misdirection Archives

Why Magicians Should Talk Less and Listen More

Many magicians find that they practice a magic trick until it seems to flow perfectly, but when it comes to a live performance, things don’t go as well as they should. There’s a BIG difference between live performance and a practice session. We are going to recommend that you change how you practice your magic tricks. It’s a very small change to make, but should give you a huge step forward in your performance.

A magic trick practiced Vs. a magic trick performed.

Magicians build up to a magical event happening, after all, that’s the whole point of their magic tricks. However, many magic tricks have several magical events happening in a series. When magicians practice a magic trick they usually do it in private, towards an imaginary audience. It’s this audience of ourselves, silent in its reaction, that causes us a problem. We already know what’s going to happen, and our attention is on the next part of the routine to be performed. We don’t react to each magical event and give ourselves the same feedback that a live audience does. We run through our practice sessions, mastering the moves, then work through our rehearsal sessions, polishing the routine, but we never work on the feedback we will get when we perform. Here’s Dominic Reyes talking about this, and how it relates to magicians performing for the public:

During a performance, it’s tempting to move on to the next magical event in the routine, without stopping to allow the reactions of the spectators to play out. As soon as the coin vanishes, or the playing card changes, we start talking about what will happen next. We sweep the spectators along to the next part of the act.

Being eager to move on, prevents the spectators from giving your magic the reaction it deserves. It reduces the impact of a magicians magic tricks and turns the performance into a passive form of entertainment. Being a magician is as much about engagement with the audience as the magic tricks themselves.

DO THIS: Make a note of each magical event that happens in a few of your favourite routines. As you practice them, pause at the moment that something magical happens. Relax. Imagine making eye contact with some of the spectators and smiling. Make a little comment and imagine an answer to it. Breathe. Then move on to the next phase of the trick.

When you perform, pause after something magical happens. You want to slow down the performance, and also focus the spectators minds on what they have just witnessed.

Use the moment of misdirection to set up the next phase if needed, but once you are in the clear, smile at someone and laugh with them. Make a comment or answer a question. Make your audience feel that this isn’t a magicians stage show, up close. You are with them, performing something that they also play a part in. You will be very pleased with the results!

How Magicians Use Spectator Memory Against Them – Magic Tricks Tips

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

Learn magic tricks that use a spectators memory against them with a playing card

By Paul Knight

Magicians can easily use memory techniques that will influence how spectators describe the magic tricks that are shown to them.

Often as magicians we forget to perform through the eyes of a layman. Magicians fully understand the route their magic tricks take from beginning to end. However, the spectators will often miss details that happen between the beginning and the end of the magic trick. This is human nature and the way our minds are designed to work. The brain will form a shape to events that happen, and the contents within become an assumption.

The Primacy and Recency Effect in your Magic Tricks.

For many years, Psychologists have understand that subjects in experiments will best remember events that happened at the start and at the end of a particular event.
Remembering the first part of an event or experience is called The Primacy Effect. It’s one of the reasons why first impressions are hard to change.

The last or most recent parts of an event are also remembered well by test subjects (The Recency Effect).

The middle of an event is often forgotten, or can easily be overshadowed by events that happened at the beginning or at the end of an event.

This is one of the reasons why your opener magic tricks and closer Magic tricks are so important. They are the magic tricks your act will most often be judged on.

The start and finish are important.

The human brain is amazing. It’s easy to think that we simply observe information and use the data to understand the world around us. However, our minds also apply their own filters and processing to the information it receives.

Can you read this sentence:

‘I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg.’

Oxford university conducted an experiment and came to the conclusion that so long as the first letter and the last letter of a word are in the right places the brain can very quickly reorder the letters in between and compose the word it is intended to be, creating an assumption. It is the brain fooling itself.
Often, when you perform your magic tricks, spectators may approach you afterwards and retell the events of the magic trick that they believe they have witnessed. You will notice that many of the events within the magic tricks you performed, never happened.
Magicians can learn magic tricks that use the spectators memory to their benefit.

Using a Playing Card

Let’s use this approach with magic tricks that use a playing card.

The card through window magic trick is an excellent example. Often spectators will approach you later on after the trick, sometimes on the same day, sometimes days later and convinced themselves that there was no playing card on the outside of the window before, and that they signed the card. They never looked at the window before the trick, and they never signed the playing card until after the playing card was found on the window. They are filling in events that never happened to sell the story.

Card to wallet magic trick tricks are also a good example of a spectators faulty memory of events. At the beginning of the magic trick a playing card is selected and signed and then lost in the deck of playing cards. At the end of the magic trick, it is found in the magicians wallet within a zippered compartment. If you put a few practically self working red herrings in between the start, and after the magic trick that solidifying things that didn’t actually happen, the spectators will solidly believe a different course of events has happened.

The spectator believes that the playing card may be his selection, but when he looks at the playing card, it states ‘look in the card case’. In the card case is a playing card that reads ‘not here, look in the pocket’. In your pocket, you could have a playing card that reads ‘not here either, look inside the zipper compartment of the wallet’. Then the spectator unzips the wallet and finds their signed playing card.

When recounted afterwards, the spectators often say that the playing card was in the wallet. The playing card transported to the card case, then into the magicians pocket and finally back to the zippered compartment of the wallet they were holding from the beginning. This is a moment to monopolise the situation. Notice that they are already creating moments within the magic tricks that never occurred. Magicians can strengthen this with a white lie or two!

Here are a few simple lines you could use when you do card magic tricks. The lines may help enhance the magic tricks after the event. Using specific language within the magic tricks paint a more impossible and impressive memory for the spectators.

“Yes, and I never even touched the deck of cards.”

“You could have thought of any playing card!”

“You signed your playing card before we even began.”

“You held the deck of cards from the very beginning.”

“And you thoroughly shuffled the deck of cards!”

Spectators will sometimes remember the premise set at the beginning of your magic tricks and the finale. The start and end. As magicians, we can aim to learn magic tricks that use this psychology to our benefit. Our job as magicians are to leave our audiences with magical memories, and the responsibility is on us to create that memory. If the audience willingly show they want to fill in the gaps with their own images, is it wrong that we should expand on this within our magic tricks? An innocent white lie or two is not a bad thing.

Close Up Magic Vs. Stage Magic – Problems All Magicians Deal With

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

Close up magic and stage magic have several different problems. Let’s look at a few of the differences:

Choice

The audience in a stage show has chosen to see you perform your magic tricks. With close up magic, the audience does not know who you are and often that you will be performing.

Location

The audience visits a theatre to watch a magic show. They make the decision to come to you to watch your show. With close up magic, you go to them. Because of this, the locations are very different. With a stage show, you create the environment that the magic tricks are ‘staged’ within. Close up magicians fit in to a larger event, so your magic needs to be designed to complement an existing event. You need to be prepared for location surprises at close up magic gigs.

Lighting

Stage magicians can ensure that the lighting for the show is perfect for the magic tricks they will present. If you need a ‘dark’ area you can make sure that happens at just the right moment. If you need the lighting to focus attention away from an object or from you, for a few moments, this can be easily built into the show.

The main disadvantage for stage magicians is that the lighting makes it hard for them to engage with the audience. Lights can stop you from seeing the audience. Because of this, careful rehearsal needs to be done, to ensure the act is engaging without as much of the personal contact that close up magicians can create.

Close up magic happens in random locations, often in restaurants and busy bars. The lighting can be too dark, or very bright, and you will have no control over it. You need to make sure that the magic tricks you can perform are suitable for as many lighting set ups as possible.

Sound

Stage magic is supported by a PA system so the whole room can hear you. Sound effects can be added, as well as backing music. This can be used to change the mood and attention of your spectators when you need that to happen.

Close up magic takes place inside a larger event. It’s social in nature and happens in and around conversations. A band or loud music may be the background to your magic tricks, so you can’t assume that your audience will even be able to hear you. This creates a real challenge for you as a close up magician. You need to engage with the spectators and entertain them, but at the same time, you need to make sure that your magic can be understood, even if the spectator can’t hear you very well.

Good close up magic is presented in designed sets of magic tricks for different sound conditions. You should have at least 5 or 6 magic tricks ready to perform, should you find yourself in a situation where nobody can hear what you are saying. If you don’t do this, you may find you are limited in locations that you can work at a gig. You really don’t want to be forced to be positioned in the bar area away from the ‘action’ simply because the magic tricks you do, requires people to listen to you.

Set

Stage magic has the advantage of being able to control the environment to reinforce the magic or the presentation within a particular magic show. Everything can be arranged exactly how you want it, to present your magic tricks for maximum impact close up magic has no set. It may be the street, a bar or restaurant. However, this doesn’t need to be a disadvantage. The restaurant has objects, rituals and a structure that can be used to your advantage. Choosing magic tricks that compliment the situations you perform in, can turn the restaurant or bar into a perfect set. You need to be much more flexible and design your magic tricks to use the settings you have access too, in a way that will strengthen and highlight your magic tricks. Part of your job as a close up magician is to define your performing area, and communicate that to the spectators very quickly when you join each group.

Costume

Stage magicians can tell a story as much through their costumes as the magic itself. From a Chinese 19th century royal court, through to a sinister torture chamber. The act is set in a theme that communicated the story of the show.

Magicians that perform close up magic either wear a suit or dress down for street performances. They match the costumes that their spectators wear. The goal is to integrate, rather than stand out. It’s important that you think about what is best for a close up magicians to wear.

Seating

When a stage audience is seated, they have been arranged in a position to pay full attention to the show. Close up magic is often performed strolling magic, or magic at restaurant tables. The audience isn’t going to be seated so everyone can see you. When you perform close up magic, you need to move around. You need to engage different groups and capture peoples attention. It’s very important that you take some time to practice this and examine how your magic will work when your audience is not all sat directly in front of you.

Beginners often struggle with this, as they practice their magic tricks as if the audience is watching a stage show. When it comes to performing in a real world situation, they become confused and unsure how to present their magic tricks as people move around or are seated in a way that could expose their magic secrets.

Attention

The moment the lights go down at a stage magic show, everyone is paying attention. The stage magicians job is to keep that attention and stop the audience either leaving or falling asleep.

Close up magicians need to win the attention of the group, and then keep it. Spectators can be interrupted, become distracted by everything else happening. The food could be just about to arrive, an argument could be simmering between the group. Your spectators could be in deep conversation or even simply show no interest in your table magic at all. Social skills are very important for close up magicians, probably more so than good technique. The audience has no obligation to pay you any attention, so you need to give them as many reasons to like you and find your magic entertaining as you possibly can.

Misdirection

Stage magicians are being watched from the moment they arrive on stage. Many of the techniques of misdirection are different from those of magicians doing close up magic. Close up magicians, by definition, are closer to the audience. You will need to use misdirection techniques specifically designed for this situation. Tactics like eye contact, crossing gaze, positioning and questioning can all be used much more effectively in a close up magic setting.

Applause

We have all been trained from an early age to clap at the end of a stage performance. This is not so much the case for close up shows. Because close up magic is much more intimate, spectators tend not to use applause. They simply tell you how much they liked the magic trick they just say.

Unlike stage magicians, close up magicians need to train their audience to give them applause.

Do This:

Take a moment to think about these differences. List the magic you currently perform and next to each trick or ‘set’ answer these questions:

1) What practical steps can you build into the magic tricks you already perform that can communicate the need to clap after you show a group your magic tricks?2) Which environmental conditions would be ideal for each trick?

3) How can you adapt various performing conditions to enhance the magic?

4) What could you say or do, to capture attention and keep the spectators engaged?

5) How could each magic trick be adapted to increase the amount of participation and connection from the spectators?

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