Magicians Archives

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.

Does the World Really Need Another Magician Doing Close Up Magic Tricks?

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

By Dominic Reyes

Too Many Magicians doing Close Up Magic?

Does the world really need another magician going out and performing close up magic? That’s a common topic of conversation between working magicians. Close Up Magic has never been more popular, both as a performing art and as a private hobby. Should we be worried about a diluted market for live magic?

Does the world need another book or painting?

There are millions of books and paintings in the world. Far more than any person could hope to encounter or even archive. That doesn’t reduce their worth or value. In the same way, the popularity of magic and it’s availability isn’t reduced by its rarity. Being entertained is an insatiable desire. People don’t care how common place a form of entertainment is, only that it IS entertaining. If rarity had anything to do with is, then nobody would be interested in watching movies or listening to music. The value of any entertainment is in its quality. You could say, ‘Does the world need another bad magician?’ Then the answer would be yes, but quality is always in demand.

Perceptual Vigilance

When you buy a new car, you will start seeing that same make and model everywhere.

It’s a psychological effect called Perceptual Vigilance and has been demonstrated in many studies. Psychologists are interested in this because it’s evidence that we process visual information about our surroundings at an unconscious level, BEFORE we become aware of doing do. There is so much data in the world. Our minds fade out information that is common place or not relevant to us, and instead, draws attention and focus to information that is useful or relevant.

Chances are you are just like me and are totally obsessed with magic. It’s become your passion and you work at improving your skills at every chance possible. You seek out friends who also love magic. You read books on the subject, watch magic DVD’s and practice your close up magic tricks like crazy. Because of this, you will have perceptual vigilance about magic. You probably will be the first to notice magic sets on sale as you walk around a superstore. Dlites for sale in Toys are Us, and that many family restaurants have a ‘magic night’. You will spot magic shows being advertised on TV far more often that non magicians. Because of this ‘tuned in to magic’ view of the world, it’s easy to assume magicians are everywhere and common place. The truth is that most people are as blind to magicians being all around then as they are to everything else.

If you want proof of this, read some books on ventriloquism, watch some shows and read some blogs on the subject for a week or so. You will start noticing how much more popular it has ‘suddenly’ become.

The life cycle of magicians on Youtube

Try typing in ‘how to do magic tricks’ in Youtube, it my depress you. You will find countless children performing close up magic tricks in their bedrooms with varying degrees of success. It’s easy to conclude that ‘the games had it’. However, that’s not the case. Ever since, the first magic sets were sold to kids, they have been playing with them in their bedroom. The only different is that they film their play, and put it on Youtube for their friends to watch. Nothing has changed, only our ability to watch kids at play.

The life cycle of a beginner in magic is, on average, 6 months. After half a year, most people with a casual interest in close up magic tricks move on to their next new hobby. If they continue past 6 months, there is a second drop off point after 2 years. Every day, hundreds of people discover magic, and hundreds forget about it. It’s a constant renewing cycle, and on the whole is a good thing. Out of this ‘churn’ rises a handful of magicians that continue to develop and become excellent. It’s just like panning for gold. The more full pans of sand, the more nuggets of gold get found. The sand will simply drop back into the river.

When you see kids or amateur magicians performing close up magic tricks, smile to yourself. It shows that magic is alive and has a future.

How Magicians Can Link Their Magic Tricks to Create Continuity

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

Let’s explore how magicians can link the magic tricks they perform, by using continuity. One of the skills that separate professional magicians and amateurs is the degree of continuity within their magic tricks. Most magicians perform one of their magic tricks, put it away and then start performing another one. There is no continuity between the magic tricks they perform. Each of the magic tricks is unrelated. The tricks are bookmarked by a moment when the magician puts it away and starts another trick. Let’s look at introducing continuity into the magic tricks you perform.

Performing one magic trick, then putting it away and taking out another is like being a comedian that fires off unrelated gags. The comedian tells a range of jokes, knowing that sooner or later, one of them will hit the spot and make the audience laugh. Your magic can be much better than that. You can build in a theme that runs across all your magic tricks and ties them together to create something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

How Your Magic Starts.

Rather than getting out the props for a new magic trick, could the previous trick introduce the props for the next? Could it make an object appear that you then use for your next trick?

Here are 5 quick easy card magic tricks bound by continuity. Notice that they flow together as they tell a larger story about the most amazing playing card the magician has ever seen.

You take a shuffled deck of playing cards and magically find all four aces. You explain that one of the aces has very special properties.

The aces are then used for a mentalism trick, and the spectator is asked to choose one, and it matches a prediction because it is the ‘special card’

Once the prediction has been made, the chosen card vanishes and appears in your wallet

You then destroy it, only for it to reform, as a torn and restored playing card.

One corner remains unhealed. It vanishes and appears in an impossible location.

How Your Props Vanish.

A previous magic trick, could give an explanation to your spectators, as to why an object vanishes in a magic trick that follows. David Roth uses a Portable Hole, and it’s a great example of this. The idea of a portable hole that makes your props vanish can run through all your magic tricks, appearing to cause trouble for the magician and bring props in and out of play.

Thinking about joining the magic tricks you perform into a set that has continuity and a story line that runs through it, will greatly improve the reactions you get from your magic tricks. It will improve your pocket management, the timing and flow the act and will create an overall ‘message’ that is far more memorable to spectators than a generic magician what performed a series of unrelated magic tricks.