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Long time no see/log on. Been playing the guitar for hours on end as any magician does when he's been doing magic for so long he decides to take a nice little break.

Anyways

I saw a Table Magician the other day at my Sister's friend's dad's Musical party (which explains the guitar practice). This magician started off by walking up to the table without asking and placing a glass jug down. Interesting. He gets out a blue bicycle deck, and gets a signed card to switch places with a card under the jug which he hasnt touched. Yes the explanationnn is what you think it is, nice simple age old trick which everyone's seen.

Second Trick, on the offbeat that he somehow achieved, he (which i found blatent, though i dont know who else did) switched the deck for another blue bicycle deck. He asks a lady to think of a card. She says "Queen of Hearts". He fumbles through his ID and discovers that the only face up card is on the top. Cool. He continued as he should though.

Final trick. He passed around a notepad filled with "Tissue Paper" with pictures of hearts on for examination. Then he got a volunteer to rip off a piece and scrunch it up then place it in the jug. He then lights a splint. It goes out. He lights it a second and a third time before it finally stays alight. Then he lights the "Tissue" paper and it sparks in a big terrifying flame. There is nothing in the jug. Then he gets his notebook, shakes it over the jug until a blue plastic heart falls into the jug. He gives it to a girl to keep.

c*** (not the best) magician? I beg to differ. Now I must mention that the presentation was **** (not the best) but the table loved him to bits. They said he couldnt have been better. I cannot stress it enough, they were like those squeamish girls from David Blaine's show.

Anyone want to share any thoughts? Im interested.

it dosn't mater that from a magicians perspective that he was technicly below par or that his tricks to a magician were pedestrian and safe.

because from what you described he held the audiences attention, made an instant repore with the ladies allowing him to just walk up to the table and take charge and entertained them, therfore fullfilling all the required checkboxes that an audience needs.
and from a working pros perspective, simple is safe and allows you to concentrate on the presentation, given the choise i'll rarely do a complicated sleight that could get me caught and spoil the evening for the whole group over a gimick or simple sleight, why make problems for your self.

remeber at the end of the day what the audience don't know to look at they won't see, iv'e been able to do some horrendous, hamfisted palms and openly switch coins in my pocket, retrieve a final load and such in a way that beggers belif to a fellow mage and yet still leave the audience happy.

It's not the tricks. It's you.


I think I may have mentioned this, ooh, a zillion times before.

I agree with my good friend Mr Wand.

It's all about whether the audience were entertained and from your account they definately were.

Whilst I agree that if the audience was entertained then fair play to the guy, and maybe his manner was remarkable and that saved a lot of what he did poorly, but it could also be that these people had seen a magician before, and therefore had no comparison.

Basically, I don't really see any controversy. We've all had gigs/performances where we were basically awful but good grace or amiable/drunken spectators meant that you still really entertained them, but that doesn't mean the performance wasn't bad. With a couple of packet tricks and practically NO presentation the right audience will respond well. But with THAT audience, you should not be aiming to totally blow them away. I mean, they should spend the rest of their evening talking about how unbelievable you are.

The really telling line here is "the audience said he couldn't have been better". Of course they said that, because if they'd never seen a better magician than that, he is by their experience the Greatest Magician in the World. That doesn't mean that he is, it just means that his audience - like many audiences - have a very limited experience of magicians.

I believe we, as magicians, should always be striving to improve our performance, to make it grow and develope into something new and imaginative. It doesn't take much to make an audience clap. That doesn't mean once you've got that applause you rest on your laurels.

In short, if an audience thinks your performance couldn't be better, prove them wrong.

There's a huge difference in how we as magicians view another magicians performance and how a lay audience will see the same performance. We're naturally looking at different things, often we know or at least have a good idea what's going to happen and the methods that's being used. We know how much time and effort certain moves take to master. So naturally we're going to be impressed by a very technical performance but tend to shrug at a more simple presentation. The average lay person doesn't know this and looks at the magic in a totally different way. They see the effect but not the method.

I think way too many magicians fall into the trap to trying to perform harder and harder effect which to the audience appear no different to a much simpler effect. You've got to remember that we're not here to impress magicians but to entertain our audience. If he did that then I'd consider it job done.

This is a very interesting topic actually because I actually believe the simplist thing's impress the lay's most. I alway's keep a couple of backup trick's which I normally don't use but lately on a couple of occassions I have had to use them and one of my backups is also the old pick a card, lose it in the pack, try to find card and get wrong card, ok hold this wrong card and with the magic wave it's the right card blah blah blah, we all no the drill. Anyway's upon doing this effect people literally get all over excited and squemish and this is the one they all talk about as I'm packing up to go. Now this to me just alway's seemed boring but maybe that's because I have seen it so many times and it's become repetitive where lay audiances haven't seen it this is what there looking for something simple,direct and visual not overcomplicated sleights that take years of practise. I just wish I could see from lay's perspective one last time Anyway there's one thing for certain a lesson we all need reminding from time to time. Never take granted of the simplist of tricks and use them it's all in the presentation.

lindz wrote:This is a very interesting topic actually because I actually believe the simplist thing's impress the lay's most. I alway's keep a couple of backup trick's which I normally don't use but lately on a couple of occassions I have had to use them and one of my backups is also the old pick a card, lose it in the pack, try to find card and get wrong card, ok hold this wrong card and with the magic wave it's the right card blah blah blah, we all no the drill. Anyway's upon doing this effect people literally get all over excited and squemish and this is the one they all talk about as I'm packing up to go. Now this to me just alway's seemed boring but maybe that's because I have seen it so many times and it's become repetitive where lay audiances haven't seen it this is what there looking for something simple,direct and visual not overcomplicated sleights that take years of practise. I just wish I could see from lay's perspective one last time Anyway there's one thing for certain a lesson we all need reminding from time to time. Never take granted of the simplist of tricks and use them it's all in the presentation.

I agree. I don't tend to perform many of the basic, older tricks I know because I don't get much joy performing a trick I've done loads of times which is basic in my eyes. Although when I do perform them, they seriously get the strongest response.

It doesn't matter how technical my sleights are in a trick, one of the biggest responses I get is off an ID. It's soo direct and seems soo fair. That's the key point, it's soo basic, it looks like there CANNOT be a sleight involved which blows them away more.

If you're juggling cards about doing f*lse co*nts, shuffles, DLs, even though they don't see when you've actually done them, they know something dodgy has happened somewhere. With the basic tricks, it looks like less has actually happened so they cannot explain how it was possible instead of saying well his hands were moving all over the place, he's just really quick with his hands.

Just my 2pence

MasterCyde wrote:I don't tend to perform many of the basic, older tricks I know because I don't get much joy performing a trick I've done loads of times which is basic in my eyes. Although when I do perform them, they seriously get the strongest response.

Always perform the tricks that get the strongest response NOT the ones YOU enjoy doing most. Remember it's all about entertaining the audience NOT about entertaining yourself

Kevin Cann wrote:

MasterCyde wrote:I don't tend to perform many of the basic, older tricks I know because I don't get much joy performing a trick I've done loads of times which is basic in my eyes. Although when I do perform them, they seriously get the strongest response.

Always perform the tricks that get the strongest response NOT the ones YOU enjoy doing most. Remember it's all about entertaining the audience NOT about entertaining yourself

If you don't enjoy what you are performing, the audience can tell. We must seek the balance between reactions and enjoyment. People can see if you are having fun or not.

You can use the difficult ones as semi-openers and the ones you enjoy less as the middlers. Of course you save the best ones for last.

Yes I like what Im hearing. I know I've always been told learning presentation is like learning to speak. Now I don't want you to think that I'm trying to argue fro the sake of it or to put this magician down, because I'm not. Just what I was thinking about when i started this off is about all the posts and books there are on presentation. And it was the other way round! It was in this case simply tricks, and nice simple ones as well. His character seemed to mimic Guy Hollingworth (but not in an annoying way, in other words he was a nice polite man) but magically the tricks weren't presented much at all. Don't mean to sound rude

I suppose he couldve been the only magician they had seen (or most of them, there were about ten people), and for him, the simple tricks and very light presentation worked. Right? Well looking through the first section of Derren's "Absolute Magic"..... Well you know the rest....

This is just to hear opinions please share

Magicians look at other magicians in a much different manner. For example, I'm sure most if not all of us are on the lookout for good technique and presentation. A lay audience couldn't care less about these details, they want to see magic. The manner in which an effect is presented or performed doesn't matter much to spectators. As long as you're likeable to some degree and perform entertaining magic, however horribly it may be executed, a lot of laypeople won't be critical.

I am all for good presentation but it doesn't do any harm for the technique to be good as well. Even if you don't use any difficult moves they should at least be done perfectly.

I am always amused that the hot shot technicians are usually atrocious at their own complicated moves. Once they get in front of laymen they flash like hell and give the damn trick away. Yet when they perform in front of magicians the reaction is quite different. The magicians watch with jaws dropping and mouth agape at all the fancy manipulation not knowing that they are watching a load of c*** (not the best).