Most of the time, there is little or no theatrical context applied to magic. There is no need to do the magic. The performer does it just because they can. Let me explain to you what I mean.

Consider a performance piece in which a performer flies across the stage from one side to the other. Think David Copperfield if you like.
Now imagine another performer who flies across the the stage because in the middle of the stage is a fire.
The second performer has a reason to need to fly, while the first one just wanted to show off that he could fly.

Is magic improved by this kind of motivation? Is there any need for this motivation?

David Blaine, when he performs his coin vanish, making a coin disappear off a spectator’s hand.
I do a similar trick (in method) where I change an American cent into British 5 pence. It is beautiful in appearance because a brownish copper coin turns into a shiny silver one on the hand of a spectator. My reason for doing that trick was that I recieved the cent shell coin with a PK magnet I bought years ago (before I opened MagicMegaStore.co.uk) and I wondered why they had sent me an American shell. What good could it be to me?
Well, I found a use. I tell spectators that it was given to me as change when I bought something in a shop and how much I hate it when foreign currency gets given to me in change and sometimes I just think about how useful it would be if I could change it into British legal tender. And then I do.
In my version, there is a reason to perform the coin change – because the American cent is unspendable in this country.
Magic is inherently showy. We have seen magician after magician do various tricks and illusions for no other reason than to show it off.
My question is, does this motivation make the magic better?

We’ve all seen magicians and illusionists do magic tricks. And there is enough magic about that we have all seen bad magic as well as good magic. But here’s an important question: What is the difference? What makes good magic good and bad magic bad?

After ten years of performing close-up and street magic, I have come to realize that there are five elements that create a powerful performance of magic.

#5 A strong effect. And in this context, by effect, I mean what is supposed to happen that is considered magical. It could be a vanish, or a transformation or an act of mind reading. But it has to be a decent idea. Decent effects in magic are usually things that are obviously magical – easily communicable. The more direct, the better.

#4 The moves. Obviously, no trick requiring sleight-of-hand is going to work if the performer cannot adequately execute the moves required. That much is obvious. Mastering sleight-of-hand moves essentially comes down to careful practise and muscle learning.

#3 Elements of impossibility. These are the little things that stick in the audience’s mind when they recall the trick. The deck that the magician never touched, or the *** that could not have happened. Some would claim that this is part of the effect, but I disagree because a lot of the time you can perform the same effect without these elements and it won’t be as strong. Equally, some elements of impossibility are presentational and as such are not part of the effect itself.

#2 Audience involvement. And what I mean by this is slightly different to, but could include, audience participation. But what I mean by audience involvement could be a physical involvement – participation – or it could mean emotional involvement. Now, whether or not you have audience participation, an emotional involvement from audience members is essential if you are going to get reactions to your magic. And since David Blaine’s shows, all magic and all magicians are judged by the audience reactions they get.

#1 Good presentation. Any veteran magician will tell you this. And there’s a good reason for that: because it’s true. Even when you have all your moves down and you have chosen a reasonably strong effect idea, and you have elements of impossibility in place, the thing – the skill of the magician – that puts the whole lot together and makes it into a powerful magic performance is the presentation. It is this that communicates what is supposed to happen. It is this that communicates the whole scenario to the audience. It is this that essentially affects what the audience experiences.

Performers like Derren Brown have become enormously successful of late and in could be speculated that a large part of his success is attributable to one quality of his performances: believability. A large fraction of his audience believes that what he is doing is not trickery, but genuine, scientifically grounded imitations of psychic phenomenon using magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship.

Making your magic act believable has pros and cons. On the one hand, your act will be marketable to the highly educated, who, may otherwise dismiss magic as silly fun and something for children. On the other hand, taking your magic in this direction is going to create a barrier to certain demographics. This is the decision you will have to make. But there is something cool about performing mentalism when your audience think that the mechanisms behind it are complicated and take years of dedication to learn.

So without further ado, here is a brief guide to creating believability.

In his book, Absolute Magic, Derren talks at length about how there should be a sound theatrical theory behind why your magic works; a source of your abilities other than “it’s magic”. And once you have decided what this is, the way you present your effects must all have a theatrical theory behind why they work that can be logically rooted in the source you have decided upon. Further, you must treat all of your presentational elements which suggest the source of your powers very seriously. If you treat them seriously, your audience too will attribute importance to them and jump to the conclusion that you want them to – namely, that the effect would not work if you did not do it.

Think deeply about what your act would look like if you did have psychic powers. Think about whether it would look like you make it look when you perform. Would you always be right when you read a mind? Would you always be 100% correct all of the time? Would your techniques and methods work on everybody?

Think through your performances and your act and theatrical reality from the audience’s point of view. What conclusions will they jump to? What will they be lead to think?

Another approach is to create routines which start out with a simple trick that is based on scientific logic or something real. Then, in phase 2 of the routine, step it up with an illusion that appears to be a development of phase 1. Then, in phase 3 you can take it to the next level and perform something really quite magical which borrows from phase 1 or 2 and seems grounded in those simple ideas.

You could think of it as creating an illusion upon which all of your other illusions are based. If you can successfully come up with something to fit this bill, you will have a very powerful mentalism act that most will believe.

As one such sufferer wrote “More often that not, amazement is followed by some annoying question or statement.”

1. “Do it again!” or “Do it for my friend!” – The request for repeat performance
2. “Do another!” - The requestion for more
3. “How did you do it? Tell me! Pleeeaaaase!” – The request for explanation
4. “That’s obvious. You did it by….[insert explanation here]” - The declaration of explanation.

The solutions:

What To Say To “Do It Again!”

In this case, you can just do another trick that is similar but not the same. Then again, there are some tricks that you can repeat several times to the same audience.

What To Say To “Do another!”

“I can’t. My spidey powers are worn out!” But if you perform tricks in sequence with a opener, a middle sequence and a finisher, very few will ask. There are ways to let people know the performance is over without saying so as such.

What To Say To “How do you do it?”

This question, in my experience is usually asked with a surprised tone. The asker gets higher pitched towards the end of the question. It is not asked in a matter of fact way, so why does it require a matter of fact answer?

The smart alec answer is “Very well.” But if you don’t want to be flippant there are other ways to handle this question.

I usually just laugh off questions like “How do you do that?” or take it as rhetorical and come out with, “Yea, it’s amazing isn’t it?”

What To Say To “That’s obvious. You did it by…”

Do you really have to say anything to this? Or just do the Spok thing and mysteriously say, “Did I?”

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The bottom line is to take all of these questions with a light heart. Don’t take them as personal attacks. They’ll only annoy you if you let them. And the only reason they annoy most people is because they don’t know what to say.

The Alternative Solution: So You Don’t Have To Memorize All These Answers To Questions

Better than learning the answers to all these questions, wouldn’t it be better if you could just prevent the people asking in the first place. Remember that in any performance situation, you are in charge. It’s your performance and if you can project that leadership, even if there are spectators who ask you questions like the ones above, they’ll accept whatever answers you give them. But more often than not, they won’t ask.

I have come to believe that any response you get to your performance, be it hysterical reactions or annoying questions, are a result OF your performance and as such they are all your fault. This may sound like I’m harshly planting blame with you and you may be defensively thinking, “But I didn’t do anything?!” But if you look at it from another point of view, it’s a good thing that it is your fault because it means that you have the full power to do something about it.

Darwin Ortiz points out in his book “Strong Magic” the difference between demonstrating magic and presenting a puzzle. Which means it all comes down to presentation. If you show people a puzzle, they want to solve it and if they can’t, they think it is their right to be given the solution.

In professional situations and even unprofessional situations with strangers, this sort of behaviour is uncommon. It only happens a lot when you perform to people who already know you and know what you’re like underneath the magician persona.

The book details a whole host of methods and techniques used by magicians and mentalists to imitate psychic phenomenon without having the so-called “gift” that psychics claim to have.

The entire 13 steps to mentalism course was recently recreated by Richard Osterlind in DVD format to bring about a 6 DVD box set.

13 Steps To Mentalism at MagicMegaStore.co.uk:

We have the original 13 Steps To Mentalism Book, now back in print for just £12.99

We also have in stock the 13 Steps To Mentalism 6 DVD Set at a UK low price of just £75.99

You’ve just blown your audience away with some amazing card magic. They’re laughing hysterically and then the question comes, “Can I see your cards, please?”

If you’ve never been in this situation you probably are not going to know what to do. It’s obvious to most that saying, “No” is completely the wrong answer.

The first thing to understand is that something about the performance they have just seen has caused them to: a) think it is acceptable to ask to examine the cards and  b) think that it must be the cards that are gaffed in order for the trick to work.

What Do You Do About It?

Communicate Innocence: You must communicate at some time during your performance that the deck is normal and give the audience no doubt in their mind that it is. This can either be done by showing them a regular deck and switching decks at some point during the performance, or sometimes, by treating the gaff in such a nonchelant way that nobody would think it could be gaffed because if it was, you would be more protective of it.

Performance Style: You must also perform in a style that does not consciously or subconsciously set the trick up like a challenge for the audience to figure out how it was done. Well performed magic should never be about how it was done. It should focus on the effect itself and the inherent beauty of it.

The Off The Bat Method: Another possible solution is to perform whatever you are doing in a way that genuinely appears to be totally off the bat, impromptu. That way it appears that you had no time for preparation and so you could not be using a trick deck. The more “set up” your performance looks, the more your audience will be inclined to think that you are using trick cards and gaffed props in general.

These methods apply to all magic performances, not just card tricks. The same could be applied to coins, candles or anything you choose.

Enjoy!

Dear MagicMegaStore.co.uk,

I stumbled across your website quite by accident and think it’s great. I’d really like to learn some magic tricks but am unsure what to start with. I’m 15 and I don’t have much cash, so paying £10+ for one trick is out of the question. What would you advise?

Thanks,

Declan

That was the e-mail I recieved.

Jake’s Answer:

There are plenty of DVDs and book available in the store that I designed for people just like you, Declan. Born to Perform Card Magic by Oz Pearlman comes to mind off the top of my head. Michael Ammar’s Complete Introduction to Coin Magic would be another suggestion. It depends what kind of magic you are interested in learning.

I’d suggest starting out with something that doesn’t require any technical skill. So while you might pick up one of the DVDs mentioned above, the material taught on there will take you time to learn. In the mean time, I’m sure you’ll want to get out there and start performing a few tricks to your friends so I would suggest some self-working magic. Card College Light is a great book. Also Self-Working Mental Magic by Karl Fulves is killer. That’s one of the first books I ever learned from!

I can’t stop myself from also suggesting a couple of cheap but amazing single tricks: The invisible deck, I would strongly recommend. Yes, it is basically only one trick although there are many possible presentations, but it is one of my favourite tricks ever and it’s only £5.99.

Hope that helps!

Jake.

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If you have a question for our resident magicians, please e-mail it to questions@magicmegastore.co.uk. We’d be happy to answer it!

The first three specials were must-see TV: compelling, interesting and addictive. A cult following was inevitable.

As a magician and somebody who knew what was going on 90% of the time, I was always interested to hear what other people had to say about Derren Brown. I would always listen in to conversations in the queue outside the theatre before a live show and it was as clear as day: the psychological aspect of the show was what made it so popular. People believed.

This credibility was first put under threat after a one off special called The Heist, which was in my opinion neither entertaining nor exciting. It also seemed to stretch the premise of what Derren claims he does, to something quite unrealistic.

Then a couple of weeks ago there was the lottery stunt. The stunt itself was good and had it been left well alone, I think it would have been fine. People knew it must be a trick. They would think that, and it would end there. But proposing to explain how he did it? Could he possibly tell the mundane truth? Not our Derren. The explanation, as usual, would be some seemingly complex method fusing magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship…oh, and “deep maths” (whatever that is).

The problem this time was that the explanation was not believable.And how could it be? Even a gullible ameoba knows there’s no way to predict the lottery results. That is why almost all mentalists – and all other notable ones – have decided not to attempt this stunt. Karl Fulves opens his book “Self Working Mental Magic” with a discussion about how mental magic is the only genre of magic where there still remains a question as to whether or not it is real. And the reason for the proverbial question mark still being there is due to the property of the feats attempting being unlikely but possible, as opposed to standard magic, the point of which is to completely defy the physical laws of the world.

For example, it may be possible to tell which of a bunch of small items belongs to a particular person, if the performer was well practised in picking up signals and reading people. It may be possible to tell if somebody is telling the truth or lying and it may be possible to influence somebody into making a particular choice. These things are all possible, if the environment and circumstances are carefully controlled. And genuinely, they really are possible, just quite difficult and not guaranteed. On the other hand, to make the Statue of Liberty disappear off it’s podium is completely impossible. It could not possibly be done. And in it’s own genre of magic – grand illusion – that is quite the point.

We do sell a similar thing at MagicMegaStore.co.uk, though. The trick is called “How To Make The Statue of Liberty Disappear”. It includes a DVD fully explaining how to do it, along with the gimmick you’ll need to make it all possible – 100 sticks of dynamite! (For any slow readers, that last paragraph is a joke. There is no such product. We do not deal in dynamite.)

But to predict the lottery results is completely impossible because a machine chooses the numbers. It is not possible to either predict what numbers it will choose, nor to influence it into choosing any particular numbers. And therefore, it falls completely outside of the premise that Derren Brown has worked under since his rise to fame. So, not surprisingly, nobody believes it.

And I’m hearing it everywhere, “At last, now people know that Derren Brown is a fake”, which seems to me kind of sad, because a lot of what he does is not fake. But if the source loses credibility on one point, the rest of his back catalogue must come under scrutiny as well. And in the minds of people who don’t know any better, it will then be immediately discounted as fake.

Has Derren committed some degree of professional suicide? Only time will tell. I’ll be keeping a close eye on his next tour sales and the viewing figures on the rest of the series. The next episode, which I’m curiously looking forward to, titled How To Control The Nation, will see Derren attempting to control us in our homes while we watch him on TV. I’ll tell you what I think, after I’ve seen it.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Since I’d heard that this was going to happen only earlier in the day I already had several theories on how it would be achieved and presented, starting with my prediction that Derren would get at least one number wrong. It turns out I was wrong and he actually got them all correct.

For anybody who didn’t see it last night, here’s the video clip…

That ten minute spectacle seems to have caused quite a stir this morning as Derren Brown becomes the most searched for term on Yahoo and the show from last night spawns a 39 page forum thread on DigitalSpy.

So how was it done?

Well, the short answer is, “I don’t know exactly” but a more speculative answer follows.

Obviously Derren is no more in a position to predict lottery numbers than you are I. If he could really predict lottery numbers prior to the draw, then why did he not buy a ticket? He could have won the jackpot and got even more publicity because really, winning the jackpot would have proved that he had indeed predicted the numbers prior to the draw. In this case, we know he didn’t and in order to create the illusion of predicting the numbers, all he actually had to do was make sure that when he revealed his prediction, it had the right numbers in the right places. Which simply (or not so simply) means getting the numbers onto the balls after they were called out.

On Friday, Derren claims he will reveal all and explain exactly how he did it but some people just can’t wait. The 10 minutes of footage from Wednesday night have been watched and rewatched, slowed down and seriously scrutinized producing as many theories and proposed explanations in one night as there have been in the 40 years since the Kennedy assassination.

The proposals range from time delays between the actual draw and the time when it is aired, to camera tricks and everything in between.

It seems some have turned to Derren’s blog for clues as to how it was done and have for some reason fixated on pictures demonstrating forced perspective although I myself fail to see how this would help.

The most interesting thing I’ve seen regarding the method so far is footage of the prediction balls where one of the balls appears to move during the performance as if it is being tampered with. I had previously featured the footage in the image but it has since been deleted from the internet so I have had to remove it. But that is the most likely piece of evidence so far to hold the secret to how this stunt was actually pulled off.

All we can do now is wait until the official explanation is given on Friday. But I don’t think I’m the only one who is already doubting that it will be an accurate explanation!

Well done Derren! You’ve got us all guessing!