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I wrote this as a response to the Alpha Cards review, seems i revivd and old topic that no one wanted to read. If you know the principle of Alpha Cards you will understand what i am talking about, please offer you thoughts, and i am sorry if there is already a big post about this somewhere....

i dont mean to bring up an old topic but i have so meh. i recently decided that i might buy these cards but let my girlfriend watch the video first as shes my usual spectator and helps me out a lot when refining my tricks. now when i looked at it i thought ''wow thats cool, people will love this, they'll be scratching their heads for hours''. so i had my girlfriend turn watch the demo and just said ''it's obviously a trick card, heat sensetive ink or something, dont buy it''. now my girlfriend is very intelligent but that does not detract from the fact in my opinion i think magicians now do not give our audience enough credit. i think looking at it, it may just be too visual, if you catch my drift. now most people dont believe what we do is really magic, but they go along with it, and we get that ''how did you do that reaction'', they know we did something, just not how. so when i perform a card change that involves me rubbing my hand over the card first there is that moment in time where the card is not seen, where i could be doing anything, and that's where the sneaky move comes in. afterwards they smile because they have been fooled, the magi did something that seemed impossible, under the cover of the hand of course. so when something like this is presented and all you have to do is hold the card until it warms up and the trick happens for you it kind of detracts from the magic, the 'trick' of it. as the spectator does not see the sneaky move they assume one of two general things, you are either capable of real magic OR you used a 'funny' card, neither being desirable in my opinion but the latter being the most devestating. this is probably grounds for a new topic but does anyone who reads this share my viewpoint, do most of us take our audience for being less intelligent than they really are?

please put some breaks/spaces in your text, it made my eyes bleed!

on one level, your girlfriend is correct...on another level, the cards can be used as a metaphor, a story, a thought process...

and if you're using more than one person, even better....

hey, you dont have to like everything that gets reviewed - but ultimately you just have to move on and mark it up to experience...

but to answer the wider question - yes, a lot of magicians dont credit the audience with enough intelligence...

IAIN wrote:but to answer the wider question - yes, a lot of magicians dont credit the audience with enough intelligence...

I think some also credit them with too much.

The Magicians Guilt complex seems to affect many completely unnecessarily.

=)

IAIN wrote:please put some breaks/spaces in your text, it made my eyes bleed!

sorry about the spacing lol. here....


it's not that i dont like the effect, im actually a bit of a gimmick geek and i do love the look of the transformation so i will probably be getting alpha cards at some point.




it's more to do with the thought process of spectators that im interested in...

You can never EVER predict who will make a critical leap of logic that defeats a trick.

There are tons my GF tells me how work I had no idea and vice versa (before I got a library of books to review).

The end result is they will never KNOW if it was or wasn't. If you anticipate what most people will think and defeat it through performance your even better for the doubt.

I mean how many people know what a center tear is? I bet those people are still fooled by it if presented properly

I have thought of having a rolling panel of friends that I will impose the demo video upon, say 3 out of a pool of 8 candidates, and see if the guinea pigs know how it's done and if they're wowed by it. Getting a good sample of reactions is probably better than one person that constantly sees you perform magic and therefore practically knows the potential theories at work...

Granted, I do think that the test subject must match the effect being tested, but sometimes this isn't an issue (such as performing the human blockhead for my Mum. In the middle of Tesco. At the pharmacy counter...)

I'd go along with that, I'd say a lot of magicians underestimate their audiences. But then again, even the good ones do it, even if they don't mean to - it's built into the language of magic and isn't going anywhere. With the best will in the world, if you expect an intelligent adult to believe that anything magical occurs as a result of arbitrary finger-snaps, you may be overestimating your brilliance or underestimating your audience's intelligence (this is why I love Lennart Green - he offers no such explanation for what he does, with the exception of the beam, which is more a joke to accompany a staggering visual curiosity than a genuine explanation).

Although that said, "eye movements and body language" is becoming an equally lazy explanation for mentalists. Derren Brown is inadvertently responsible for this - whereas he commits to his "process" and is consistent (and, by extension, entertaining), I've seen countless mentalists who put their perceived abilities down to Ekmanesque reading of body language, and then proceed to make no effort to convey it with their actions, resolving to just gormlessly stare at their spectator before dribbling out their secret (written-down) thoughts to a smattering of applause. The main offenders are usually the ones that bill themselves as psychological illusionists and open with something from The Devil's Picturebook (that, in some instances I've seen, goes delightfully wrong).

Lennert Green is also good because if somebody was to try and replicate his moves. They'd never be able to do what he does. I know he teaches his stuff on his DVD's, but from a lay persons perspective, I doubt they'd be able to do what he does at all. He just looks like a clumsy old man.

Yeah, he looks half-drunk, the guy's incredible. And that, I think, is what really knocks people for six with his stuff - his moves are absolutely sublime and I use them all the time, but nobody can use them the way he does. The snap deal is one of those moves that can change your game if you use it right.

But I've shown his stuff to friends who hate magic (his TED talk, obviously not his tapes) and they love him, and I think it's because he doesn't patronize anybody, be it directly or indirectly. He's probably my favourite card magician - not just because of his originality, but because of the way he conducts himself.

(And as an aside, I recently found out that he's actually a doctor - like a proper, qualified medical doctor. What a guy.)

You don't quite understand. It is not that Lennert Green looks half drunk or that Al Goshman always looked like he just woke up in his tux and so they were unasuming. It has to do with the fact that they took a good hard look at themselves and came up with something that works for them. Yes both Al Goshman and Lennert Green both are/were brilliant (Goshman is dead). They figured out what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it and they built their character into performance. The late Martin Nash did the same thing as the charming cheat. Just as, if not more skillfull then Green and he was always a gentleman, never looked drunk always a little swindler on the side he was the Charming Cheat. Sid Lorraine, same thing. The list goes on. Its not what you perform that is ever going to make you great its never the tricks its you.

Sure some people underestimate the audience and others overestimate. That is true of everyone not just magicians. What you may want to think about is treating your audience with respect, don't try to put one over on them. Take them along with your magic try to experience the sense of wonder with them. Magic is never about making somebody look bad or fooling somebody it is to create wonder.