talkmagic.co.uk

This is my first post. So hi to all.

I recently did coin in soda can houchin's way for some friends. Everyone was impressed and it was really bugging, they kept thinking how. About 2 hours later they decided to by a coke can and try to figure it out. I smiled thinking theyll never do it, but they managed to figure out the first part and tried to piece together the rest. which was almost on the button.

My peformance was spot on but they knew it had to be sleight of hand

What would you do in this situation?

Practice more. You obviously gave enough away to give a little hint as to how to perform.

Yup. Practice more. And a little verbal misdirection to "prove" why they're on the wrong track usually makes inquisitive muggles give up searching too.

Yes practise, pratise in front of mirror, film yourself peforming the trick. Keep on doing it until all is smooth and confident. Too many people get a trick and want to do it to audiences straight away without any thought to how the moves should come across.

Ive been doing the trick for the last 3 months and ive lost count of the number of times ive performed it in front of mirror, camera and various audiences. The reactions are always great. On this occasion they were stunned until they rationalised that a coin cant pass through a can especially a borrowed signed one.

Suppose my saving grace was that the coin wouldnt fit through the can they bought

Ah! their 'suspension of disbelief ' has been lost. This is an age old problem.

I have the same problem with the beginning of the trick. In fact right now I am watching the video to see if I missed something. Maybe a little better convincer. I don't feel it's neccesary to defend yourself to a spectator. Is it really the end of the world if they figure it out. I'm not saying you should go out and do something after 5 minutes of practice. But really it isn't the end of the world. Besides if you argue with a spectator doesn't it make you kinda sound like a know it all

or, teach them more, therefor gaining more magical buddies.
everyone's a winner!

I think this is due to the much underlooked magical skill, "selecting your audience and time!" The first time I performed this, I did it for my "acid test" - my 15 year old brother, about 3 feet away, in an intensely bright bathroom with mirrors in it! Suffice to say, he wasn't fooled. Luckily, he's my "examiner" and "inside spec!"

If you perform almost *any* close-up magic for a hard-thinking crew who are in the mood to play devil's advocate, to not respect your right to magical secrets and to happily spoil a good trick by being smart-arses rather than keep the spirit of illusion alive, you are asking for it!

"A prophet is not recognised in his own country", and indeed, the worst spectators for your magic are your close friends and relatives, who know that you leave the toilet seat up, fail to wash your dishes and forget your keys along with the best of them! Random specs: fine. For all they know, you are a man (or woman) of mystery with fantastic abilities to do impossible things. Your friends? To them, you're just *you*.

Ok, so you could say "practice more, it should be totally natural, there should be no hints" etc. but come on - if you were simply to repeat the actions of a magician pulling "Sinful" you would probably click onto the initial move straight off, and probably a couple of other key bits as well. That's not accidental exposure on your part - that's the wrong audience!

Ideally, when you do a trick, consider the following things:
1) An agenda. If there is a "schedule", even if it be "one of us needs to get off the bus soon" or "I've got more tricks to show you", you are putting a natural time limit on the time they have to mull it over. Every good magician knows the line, "why don't I show you something else first?" when asked "do it again!" - this is the simplest way to stop them sitting there, trying to work out how you did it - or even having a go themselves, or asking to check your pockets, or whatever! If you do a trick for a group of intelligent, sober people, and you only intend to do one trick, and you do it near the beginning of however much time you're spending with them, you're asking for trouble!
2) The type of people you're performing to. As a scientific-type, a lot of the people I see day to day are so rigorous/an*lly retentive that they do exactly what your friends did - they think, "well, obviously such-and-such couldn't happen, so it was obviously this..." - the old Sherlock Holmes principle! Preferably, your audience will include a smattering of people who are a)young, b)gullible or c)inebriated enough to blow the illusion you just did way out of preportion. David Blaine doesn't go to MENSA and do magic, he chooses people who he knows are going to go "WHAAAAAAAA?!?!?! How the f***, man?!!!! Impossible! I mean, WOW!" because once the effect has been pulled, they are doing half of the hard work for him in convincing everyone present it was a total miracle. And they will ask the "right" questions, the questions we love hearing, like "can I look at the can/coin?" as they try to catch you out at a certain point when actually you are so far ahead of them it hurts
3) Finally - the beauty of a "routine", rather than one off tricks, which doesn't come across in stand-alone DVDs like "Sinful". The aim is to leave an impression on your specs that you did something incredible - this will include a particular effect, but not necessarily the details. Eg. my friend saw a magician in a club do the ID. She was amazed - and when she describes it to me now, she tells me that "all I did was think of the card - I didn't even tell him, he read my mind" etc. Her memory is of an effect, yes - but the overall effect has overpowered the fact that actually, she will have told him which card she thought of before he produced it! His general skill/ability was what came across. Likewise, when you do "Sinful", the aim is to leave people saying "he slammed a signed coin into the can and it went inside, so that when he opened it..." etc, not "he whacked his hand into the bottom, then showed it to be empty, then passed the can from one hand to the other..." - see the subtle difference?

Anyway, this is way too long. But to summarise - do still keep practicing, it never hurts! And try to think what's coming next and how it will be received, before you do a trick like coin thru can.

All the best

My tuppence worth is that you can't fool all the people all the time. If you do an effect many times, as you've done with Sinful, eventually you're going to do it to someone who will catch something or be interested enough in the method to work it out.

Some folks just don't have the imagination to believe that something impossible happened, there's a guy at my college for example who is, for want of a more pc term, slow. I'll show him something great and he'll just look at me and wander off unimpressed. I recently learned CMH and was doing it to all and sundry with fantastic reactions. The rest of the class had to explain to him why he should be amazed, which was quite funny. To him I'd only done something clever, not something magical.

A concise and accurate statement would be:

"Choose the moment, choose the target, build the moment, release."

If you can't fulfill the criteria, don't perform. Simple as that. Magic is something which you cannot and should not impose on people.

By biding your time and getting the right interest, you'll get far better reactions. It's all about patience, and timing. Skill and knowledge is nothing if you waste it.