I am an amateur mentalist, first of all. It seems that my "revelations" are always anti-climatic.

For example, I have an effect where I let the spectator shuffle a deck as much as they want. I then take it and riffle through it, stopping when they say "STOP". I hand them the deck and they look at the card. I then "read their mind" and tell them which card they picked.


When I slowly reveal their card, the reaction I usually get is a polite smile or "Oh, that's a neat trick". I strongly suspect this is due to my presentation of the effect. How do I go about fixing this?

First of all, you picked a card trick to make the claim you are a mentalist. If you want to be regarded as a mentalist, don't do card tricks. That only identifies you as a magician or a gambler.

I'm not saying an experienced mentalist can't make use of a deck of cards as an example of mental powers of precognition or clairvoyance... just don't do the old "pick a card and I'll tell you what it is" card trick.

What else can you do?

Hi Spellbinder,

I am a beginner with only about a month of experience behind me. I can do some billet work and effects with a Swami gimmick (so basically the basics).

I understand your point about not using cards, but don't you agree that cards are one of the easiest "openers" towards a performance, especially when performing for strangers? I suppose something with a Swami would be a good opener as well...

Any suggestions you have are welcome!

I suppose that the more I perform, the better I will get?

Magic is so much about the patter. The sleights are one thing, but how you present them and put them together is another. The revelations need to be extreme. Simply naming a card they selected is pretty unimpressibv. If you learned a good force you could do many good things by somehow preparing their card for revelation beforehand.

Also, for mentalists, spoon bending looks awesome!

Create tension and build up to a climax.

Hi, MrHoudini666! Welcome to the Café! I hope I can help. If mentalism is what you want to do, may I suggest Larry Becker? His presentation is awesome! See here:

http://www.magiclegends.com/larrybeckermentalism.html

There may be other suggestions, but Larry is one of the best. Good luck!

Doug

Who are you performing for? family/friends or complete strangers/customers?

if I had any advice (not that I am in a position to give much ) it would be to really play it up as though you are seeing it for the first time. We should know our tricks really well and they can become monotonous, I guess a big part of being a pro at something is learning to repeat things and make them seem new for fresh audiences. Work out which bits are AMAZING and maybe if the trick allows, recap all the impossible things that have happened (or just the bits you want them to remember) then make it as though it is the most incredible thing ever at the main reveal. Maybe in our heads, if there is a difficult slight or move to be done before the end of a trick we then relax and turn off when it is done because the "magic" work is finished, need to put as much effort into the performance too. Make nothing of the work you do in the trick and make everything incredible from their point of view.

Make impossible things really seem impossible, don't casually read someone's mind, make it seem like it takes effort etc. To me this is achieved by performing for strangers rather than friends. Friends know I have an interest in magic and that I haven't been studying the behavior of people for the last 9 years in an attempt to pick up micro-signals given off in our faces to divulge information about a freely selected card.

I think cards and mentalism can go together as long as no attention is given to the cards unless it is important. Just use them as casually as you would a prop like a pen and they will work in my view.

I like the last line. "...make it seem like it takes effort.."

This is good advice and even better advice if you aren't basically a Mentalist.
As someone who does more sleight of hand I pretend to struggle with effects like this, including IT effects, silverware bending, etc.
By struggling with such an effect there may be a time when you will fail or IT will snap. The impossible won't happen but the act struggling shows how difficult such things are.

I think part of the issue may lie in what is known as the "silent script" (at least I ~think~ that's what it's called). That is the scenario that is playing through your mind as you go through the routine.

I would wager that in your mind when you're presenting this, you're thinking about the moves and the skills. So in your mind, you are NOT a mental master reading their mind - you're just a guy with a card trick who really hopes he can pull it off okay.

There are two parts to performance: a routine polished so the moves are smooth and second-nature, and an inner script in which you believe that "you" are really doing magic. It's the difference between an actor in a hgih school play who can smoothly recite the lines, and a professional Broadway actor who can pull you into the character and action. When the professional plays a magician, an alien, a cat, he puts on that character in his mind as well as in the costume.

(Note: I'm speaking from knowledge at this point; I can't say that I have attained this level of performance yet.)

This is what is lacking in most beginnning performers (and why most high school kids shouldn't be too worried about a lack of response). You are concentrating on the trick. You must rather allow the event to pull you into actually being a magician. Only then will your spectator be pulled in with you and act like a participant.

Some other thoughts:
-- I agree that a recap of events is good. You want to firmly cement in their mind just exactly how in control he was at all times, and how impossible it is for you to know his card.
-- Maybe instead of a spoken reveal, you could draw the card in a pocket notebook.
-- One possibility for tension: put some money on it.

Bet a dollar you can name the card, and spit out a card name in full arrogance and smugness. But you're wrong! Beg for another chance, and offer another dollar. Take a bit more time - but you're wrong again. One more chance, maybe for an additional two or three dollars.

Run over what's happened like you're talking to yourself, trying to figure out what went wrong. Then slowly stumble through the reveal - get the color right, the suit wrong but correct yourself quickly, narrow down the number by being confused by the amount of pips you see on the card, finally to settle on a card.

Make sure you've set the card off to the side or otherwise have it marked - by this time, he's liable to have forgetting it, or may just try to jack you up.

Ed

Thanks for the great advice, guys!

Yes, I try to keep anything involving cards as simple and direct as possible! I will keep performing, and hopefully improve. I have already seen an improvement in my confidence during performances since back when I first started showing mentalism effects.

I'm not primarily a mentalist, but I do one effect that I would call mentalism. It gets some of the best reactions in my whole show. First I'll describe the effect and then I'll tell you why I think it works so well despite the actual workings being fairly simple.

First I tear a blank piece of paper off of a pad. I show it to the audience, sometimes letting them examine it themselves. I then wad up the paper and poke it into my hand and tell them I will make it disappear. I wave my hands mysteriously and then go to show my hands empty, but the paper "accidentally" falls out from where I was hiding it. I look embarrassed, and say I'll try it a different way. I put it in an audience member's hand and take a pen from my pocket. I say again that I will make the paper disappear. I tap the paper three times but instead the pen disappears. The audience is usually awed for a second until they look up and see that I had just stuck the pen behind my ear while they were looking intently at the paper. I then give up on that trick and leave the paper with the spectator. I take out a deck of cards and let 4 spectators pick a card and tell them not to show anyone. I then ask some other spectators to list off some numbers. When finished, I have one person come up and add up all the numbers, writing the number very big on the pad of paper. I then have each of the spectators turn over their cards one by one and add them up (where A=1, J=11, Q=12, K=13). I write down that number and it is the same as the other number. The spectators are fairly amazed, but the trick isn't finished yet. I have the guy with the wadded up paper (that the audience had pretty much forgotten about at this point) unwad the paper and there is the same number written there! This is when the gasps of absolute astonishment happen.

Some people will recognize this as a slightly differently dressed version of a trick right out of the Tarbell course. Any one of the parts of this effect would be slightly interesting on their own. When all put together, however, the effect is mind blowing for many people. Sometimes less is more, but in magic often more is even more. The more I'm referring to is the presentation part.

Laymen are usually not complete idiots. They know that when they take a card from a magician, the magician will be able to figure out what it is. That's not surprising. To get a good reaction, something has to happen that they truly don't expect. You do this by distracting them with patter, with comedy bits, by appearing to make mistakes, by magicky hand movements, by inserting redundant convincers into the routine, and so on.

The best advice I can give you is to watch a lot of magicians at work. Especially watch them performing stuff that you know how to do. Notice all the stuff that they insert into it, and how they present it to make it more than just a trick.

Many good points up there. To expand on Ed's ideas, when you recap, you actually have the ability to alter what they remember (that's actually part of the reasoning behind recapping). I do a version of the old 21 card trick (I mean, it's so simple it's downright stupid!) that involves five volunteers and poker hands. In the middle I recap that (1)every person has shuffled his own cards and (2)I've never so much as touched the cards (true). At the end (before the reveal) I recap that (1)I've never even looked at the face of a single card (also true) and (2)I'm going to reveal their cards just by looking in their eyes (not quite as true). But it gets their minds away from the idea that the handling has anything to do with what cards are where. I've never been "busted".

It's also true that many people associate cards with "card tricks", and unless you have a strong personality, you may not be able to overcome their expectation of some kind of "pick a card" routine. For a Mentalist there is a way around this that can work for some effects. Use a pack of 3x5 file cards marked with "miscellaneous" symbols. Handled properly, almost any locator, stack, or lost & found routine can be done with these without triggering the "card trick" thought in your spectator's minds.

Finally, and this is just my personal opinion, I think Mentalism should be handled as a separate function from Magic. A Magician doing mental tricks will never get the respect that a Mentalist needs to really get his audience to "buy-in" to the routine. I do Magic and I do Mentalism, but never in the same venue. I expect that before much longer I'm going to need to choose...

To quote myself:


Here's one way to turn that old "pick a card" trick into a mentalist's dream. Before the show, go to spectator A in private, force a card and tell the person to "look at the card, get a mental picture of the card, and then return the card to the deck" which you hand to them. Tell Person A to hold onto the thought for later. Now go up to person B in private and force the same card on person B. Hand the deck to Person B and tell him to replace the card in the deck, but remember it for later. Then have him put the deck in his pocket "for later." Time passes, crickets chirp, you do some introductory mentalism until the group practically begs you to demonstrate your mysterious mental powers further. At that point, you have person A stand up and tell the person "A while ago you placed a mental picture of a card in your thoughts, is that correct? I want you to just think of that card, imagine what it looks like. Does someone here have a deck of cards?" Of course you know person B has the deck you gave him to hold for later. "Would you take out your cards and spread them out until you come to a card you also have been thinking about. Slide the card out of the deck and don't show it to anyone just yet." Now ask person A to name the card that he or she is thinking of. Have Person B turn over the card he removed from the deck. No one, not even Person A and Person B, will know how you did that. The illusion is that Person A thought of a card, Person B removed a card from "his own deck of cards" and you get the credit for somehow making the cards match and no one but person A and B, in private, ever had to "pick a card, any card." Use your power carefully and don't use it for evil purposes.