Will You Ever Be More than an Average Magician?

I was asked this question today:

‘How can magicians script and arrange several magic tricks to get maximum entertainment value? Is there a tried and true method of determining what order of the effects is best?

This is what I have learned so far:
Opener – something quick and visual to let the audience know that the magicians, good and that they will be entertained.
More Magic . . .Use the audience as much as possible, they love to be involves (most of them at least, I hate to make fun of a volunteer or make them look foolish)
Closer – usually the best and biggest WOW factor magicians can do.

Any suggestion about pacing the routines and what goes well with other tricks?’

That’s a great question. In fact, it’s one of our favorite questions to be asked! This magician has been hard at work. He has chosen the tricks he wants to perform, which is really the easy part. Now he faces the biggest challenge magicians have: Making it all flow together into a polished and entertaining act.

Option 1:

Don’t worry about it. Magic is a fun hobby, and a great second income, if you decide to perform magic for money. Just keep finding new tricks and show them to as many people as you can, The ones that don’t get great reactions can be dumped and new ones added. Your local magic dealer will LOVE YOU, and you will have a decent reputation locally, as one of the best magicians. You will constantly be met with requests to ‘Show us what new tricks you have’.

Option 2:

You take the time to find out who you are as a performer. The style of magic that suits you best, and the most effective way for you to present your magic. You select only tricks that strengthen your performance and your act. As you study each trick, you create, test, and refine the way you present them. New tricks are added in a way that increases the power of the other magic tricks you do, until you have an act that is the best it can be.

If you look at all the magicians performing magic today, some are pretty terrible to be honest. Some are really good, but most are just an average magician, after all that’s what average means.

Ticking along with option 1, WILL give you results, and your magic will improve over time. However, it will never push you past being one of the average magicians. All magicians are searching for new magic tricks. Magicians everywhere are practicing like crazy. That’s what everyone does:

It’s a path to being just an average magician.

DO THIS: You need to CHOOSE right from the START, where you will fit into this scale. It’s not something you can just gradually move along, until you wake up one day, years from now, better than everyone else. Every day you spend practicing without making this choice, is a wasted chance.

Decide RIGHT NOW to set your aim above the average magician, then do something to act on that decision.

Magicians that asked me this question, are on the right track. They have got to the stage where they want more from their magic. Professional magicians have something more than new tricks. They are doing more than the average guys. Not by accident, but by a conscious choice to study more than the moves of a new trick. They follow option 2. They look at themselves, and their performance, and find ways to make THAT part of their show as good as the tricks within it.
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By Dominic Reyes

How Magicians Can Keep Clients Informed

How to Do Magic Tricks on TV – Live or Set Up?

by Merchant of Magic 2 Comments

A magician called Yif recently posted videos on YouTube, which many of the magic community felt were simply full of camera tricks. Magicians have discussed this in depth on magic forums and debated if the magic video was filmed with stooges and set up off camera. So, do you feel that magic on TV should only be performed in the same way a magician could perform it in live conditions?

The problems magicians face on TV.
MoveMonkey in Detroit makes a good point: Unlike at a live performance of magic, audiences watching a trick on TV or YouTube have the power to REWIND. They can enjoy infinite viewing of the performance. This destroys many of the techniques magicians use in live magic:

False-memory.
Misdirection.
Change blindness.
Forced perspective.
Intersecting moments.
Psychological influence.

One of the golden rules of how to do magic tricks, is broken when a trick is recorded:

Never repeat a trick
Once a trick – Twice a lesson comes into play here. It’s pretty easy for viewers to back-engineer a trick they watch on YouTube if they really want to.

Are magic tricks on TV a problem?
I’ve often wondered why so many magicians insist that magic on TV should only be performed the way it would be if performed ‘live’. We don’t insist singers only release live recordings without sound processing. We also don’t insist all TV shows are recorded theatre plays.

I’ve no idea if the tricks Yif performs use stooges. To be honest, I don’t really care.

THREE WINS:

1) If someone watches the video and is entertained, it’s done it’s job.

2) If that makes someone more likely to book a magician to see some live magic at their event, that’s great for us!

3) If it inspires a beginner to start the journey into magic, that’s great for him and the magic community.

Regardless of the material being live magic or staged magic, the footage can still help us learn how to do magic tricks. Just like a singer can learn something from a processed pop song. Yif does not rush the presentation, and allows the reactions to grow well after the magic has been performed. We can take from that and find ways to apply it to our own presentations.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts about magic tricks on trick in the comments section below.

3 Danger Signs For Successful Magicians

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

You leave the group with applause and congratulations ringing in your ears. As you pack up, the client comes over and thanks you from the bottom of their heart for doing such a great job and tells you that everyone is talking about it. You feel great, and head home, knowing you did a great job.

That’s a dangerous thing to get used too.

1) Working alone, surrounded by people.

Successful Magicians working in a lonely business. They travel from gig to gig day after day, and although they perform for hundreds of people, they are separate from them. Even on large events with multiple magicians, they meet at the start while everyone sets up, then divide the room or tables and get to work. At the end, they will all met up, and motivated by the excitement and adrenaline of the evening, joke and discussed magic while the close up cases are packed. Then it’s on the road again and so it goes on. After a while, they can start to work within their own bubble, isolated from real criticism of their act or performance.

2) Believing your spectators feedback

If you are not careful, you can fall into the trap of believing all the praise you receive from your audience. You entertained them, and they loved it, but they only saw you that single time. They can’t give you feedback on anything other than that single performance. If you are starting to take shortcuts, cutting corners or just becoming too familiar and bored with your routines, they can’t pick up on that until it’s so bad, you give a terrible show. Never think that because the show went well, it means you gave as good a performance as you have in the past. You need to be introspective and critical of your own performance to guard against this.

3) Losing the fear.

Do you find you still get a little nervous before a gig?

Despite working for years, many performers still get a panicky or tense feeling before a new gig starts. That’s stage fright. It’s perfectly normal, and unless it becomes unmanageable, it is actually one of your best friends. As you go on from great performance to great performance, you can lose the fear that something may go wrong. That can cause you to stop being introspective and lessen the desire to perfect your existing material. If you find you no longer get that feeling, it may be a warning sign that you need to spend some time checking that you are still giving your work the same energy and attention to detail that you did earlier in your magic career.

Do This:

Try to get any performing video footage you can of your routines each time it’s recorded at an event. Look back on a few of these over time and see if the energy you had when you first started performing is still there.
Take your spectators praise with a pinch of salt, keep being critical of your own performance.
Look out for losing your fear of performing and view it as a possible warning sign.

Being aware of the danger of success is vital as your career in magic develops and you become successful magicians. You are only as good as your last performance, so make sure it’s consistently the best it can be.