talkmagic.co.uk

Hello,
Having done magic for a few years now, I have come across a problem that I am pretty sure many magicians run into. It is a tough spectator. The ones who will watch your trick very intensly, not look at you when you speak, and when the trick is over, they make up some excuse why they are not ammazed. They usually they say some rediculous remark. I have found just leaving and finding someone new is the best thing to do. What are some suggestions or what do you do in that kind of situatuon? I have not found a post like this yet sorry if one already exists.

Sincerely,
abn801

Yeah im pretty new to the magic scene but i know what you mean, I had a similar problem, but it was actually with a 'friend'. So i guess its kinda differant from your situation. I think you are doin the right thing by just moving onto someone else. I guess it is just part of the package in being a magician. Does it make you feel uncomftorble or just annoy you?

Roberto Giobbi has covered this in vol. 2 of his Card College pretty well. You may want to check it out.

There are many types of "tough" spectators, and each of them can be treated differently. But whatever they are, the best solution is to not perform for them. If you are heckled, or your audince is unamazed and bored (not everyone likes magic, we should always remember it), use any excuse to stop your perfomance (staying polite, though) and move on to somebody else.

Thank you very much. I a have heard of card college, but never got around to buying it. It is very expensive for the whole set so, i am saving up some money.

i usualy say well if you didn't like that then you'll definately not going to like this.

if I'm table hopping i will say well you can't please all the people all of the time then move on.

if its a magic show i'll usualy give him a piece of rope and say your evidently much better than me so you finish the show I'm off for a tea break, then i leave for ten minuets by then he's usualy booed of stage.

my other favourate is if your boerd i may as well pack up and go home, iv'e already been paid, then just walk off untill someone comes to get me.

magicdiscoman wrote:my other favourate is if your boerd i may as well pack up and go home, iv'e already been paid, then just walk off untill someone comes to get me.

Excellent!

The ones who will watch your trick very intensly, not look at you when you speak, and when the trick is over, they make up some excuse why they are not ammazed.

Well, not all tricks require misdirection (or sleights). You should be able to do the moves with them looking at your hands, that is what makes the magic more believable.

I have a problem where if I want somone to take a card from, for example, the bottom half of the deck, people like to have a search through the unspread cards, rather than taking one from the nicely spread bit. I don't ever make it obvious that I want them to do this but they don't seem to believe that it's a 'fair' choice (they give me more credit than I'm worth!). This is putting me off learning to do the classic force. I don't know what I'm doing wrong

One obvious way - one which I believe is used my many users of the Classic Force is too have a backup trick which doesn't rely on the force - thus if they don't take the force card, then just carry one with something different - lose the card in the deck and then find it - an ambitious card routine - use your imagination.
Obviously, this relies to a certain extent on the fact that the force is towards the beginning of the trick, but with imagination, you should come up with some useful get-outs.

Nice replies with how to deal with tough spectators.
Bcfaigg

At a party on Saturday night, there was a really drunk woman (a friend, as it happens) who insisted that she should be the glittery assistant. Asking her to cut the deck was a two handed job, for instance, so in the end I was playing to the guy over her shoulder. I revealed a thought of card but she couldn't remember the trick so couldn't understand why people were clapping, so thought she'd done somethng clever. Anyway, I angled her out of the frame for the next one and got on with things, then handed the bikes out for someone else to have a go when I'd finished and was answering questions.

The moral of the story? Find the audience among the crowd and play to them instead

BTW, genuine heckling or disintrest and scepticism are in fact rare. Most of the time when we encounter what we consider heckling, it's our fault. And when people are unamazed, it's often bacause we fail as entertainers or, to put it bluntly, our presentation is horrible. When someone asks you to show him/her the face of the card you've tossed onto the table after a DL, it's because you've failed to execute it properly - cleanly and in a way that looks very natural. We fail to misdirect our specs' attention, they smell something fishy, and some of them have a natural reaction of checking something (during or after the trick). It's not heckling. And it is our fault.

I have alot of information on this subject. Not because I am skilled as a magician, that is not the reason, but because I am skilled in something else.

There are many ways to deal with a heckler. Alot of those have been covered. They have some great ideas up there.

Then there are better ways. I think. That deal more with psychology and rapport.

::STOP::

Rapport is a heavily abused subject in the world of NLP. Disreguard alot of what you hear about it there.

::UNSTOP::

I am thinking about putting together a little booklet for magicians about 'unconscious persuasion' in terms of states and such. How to notice the states in a spectator and how to shift them. Often a heckler is in responce to the state you are in. To 'where you come from'. There is alot to know about how to change the hecklers state.

You can take the classical route and avoid the heckler, or heckle him back.

But I like converting him into a spectator. It is more fun for everyone.

If you study hypnosis, the real stuff, not all this language pattern bs then you will understand better what I am talking about. It is a similar prinicpal. And if anyone cares to chat about it, or if they do this as well I would love to chat about it. Just PM me.

i1011i wrote:If you study hypnosis, the real stuff, not all this language pattern bs then you will understand better what I am talking about.

What do you mean? Do you mean hypnotic language and all that entails, ambiguity etc.?

im gonna get all emotional here so watch out!

I HATE PEOPLE LIKE THESE!! WHY O WHY CAN'T THEY ACCEPT THE GIFT THAT MAGIC IS! I MEAN I WANT TO KNOW HOW TRICKS ARE DONE BUT WHEN IM FOOLED I HAVE TO ADMIT IM FOOLED AND I GET REALLY HAPPY THAT I'VE JusT BEEN ENTERTAINED AND I LOVED IT


PHEEEEEEUW

now thats out i give people like this a good stare or take the mick out of them e.g. i like to hold my cards low near my bellybutton and when you get someone staring i give them the old have i got summet on my c**k.

start looking and make them stand out and ask them directly infront of everyone that way they get embarresed a look away for just a second or two and you have your time needed for misdirection!

hope this helps

Do not, I mean, do not try to embarrass your spectators. It'll only turn your audience against you. If misdirection does not work, it means you are bad at it and you need to practise more. Do not blame your audience, they are the last to blame. It is your show, not their's, you should blame yourself.

What is this for a complaint? The spectator watchs me very closely, I cannot execute my sleight. Heckler!

No, he's not. You are a bad magician.

If your spectators are not impressed, more often than not, it is your own fault.

Hi,

I'd not normally recommend the method I'm about to describe, but an occurence on Saturday has made me think about this subject a fair bit.

I was heckled on Saturday in a pub in East London by a very large man with no brain. His friends jumped on his bandwagon and soon I was being gang-heckled by a bunch of street-thugs....abandon ship?! No.
In fact I wasn't even performing to them when they were heckling/hurling abuse (I was performing to some delightfully attractive ladies, quite clearly a cause for the men's animosity).
I offered to show the thugs a trick, so that at least they could have something in particular to heckle me about, and I went into an ambitious card routine (which I hasten to add I executed perfectly...) and they were still completely underwhelmed, refusing blind to be impressed at all. (Certianly not in front of the ladies).
At this point I thought it probably best to just make my excuses and move on, but then I thought again. I pulled my thought-transmitter from my pocket, and told the hecklers' front-man to write down a country....
Bish-Bash-Bosh...the man had to sit down when I got it right, he was beside himself, and the whole group were harranging me with questions about how I knew, and how they learn the psychological techniques that I used. "You can't learn anything like that from a book" I said.

I would not normally advocate using mentalism just to turn the tables like this, but as Judo has taught us, the more energy that goes into a (verbal) assault, the more energy you have to throw back at them in the form of an innocent looking notepad wallet and a healthy portion of BS.