After catching a re-run on ITV1 +1 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, it got me around to thinking about fooling magicians.

Magician fooling isn’t all that difficult. In many ways it is pretty similar to fooling regular people. The nature of fooling people relies on using their own assumptions against them. When fooling regular people we know how their minds work and we know, more importantly, what they don’t know. We know ways of doing things that they don’t.

When fooling magicians it’s a little different. Magicians know how magic works. If you show a magician any magic trick, they will be thinking in their minds of ways to do it. And they’ll usually come up with a few. The easiest way to fool magicians is, therefore, to use that against them. Lead them down the garden path.

But would it be the same for Penn & Teller? Two of the best known and most accomplished magicians in the world are bound to have a wide knowledge of magic and performance techniques. And yet there are many other less famous magicians who have just as much knowledge but not the famous names or the millions of pounds. So yes, I would suggest that fooling Penn & Teller would be no different than fooling any other magician.

So decide upon your effect and decide upon the way every magician would assume you would perform that trick. Now, don’t do the trick that way. But throw in a couple of moves or gestures to make it look during performance like you are doing it the way you are not going to do it.

Can’t think of more than one way to do your trick? Hey, I never said it was going to be easy. I just suggested a method of fooling magicians by misdirecting them with their own knowledge.

There are tricks and techniques to mastering this and a lot of it depends on understanding the social dynamics of the situation and the unfortunate truth that in the real world, magic is not to first thing on your spectators’ minds a lot of the time.

Before we go into any techniques to help you grab and hold attention, let’s just address one issue first: It doesn’t matter what you do, none of these techniques will work if your act is not brilliant. Nothing will rectify a poor magic act.You need to first of all go to work on creating routines that are absolutely killer, highly entertaining and highly magical.

Getting Attention

If you approach people on the street and stop them and ask them if they want to see magic, many will just say no without thinking. From their point of view it’s the one response fits all because most people who approach you on the street are trying to sell them something. In this situation I have had more luck by just doing something really really quick. Just start. If it’s magical enough it will get their attention and they will stop what they’re doing and watch. Once you have their attention, holding their attention will have a lot to do with getting them to invest emotionally in what you’re doing.

Holding Attention

If you’re doing walk around magic at a party or some other social venue, let’s be honest, all that’s on the minds of most of your spectators is the girl in the red dress that they’re trying to get with. Magic is often well recieved in these situations but one great way to get the attention of a whole crowd and hold it for a while, get the girl in the red dress involved. That’s why grand illusionists have beautiful assistants. It makes watching easier.

Once you are into the routine, use as many personal belongings of your audience as you can. These keeps them involved and holds their attention.

Why am I asking? Because to get a handle on this will help us become better entertainers.

No matter how varied entertainment becomes I still think there is one central aim of any kind of entertainment: to elicit emotion in your audience. That’s the only thing that Big Brother and Jackass and The Shawshank Redemption and Cold Play all do. They elicit emotion.

We are mammals. We are emotional creatures. And if we are experiencing something emotional, we are not bored. Boredom is the absence of any kind of emotion, or at least any kind of positive emotion. If you can make your audience feel something, you are in one way or another entertaining them.

So to keep people better entertained and more emotionally involved in our magic routines, we will need to follow a fairly simple and scientific process. By scientific I don’t mean that you’re going to need petri dishes and a Bunsen burner. I mean simply that it is a tried and tested formula that you can apply that will get you results every time. And anything that follows a formula is easy to teach.

The Formula Of Great Entertainment

1. Get your audience to invest emotionally in what’s going on
2. Give Them A Pay Off
3. Don’t Be Predictable
4. End With A Flutter

How To Help Your Audience Invest Emotionally

How To Give Them A Pay Off

Don’t Be Predictable

End With A Flutter

What Is Misdirection And How Does It Work?

Close-up magic has been described in a very technical way as “eye line management” – the performer directs the attention of the audience by influencing where they look and when. Grand scale illusion uses the same techniques but on a larger scale.

A definition to start: Misdirection is the act of purposely attempting to cause the attention of your audience to be spent on something meaningless, while you pull of something rather tricky and obvious elsewhere. And there are several ways to do it.

A deeper definition of misdirection involves having your audience think their way down a certain logical path which appears on the surface to make sense, while their efforts are wasted because you’ve purposely laid this trap to prevent them figuring out the trick.

Misdirection works by taking advantage of certain survival mechanisms that are the results of the way that our brain has naturally evolved. These mechanisms have helped us survive as a species. Many of them are involuntary so they work on even the best of us.

Creative Ways To Misdirect

1. Sudden Movements

It’s one of the most primitive parts of our survival instinct. We pay attention to sudden and/or large movements. They are to some degree threatening. So all it takes is a sudden movement in one place to grab a spectator’s attention so that you can do your business with the other hand.

2. Quick Maths

Have you ever noticed how people look up when they’re trying to do mental arithmetic or remember something? Why not try working a quick bit of mental arithmetic into your routine to divert your spectator’s eyes for a few seconds while you do the most obvious false shuffle ever.

3. Interaction

Give them something to do. This has nothing to do without primative psychology. It’s a pretty obvious way to occupy the attention of somebody. In magic, a card box to hold or a coin to flip. This helps make the trick less of a one man show by getting the spectator involved all with the added bonus of directing the spectator’s attention where you want it.

4. Humour

If you tell a joke that’s funny enough, it’s natural the people reorient their heads when they laugh. They look up. And if they’re looking up, they’ve taken their eyes off your deck of cards. Often humour will have to be natural sounding though. You can’t realistically tell a canned knock knock joke and expect it to sound natural or even funny enough to make this technique work. Unless you are a naturally funny person, this technique will probably involve scripting, which we’ll discuss in a later article.

So there are just some general methods of misdirection that can be worked into almost any routine. If you have any other misdirection techniques that you’d like to share, post them in the comments section below.

What Can You Expect From An Online Magic Shop?

Online magic shops are generally no different from any other kind of online store. They have an interactive catalogue of products and facilities to allow you to spend money from your credit card on the items in the catalogue. So the basic idea is the same regardless of the store.

So what’s good and what’s bad?

Good online magic shops will give you an idea of how long the goods will take to arrive, ranging from next day up to 28 days for some. They should also tell you if there will be a delivery charge. Many today offer free shipping over a certain amount of money but be careful that free shipping doesn’t always mean cheaper – the magic shop needs to pay for it somehow, so the chances are that the product prices will be higher on those sites.

Relatively few online magic shops, even today, have video demo capabilites. We just installed it on MagicMegaStore.co.uk and we don’t know why everybody else wouldn’t or hasn’t done the same. Videos are great because rather than reading a few paragraphs of text explaining how the trick looks when performed (it’s easy to bend the meaning s of words and leave descriptions open to interpretation), video allows you to actually see a performance of the trick so you know exactly what you are buying.

When we envisioned Magic MegaStore we wanted to create a one stop shop for those interested in magic. A shop where you could feed your passion, a forum where you could discuss magic with people who are as obsessed with it as you are and a theatre where you could show your magic to the world.

And we’re getting there!

A few days ago one of my flatmates offered me a book she had won in a Poker tournament. Titled “The Complete Guide to Poker”, I had to take a look at it. Whatever anybody says, poker is a game of skill and there’s a huge amount to learn before you can sit down at a poker table and expect to walk away with more money than you sat down with.

Winning a poker game demands a knowledge of the game, the hands and the players. Which means poker themed card routines are a great way to combine sleight-of-hand, flourishes and mechanical mastery with psychological magic. So if you want to really make a reputation for yourself as a performer whose act is based on skills rather than gimmicks or hollow claims of supernatural ability, I would strongly advise you to develop a poker themed card routine.

There are, in my mind, many advantages to this:

1. Because the routine is themed around poker, the use of cards in any psychology based stunt you might include is totally justified. Without the poker theme it can sometimes seem forced to “read minds” using playing cards, because if you could really read minds, why the name of a playing card? Why not what the spectator had for breakfast that morning? Why not the name of their pet? Because it’s technically harder to do is not a theatrical justification, only a practical one. But in a poker themed routine there’s motivation, a reason why it makes sense to read their mind for the name of a playing card.

2. In magic there needs to be, at leat in a theatrical sense, a process by which the “magic” happens: supernatural powers, psychic ability or whatever. Let it be noted that, in many cases, certainly the two named, this process is theatrical and differs completely from the process by which the apparent magic is actually brought about. A poker routine allows the fusion of mental magic and card magic without either seeming out of place.

3. Because many such routines are dressed up as teach-ins, your audience will learn something, which they’ll always appreciate.

4. Socially positioning yourself as a teacher makes you the master. This is a great way to build a reputation very fast.

The Tricks & Stunts

So what to include in your routine?

I can’t give you the answer to that. What you do in your routine is up to you. Make it your own. But here’s what I do in my routine…

Being it about poker, I usually open with a couple of flourishes. These are not done as a spectacle upon which the audience focuses. I’ll typically perform them while just playing about with the deck during my opening speech. Because they look so impressive, my audience will notice them even if I don’t bring special attention to it and this sets me up straight away as a master card manipulator. Then, may the routine begin…

Start with something simple. Something short. Something to set up the premise. Depending on who your audience is, you may need to give a brief introduction to what poker is and how it is played. Remember, the purpose of this routine is to entertain your audience, not to simply show off with cards, so they need to understand what’s going on.

A simple lie detector effect is an easy way to start, as you talk about tells. It’s short and sweet. Impressive, but not too impressive.

Now, introduce some tension. How? This is a poker routine! Let’s place some bets!

You want to do something involving money. Now, after what you’ve just done – flourishes and lie detection – no spectator who is sane and sober is going to agree to bet their own money against you, but what you can do is give them the opportunity to “win” some money by doing one sided bets with them.

There is also, if you wish, space in the routine to perform some simple card changes. I used to do this but I don’t anymore because you wouldn’t – and there are few who will believe you could – use these techniques in a real poker game.

For the big finish, I like to stack all the odds against me and apparently call out every hand as dealt by a third party from a shuffled deck. I don’t think you can perform a stronger final effect than that.

Dan & Dave filming Time Warp for Discovery Channel

Earlier this week I was reading an interesting and potentially controversial article at Online Visions, the general gist of which was to tell people not to film their close-up magic performances because it allows anybody anywhere to watch and rewatch the performance as many times as they want in order to work them out, and nuances that would have passed someone by the first time – were it live – would eventually be seen. The author considered filming magic in this way as exposure.

He made an interesting point. I’m not entirely sure it is a valid one though. While, yes, there are some absolutely hopeless videos out there on YouTube, filmed on ten dollar web cams which never move and are basically a shot of the performer’s hands – just like those annoying spectators who will not relax and enjoy the performance but instead watch you like a hawk and even refuse to blink. But I don’t think that not filming magic at all is the way forward.

We are living in the information revolution. This is a very exciting time in history and the only time to date when you could send the complete works of Shakespeare from here to Australia in the blink of an eye. Information, and the ability to share it, is what is making the human species cleverer by the day. And it isn’t going to go away.

So I don’t say, don’t film. I just say film better.

Having had a bit of film school training myself, I’m about to share with you some of the secrets of Lo-To-No Budget Film Making that you can use in your own magic videos to fake a big budget and just make it look more professional and less pathetic.

1. Use Multiple Angles

Yes, I appreciate that we are not all made of money and that the majority of you cannot afford expensive camera equipment or maybe you don’t have a friend kind enough (or skilled enough) to hold the camera while you perform, but we can do better than a continuous shot of your hands while you do a card routine.

The truth is, video camera technology is just too easily available now for single shot videos to be acceptable. I’ll bet most of you have video recording technology built into your mobile phones.

2. Perform to a Person!

Magic is meant to be seen by people. In your video, perform to somebody. It gives the viewing audience somebody in the video to associate with. It allows you to interact with your spectator. In all, it allows you to actual entertain rather than to simply present a puzzle – as you are effectively doing with the one shot hands videos.

When the person reacts, you have a form of social proof of your magic.

People are easily available. All you need is the guts to ask them, and the streets fill with people every weekend.

3. Edit Wisely

Use an inexpensive editing suite like CyberLink Power Director to put your video together. You can add simple after effects which will make your video look professional (if you’re careful, and cheesy if you’re not).

Also, you can switch angles every time a “dirty move” comes along – and not ONLY when a dirty move comes along, tell the story too – and your magic will be harder for persistent audiences to figure out.

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I think if you stick to those 3 simple rules then, for little more effort, you can have much better videos which are both more entertaining, more interesting to watch and simple don’t wreak amateurville!

Enjoy!

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.