall is a very good friend of mine, and a professional magician that I perform with on a regular basis. Michael’s main clients are affluent socialites in the best parts of London. He is often booked to arrive at small intimate parties to present after dinner magic. I asked Michael to share with you, his experience dealing with small events, and his most useful tips:

 

How close up magicians deal with small events.

If you know in advance that the party or event will only have a small audience, it may be wise to explain to the client that a 2 hour none stop show would not be the most effective way to use a close up magician. A better way to present the magic would be to have a 30 minute after dinner show, rather than ‘walk-around magic‘. You can then enter the room, capture the rooms attention and entertain them all as a group in a balanced and structured show.

If that’s not possible, or you discover the size of the audience on the night, you need to pace your magic.  Take your time. Allow the natural course of the evening to roll out as you pop in, a few times through the evening and perform some magic. Chat with the guests, engage with them, and don’t feel you have to blast magic trick after magic trick at them for 2 hours straight. Keep them wanting more.

Hold it back.

Remember to hold back one of your strongest magic tricks for the very end. There is a good chance that you will be asked to do, ‘one final trick’ to everyone right at the end. You need to have something special, in reserve for this request. This last magic trick will be the climax and the most remembered magic of the evening. If you don’t keep some strong magic held back, you run the risk of burning through your best material, and having to end on weaker magic tricks, which haven’t been worked on as well as your main core tricks. That’s no way to be remembered by your guests!

 
DO THIS: Unless you find out in advance about the number of guests that will be attending an event, you leave yourself open to the unknown. To a professional, the unknown is the enemy. It stops you from being prepared, and preparation is the key to success. Make sure you always ask the audience size when you take a booking. If your work comes in from an agent, ask them to include that information on the contract.

Pace your magic throughout a small event. Leave the guests to chat, eat and socialize. Move in and out of the action, in a way that keeps them wanting more and means you don’t burn out of your working material too early.

Choose one of your best tricks, that you will hold back as your finale. When you end your booking and meet the client to thank them, expect to be asked to perform your finale. If they don’t ask, you can always offer. It will highlight to the client that you are not clock watching, and that you have gone that extra mile for them.

Merchant of Magic Podcast 4 – Performing Time, Small Hands, and Card Control

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Merchant of Magic Podcast Episode 4Merchant of Magic Podcast Episode 4 : In a dark corner of the Magic Shop, Dominic Reyes, Ben Williams and Paul Knight chat together about:

  • Running out of time when performing magic at a gig.
  • Which tables or guests to entertain first.
  • Overhearing feedback from spectators.

 

 

The team also answer some of the questions sent in to the magic shop, including:

 

  • How easy is magic for people with small hands?
  • Ways to keep your playing cards in control.

 

The Merchant of Magic Podcast is recorded liveat the magic shop.

The motivation behind the Merchant of Magic podcast is to recreate the feel of visiting the magic shop and joining in with the conversations about magic that happen through the day.
Because all the core team are working magicians, we spend much of our time talking about the gig’s we have done that week, and the experiences we have as magicians. We think that there are enoughmagic product review podcasts and shows available to magicians. We don’t want a show that is nothing more than a commercial for the magic tricks the shop is selling.

The Merchant of Magic is in a very lucky position that we are truly grateful for. The success of the magic shop means that our customers fund us to be at the shop, helping magicians and giving advice. The podcast is funded by that support, so it does not need to be a commercial, plug products or promote sales. If you get something out of it, it’s time well spent. After all, we are in the shop talking about magic anyway, so why not record it!

The format
We plug a mic into a macbook pro, switch on Garageband, and record the show. No editing or effects, just a recording of the chat we are having in the shop. Five minutes after we stop recording, it’s live. That’s very easy, fun to do, and feels organic, but it does mean that the show is not ‘produced’.
The other option would be to have regular ‘sections’ within a show. Each section having intros, and running on a set theme each episode. For example:
  • Q&A
  • Our week in magic
  • Magic at a gig
  • Practice tips
  • etc etc
What do you think? Just us chatting in a rambling splurge of conversation with no real direction, goal or structure? Or a more formal show with regular sections? What would you like included?Please share your thoughts in the comments section below:

Why People Are Not Interested in Your Magic Tricks – 6 Common Mistakes

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Do you find that sometimes people don’t seem interested in your magic tricks? We received a question from a magician that is having that problem:

Shaun Asks:
‘When performing I sometimes find it hard to keep the audience fully engaged at all times, I was just wondering whether you had any tips that you could give me?’

This is a common problem, but there are a few tips we can give to maximise your chances of retaining everyone’s concentration on your magic tricks.

Firstly you must identify why they are switching off, there could be many reasons, I will list some and some ways to overcome these issues, by no means saying you fall into all these pitfalls, but these are some problems many magicians experience.

Reasons why they may switch off during your magic tricks:

1) You have not introduced yourself properly.

Make sure the first thing you do when you approach a group is to introduce yourself and ask for the names of the people, shake hands and ask them some questions. If it is a meal, was the food good? A wedding, how was the ceremony? If they have an accent ask where they are from and if they have travelled far… Be personable, once you have greeted everyone properly with a hand shake make sure you don’t forget their names, this is important, people LOVE it when you remember their name. A hand shake is a form of contract that you are entering into with the spectators, once you shake hands it is a form of acceptance, this is SO important to making sure they give you respect.

2) They cannot see your magic.

Try to be aware of what magic you are performing and in what spaces. If you are performing to a table of 12 people, then your magic should be presented up by your chest as much as possible. Card magic tricks are OK as long as the magical phases of the tricks are occurring off of the deck. Reveals on top the deck will only be seen and cared about by the people immediately next to you, the spectators over the other side of the table will not be able to see and will switch off. Think card to pocket and wallet, instead of ambitious card…

Ask the people over the other side of the table or at the back of the group whether they can see, make sure you care about them and they will care about you.

3) They cannot hear you.

This is a common problem. Events are LOUD! Sometimes there is music that is louder than you would want, sometimes just the cacophony of the room is enough to drop out a voice. Make sure you project your voice to the furthest person from you to keep them interested. Again, if you are performing to a table of spectators then address the person furthest away from you, ask them if they can hear OK. You can also borrow something from them and then return to the other side of the table, this will make sure he or she gets a great head on look at your magic tricks, and you will have that side of the table’s attention.

4) They do not like magic tricks.

It is estimated that when a group of people are targeted by pretty much anything, the rule of thumb would be that one third are interested, one third are on the fence, and one third are most likely not interested.

Now this hopefully is not the case and certainly isn’t the case the whole time when performing but when booked to perform you have to go up to a group and show them magic regardless. If someone doesn’t like magic tricks you’ll be able to tell straight away, and you can be brief with your performance. Maybe tell the group you will come back later (if there are people who love magic as well) this way when you return you can time it, so the person who was uninterested has moved on to speak with some others. You can’t win all the time, and you have to be able to accept the rejection if you do meet a group like this, it is not a reflection on you, more on them so don’t sweat it.

5) You have not fully gained their attention in the first place.

If you have not introduced yourself properly to everyone when you begin, maybe it is because you have not got everyone’s attention when you ‘appeared’. A quick tip to make sure that everyone pays attention to you is to be bold, confident and DO NOT HESITATE when you approach the group. If it is your job to perform professionally then this is what you must do, just like a waiter will address a table without a second thought, you must too. You can also greatly increase the odds of you getting attention from everyone by making eye contact and making them interested and saying things like:

‘How is everyone today?’ 

Slightly stress the word everyone, people will hear this and their brain will say, ‘I heard the word everyone, this includes me’ and they will look up and pay attention. You can also walk around the table and ask questions if I am borrowing money I will ask the table to nominate the most generous person at the table, this will get everyone’s attention and usually lead to some fun banter.

6) You are performing and addressing only the person that has assisted you.

Make sure you address everyone when you perform, keep the eye contact with the whole group and keep mentioning people’s names, get them involved, ask them what they think the spectator should do if they are given an option during your magic tricks, create bigger circles with your performance.

Focusing on one person when you perform will often lead to you not noticing that all of a sudden, people cannot see the magic tricks you are performing, and they cannot hear the magic because you are focusing on one person or area. Have people all help out, maybe you borrow some money from someone and you then have someone else note the serial number, then have someone else hold your wallet and another hold your wrist when you go to vanish the note, again you are drawing bigger circles when you perform.

So there you have it, some of my top tips to help make sure you gain and retain everyone’s attention when you perform your magic tricks to groups of spectators.