talkmagic.co.uk

Considering many threads seem to be going off the original topic and on to this, how about we sort it all here?

Post your tips, advice, story's etc here. Hopefully newbies (which I am among) will be able to check out this thread for information on developing a persona, why that persona is essential in misdirection, etc.

If this goes really well, maybe it could be stickied?

i will leave up my opinions on here for a few days, then delete them (if the thread doesnt first)...as I'm about to start on my new book, and part of it will be all about premise and character...

for transparency's sake - i used to perform (and paid) weekly, regular clients, after dinner and parties - then a few family things got in the way and i had a change of character/presentation - then i started again from scratch...over the past ten years, this pattern has followed me (the swine!)...

the past year, i've had intermittent gigs, again due to personal circumstances...but the past two/three years I'm much more settled in "me"...

right...

whatever the premise, the indirect and direct explanation that you share with your audience - it has to be congruent with everything that you perform, as well as how you act and display "visually"...

banachek's witch-doctor approach, and kenton's miracles of indirection at play here...go read 'em..both very good...

work out your backstory - and reduce it down so you can tell this story in 2-3 minutes tops...(its actually a long time to talk non-stop for that length of time and NOT be boring)...

the story should be interesting enough and explain enough to hook people, interest them, provoke them...whatever you feel fits you and your style...

beware using stock phrases "look at me...", "do x,y,z for me...", as we all use them too much...

whatever premise you use, use it to link each effect into the next, thus building your entire act...

if you were a crazy maths fella...

1 - predict 3 digit number
2 - PIN reversal
3 - page number and word in a book
4 - solve 3 maths puzzles very quickly
5 - those 3 maths puzzle answers previously shown to be predicted elsewhere right at the beginning
6 - lottery prediction

as a basic example...

watch lots of good actors and interviewers, notice their quirks and mannerisms - why do you like them? what makes them watchable? what characteristics do you have that are similar? what do your friends say about you when they pay you compliments? what do you have going for you now, that you can work on?

learn by doing...get off your @rse and go talk to people, be interested, and interesting...care, give a s**t about them, show that you care...

do not throw cold reading lines out there without a care in the world - you have a moral responsibility with what comes out of your mouth (matron!) - you do not have to follow any rules as such, as long as you learn from each step you take along your own path if you see what i mean...

make lots of notes, listen to the people trying to help you (usually for free), be HONEST, POLITE, and RESPECTFUL to the opinions of others if you have asked for their feedback...

never be afraid of trying something, very few things in life involve you dying because you gave it a go...mentalism wont kill you...apart from badly planned bullet catches...

dont be afraid of forum bullies, shysters or people saying "well, the way I would do it is...", thats rubbish, they're not helping you - they're telling you how they'd do it presentation wise...

dont do things cos its trendy and popular...

as long as you stick to the truth - you can't go far wrong...

do as you would be done by....

don't steal ideas, download stuff for free...don't become paranoid and bleat on that people are out to get you if all you've been is a brown-nosing free-loader...

have fun, entertain, and then remember you'll never master mentalism - its an ever growing skillset...whats good for you, may not suit others, neither are wrong...

read lots of books, keep notes of what you dont like as much as you what you do...

practice well, perform to strangers, fall on your face every once in a while...never do mentalism an injustice, never cheapen it...

Thank you, very useful advice.

I am by no means and expert, but I still take this all very seriously.
My character grew largley out of my own mannerism and ideosyncrasies, interests and abilities. They say the best way to lie is to keep an element of the truth in there, and although I am not lying, I feel I can engage more with the character and get into it much more easily that a complete alien.
Forest Whittaker, one of my favourite actors, did a fantastic portrayal of Idi Amin in 'the last king of Scotland' and he could do so because he had done the research on his character, spent time with the character's family, Learned the accordian in the same style Idi Amin would play it, studied his life and it reached the point where he could step inside that person and empathise and relate to him. It is a lot better than stepping into the skin of an Alien.
So, decide on a character and always be asking 'how would he present this' 'how would he be doing this' 'how would he make this entertaining' and then research that. I have no interest in probability, but I felt my character would be an expert on this topic (for a card counting routine) and so even though I am by no means a mathematical genius, I pulled out the maths text book and educated myself on probability. I gained some useful knowledge, some good patter (without confusing or degrading people- some people are scared of maths), but more imporatantly I felt more comfortable performing the routine (which claimed to be using maths and probability). Same with all the body language patter which goes around these days: everyone says they are using it, but I have never seen a convincing performance from someone who says it's what they're doing (Bar Derren). I have educated myself on this topic and as a result feel much more natural and believable when making those claims. Not only that it's always usefull when someone else who has perhaps I mild interest in body language or nlp or whatever, consults me having perhaps read a pop-psychology book about their mild fascination. If I was pretending to pick a lock then I would do my best to learn about that too.
So, I think if there is an element of truth in your character it makes the little differences as it most certainly did for Forrest Whittaker. But there is a lovely point in this babble, I think, that is to remember we are actors. This may sound contradictory- 'make your character real' -'be an actor' But I am sure you understand it is not at all contradictory if you have been following my logic.
Other than that, I do not have anything to offer that other's will not say or have said and these are only my personal findings at the mouth of a very, very long path.

Read Paul Brook's The Alchemical Tools. It's pretty much all about persona. And jolly good it is too.

Some good advice above. One thing that I'd add is that whatever character that you decided to play, he should have quite a bit of you in him. He should be someone that you can relate to, have a thing about all the positive aspects of your personality and use those, amplify them perhaps. But once you've got your persona and you're comfortable with it, don't be afraid to let it develop over time. It should be an organic thing that grows and changes as you do.

Lady of Mystery wrote:Some good advice above. One thing that I'd add is that whatever character that you decided to play, he should have quite a bit of you in him. He should be someone that you can relate to, have a thing about all the positive aspects of your personality and use those, amplify them perhaps. But once you've got your persona and you're comfortable with it, don't be afraid to let it develop over time. It should be an organic thing that grows and changes as you do.

To me, this sums up the answer to this question completely. I started out very nervous and looking for something or someone to base myself on. Then I found him. Me.

Performing straightforward magic I simply do it as I would do anything else. I have a quickish sense of humour, I am a master at self criticism and I hate making mistakes. Those characteristics would probably be instantly recognised by anyone i work with in my day job. So they work in my magic performance.

Performing as a mentalist I keep in the humour, where appropriate and I bring out my more intellectual character, the one I would take in to a serious meeting at work.

I find it hard enough to perform well without having to act out a character that isn't me.

My performances are just me plus a bit. Much better that you should develope your own character rather than try to copy somebody else. Whilst I would like to earn his money I don't want to be the next Derren Brown, I want to be the only Johnny Wizz.

The best advice on this is contained in the presentation section of Expert Card Technique by Hugard and Braue. The first few pages will explain that it is not so much the tricks the performer does but the illusion he creates about HIMSELF that is important.

As Goshman said, "YOU are the magic". Fitzkee also said it and it is about the only advice that Fitzkee gave that I actually agree with.

It is not so much that the tricks make the magician as the magician who makes the trick. You shouldn't present magic. You should present YOURSELF doing magic.

Dunninger once said, (and I heard him say it) "If you do a trick and present it as a trick you are taking the ghost out of Shakespeare's Hamlet"

Johnny Wizz wrote:

Lady of Mystery wrote:Some good advice above. One thing that I'd add is that whatever character that you decided to play, he should have quite a bit of you in him. He should be someone that you can relate to, have a thing about all the positive aspects of your personality and use those, amplify them perhaps. But once you've got your persona and you're comfortable with it, don't be afraid to let it develop over time. It should be an organic thing that grows and changes as you do.

To me, this sums up the answer to this question completely. I started out very nervous and looking for something or someone to base myself on. Then I found him. Me.

Performing straightforward magic I simply do it as I would do anything else. I have a quickish sense of humour, I am a master at self criticism and I hate making mistakes. Those characteristics would probably be instantly recognised by anyone i work with in my day job. So they work in my magic performance.

Performing as a mentalist I keep in the humour, where appropriate and I bring out my more intellectual character, the one I would take in to a serious meeting at work.

I find it hard enough to perform well without having to act out a character that isn't me.

My performances are just me plus a bit. Much better that you should develope your own character rather than try to copy somebody else. Whilst I would like to earn his money I don't want to be the next Derren Brown, I want to be the only Johnny Wizz.

I definitely agree. But I would also say that while the character should be be very close to how you really are, it shouldn't be just you, or you may be in danger of being too ordinary for magic/ mentalism. You need to have something different about you, or you are just an ordinary guy doing tricks.

Just my opinion.

Make it an exaggerated version of you, I play up my girly side, using pink playing cards and pink sponge balls. Doing that sets me apart from the crowd slightly and makes me different while still allowing me to play a character that I'm comfortable with. I'd still be you but find a little quirk in your personality that you can use to base your character on.

From reading the above, I had a few points to discuss:

I have always pertained to the ideas that:

a) it's not the tricks that you do that are important and
b) you should be able to entertain an audience without needing to do tricks, otherwise you are just the sum of your tricks and the quite parralell
c) you should do the strongest material you have and finally
d) The strongest material you have will come from your own material



A) We always hear that the presentation makes it and it does get thrown around a lot, but I am dubious of the amount of people that have fully realised this fact and don't just know it from hearing other's say it. I know that I knew this a long time before I realised it and am still on the process of fully realising this- it doesn't happen over night. When I first began in magic and mentalism, naturally I didn't have a ground breaking repertoire which forces one to focus more on the presentation and conviction with which you are performing.
One of the tricks I did, was a classic theme, in which I divined a selected card. Of course, this is an incredibly ambigious and diverse theme and there are millions of ways of doing it, presentation wise that is. Anyhow, I presented it, and the trick developed to a very nice piece of entertainment and it was a joy to perform. The actual effect was not at all strong, but I gave it some psuedo psychological explanation and acted my best (as I was not caught up thinking about 8 different things I ad to be doing for a method) and I believe I gave a fairly good performance with a great deal of conviction, although far from perfection.
Then my material evolved into 'cleaner' and more pure effects mirroring the real thing as best I could. This often meant quite an increase in cognitive challenges in terms of methodology and my performance took a dip- I did astonishing tricks, in which I divined thoughts straight from people's heads and people just went 'and? You already prooved you could read minds with that card thing'. Which goes to show, it is not the trick, but what the trick implies you could do, and the conviction and entertainment with which the trick is presented.



B) I need not expand too much on this, other than say, it is very easy to get caught up in 'look how amazing I am, look at all the things I can do' than to be entertaining because, surprisingly enough we are not tricksters- if we were we'd be con artists, but our job is to entertain, it is a mere coincidence that trickery is a medium through which we entertain.





C) As I just said 'The tricks aren't important' this may seem contradictory, but I still believe that doing the best tricks you can is something of an obligation, but of course, the best presentation we can muster is another obligation- ideally we aim for both- we are performing miraculous and life changing feats of the supernatural: we owe a lot to our audiences and it seems laxidasical and disserving to perform anything but the strongest material we have with the best presentation.
That said, it is VERY easy to get caught up in the trickery aspect of it all and the 'strong effects' aspect than to focus on presentation: in fact, I am a culprit all too often myself, but watching performer's like Marc Salem, Andy Nyman and reading books such as 'The Bold and subtle miracles of Dr Faust' always bring my feet back onto the ground when I get too carried away. The showmanship is humbling.



D) This is where all of this links into Character, because up until now, it has been less specific to the thread- but the truth is there are no divisions between character and presentational theory because they are all so wonderfully interwoven and ingrained within each other. If you want to truly serve your character, then create your own character's material. It has only been until quite recently where I have been making a concious effort to perform as little of other's material as possible. Some people may view this as superflous, serving no purpose- because, after all, if It's all about the effect, who cares who wrote it? Whilst this argument is valid to some extent, and I don't think it's a good thing to abandon other people's effects altogether (although I do believe there must be a refined and picky selection process- I am sure we have all gone 'that's a cool effect' when we really should be thinking 'That would never fit my character' and trying to hammer it into your character's repertoire) I think you cannot get any more taylored effects than creating them yourself.
You know your character inside out, you know his/ her manniers and personality- and perhaps you may not come up with a world class effect (I know I haven't yet) but this is the only road to doing so, and you will almost certainly surprise youself once you begin to create your own effects.

I think on this point, this is another argument for how to generate effects: Deciding upon an effect that your character would perform and then creating that, rather than making effects out of methods (although some pretty good stuff comes out of this too).
I was thinking about my character, what would he do? What would he be able to do and I decided he would be able to predict openly a coin that was flipped and which way it would land. I toyed with swami gimmicks, ambigous language (a la Max Maven) but none of it was me. I was in a real muddle, and wanted some help but I felt at the time the rediculous ambitious and crazy effect may be ridiculed (and perhaps it was crazy). Eventually, I came up with some solutions- and method wise, they are nothing spectacular, but the effect is very good, but most importantly- it is something my character would perform and I can perform it with the satisfaction that it has me in it, it's my effect nobody can say I took anything from the tv and as a result I perform it better than any other tricks and I am sure there are stronger effects but for me there is nothing better and that, is why I love magic.

Lady of Mystery wrote:Make it an exaggerated version of you, I play up my girly side, using pink playing cards and pink sponge balls. Doing that sets me apart from the crowd slightly and makes me different while still allowing me to play a character that I'm comfortable with. I'd still be you but find a little quirk in your personality that you can use to base your character on.

Again I agree totally. Thats exactly what I mean when I say that my act is me plus a bit. Take your best attributes and exagerate them. Pink is not exactly my colour but if it was I would use it. I do however have a large handkerchief made up for my by Mrs Wizz which is gimmicked and which I wear in my top jacket pocket. It is to say the least loud. I would never choose to go down to the pub with it on show but have no problem walking out in to the restaurant to do my table hopping with it. It gets noticed and asked about. Its little things like that that you will develope as you go on

Lady of Mystery wrote:Make it an exaggerated version of you, I play up my girly side, using pink playing cards and pink sponge balls. Doing that sets me apart from the crowd slightly and makes me different while still allowing me to play a character that I'm comfortable with. I'd still be you but find a little quirk in your personality that you can use to base your character on.

Although this is sound advice, and certainly an excellent place to start, I would add that it doesn't have to be this way. Some of the best "characters" I have seen in magic are those created by Jasper Blakely.

These include :-

Kockov - the Russian Mentalist
Magic Al, the Kiddies Pal
and an over the top American Motivational speaker

They are certainly exaggerated, and there probably is some of him in there (hopefully not too much in Magic Al) - but mostly I think they are just creations.

However - i do agree with Lady of Mystery in that if you will need to stay in character for any length of time, and the more successful you get, the more that will be so, then you have to be comfortable with yourself in that role.

Ive got to say, i just can't take to Jasper's aproach to character mentalism.The characters overshadow the effects.

I have performed character stuff in the past, with great sucess. I did a comedy hunter / explorer called Claude for a few years. It was out of desperation mind, because i was performing Claude in a sketch, and found one night that i didnt have the time to change... so i went on as him, and found that the act worked.

Regardless of what character you choose to portray, what is most important is you choose the right effect for that character.

In Claude's case, it was Beckers sneak thief.( It had just come out, which tells you how long ago this was)
the characters friendly, Naive aproach to people made this the perfect trick, because in his bumbling way he could say anything to anybody, and get away with it.

I keep on thinking that i should revisit Claude at some point.

He probably has much more to give.

although if i did, i would have to give up a number of my favorite effects, because they just wouldnt suit him.

daleshrimpton wrote:Ive got to say, i just can't take to Jasper's aproach to character mentalism.The characters overshadow the effects.

I see where you are coming from with that, but I have seen Jasper perform, he did his plunge of death routine (love them or hate them) and a short piece of hypnotism, all very funny, but still with a real sense of danger to the plunge of death (a nail under cup effect). If I had any worries, that it would just be entertaining witthout the belief that the mentalism was real that was put to rest afterwards from the reactions he got and what was said to him afterwards. He was genuinely being asked when he was going back to Russia. So no matter how ludicrous the character may seem - he was still extremely believable.

You could equally argue that Graham Jolley's character (although I think the character and him have grown to be one now) also isn't credible as a mentalist, but again listening to people talk after his shows I would argue adamently that it is very credible AND incredibly funny.

Perhaps these though are the exceptions to the rule.

daleshrimpton wrote:I did a comedy hunter / explorer called Claude for a few years. It was out of desperation mind, because i was performing Claude in a sketch, and found one night that i didnt have the time to change... so i went on as him, and found that the act worked.

Sounds fascinating - I'd love to see Claude in action. Maybe Claude could be persuaded to perform at the next Tabula Mentis?