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SPONGE KONG New user 84 Posts 
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I really suffer with Magicians guilt, I feel that people know the secrets to my performance and what I may be concealing in my hands or pockets!
I know I'm giving the layman to much credit and that 99% of people have no idea about the gimmicks and other sleights we use but this problem never leaves my mind and holds me back. I love performing magic but this issue tends to stop me performing a lot of tricks that I love because I feel I will be caught!! Because I know how I'm doing the trick I feel they know. Any ideas on how to become more confident with performing magic would be greatly appreciated, and maybe ideas on mind set before performing. |
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troppobob Veteran user Crescent Head Australia 372 Posts
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G'day Sponge Kong
There may be some value in reflecting on your performances and listening to feedback. If you are performing for an average 8 year old they often say "it is in your other hand" or some other similar statement (that is because they are 8 - not because they have any idea of what you may have done). Other people can give more accurate feed back - if they stare with their mouth open - that is great feedback (possibly better than applause). If it looks good in the mirror or on your video - then check the human feedback and live with the fact that you may be better than you think you are. Start in your head and go forward from there. Enjoy the journey. Bob Latta (aka Troppo Bob) |
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Ovationkck New user 13 Posts
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I know exactly how you feel. I was always afraid that the spectators would see what I was doing or could figure it out. My friend and mentor Lanny told me that most folks don't have a clue and don't even know what they are looking for. To prove his point he did a 2 card tricks for me while we were at work. The first one I knew how it was done and so I saw the 'move'. Told him I busted him coz I saw the 'move' He said of course you did because you know what to look for. The next trick he had to set up the cards in a certain order, ok fine I watched him set it up so again I knew what was happening. Later after work we went to a local bar and when he performed both of those tricks nobody had a clue as to what he had just done. He even set the deck up while talking to the folks he was performing for and they were clueless. The point is, that most folks will never 'catch' you. That isn't to say you can be sloppy or lax in youor presentation. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!! Then for sure they will never 'catch' you
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Kingman Loyal user Willow Spring NC 294 Posts
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Another helpful piece of advice is to use some self working effects to build confidence. Once you have them down you can really concentrate on mis-direction and patter. Those are the keys to making sure that the spectators have no chance to look for what you are doing. Almost no lay person can even guess at the methods, their minds cannot even fathom that we can lift two cards as one. Amazing, but true.
Confidence comes with experience Kingman |
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volto Special user 603 Posts
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Confidence is great and everything, but it's better to be anxious and perfect than confident and sloppy. As someone said recently in another thread - "nerves are just your body preparing to do something awesome".
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BCS Inner circle 1083 Posts
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Kingman’s comments about self working tricks to build confidence rings true. I would add throughout your day palm a coin or card without being caught, to rid your guilt.
It’s about presentation and entertainment... I have seen others with great skill fail because they were not entertaining. Also don’t present your magic as a puzzle or a challenge or you will lose audience control and have them turn on you... much worse than magician’s guilt. Good luck, all comes with time, Bruce |
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SPONGE KONG New user 84 Posts
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Hay thanks guys that's some really great advise!
I some times feel I should focus on one kind of magic trick ie Coins or Cards , I have such a passion for all kinds of magic that I tend to get caught up trying to many types of trick and not perfecting any(shame on me ) . It's so hard to know where to start! Love Coins and I got a thing for TNR although I've never found one I dare do in public, my strong points are Sponge and Coins. Trying to do a Bill switch at the moment using Thumb Tip but kind quite get it smooth enough yet also I have been learning Twisted by Daniel Garcia. |
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Ed_Millis Inner circle Yuma, AZ 2292 Posts
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It will also help to remember that the magic is not in the "move" or the "secret" - it's in the presentation. So when they tell you afterwards "I saw that in your hand", you can simply say "Sorry about that. But did you have fun watching the magic?" The people who steal the joy out of magic by trying to catch you and expose you are people you don't want to perform for!
Ed |
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55john55 Regular user 137 Posts
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I think there is some wonderful advice in the posts here. I love the comment about "nerves", and intend to use that nicely stated piece of advice in the future. The other especially fine comment was Ed Mills statement about the "presentation" being of profound importance. Of course we shouldn't be sloppy in our work. However, presentation in magic is almost like location in real estate. I remember watching the ventrioquist Edgar Bergan in the 1950s on TV. I was very surprised when I saw how his lips moved. However, my disappointment soon vanished because he was so outstanding in his handling of his "dummies" and in the quality of the humor. In his hands the dummies became real people. Fine presentation of magic helps open the door to a good relationship with the spectators. If they like you and your presentation, they will be very forgiving if you do happen to slip up somewhere along the line. I know it is easier said than done, but if you follow the advice of the posts before mine, you will be headed in the right direction.
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Mipple New user London, UK 76 Posts
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I'd second the advice about nerves being normal and even go as far as to say they're a "good thing".
Obviously it's not ideal if you're so nervous that it has a serious effect on your performance (this tends to get better the more you perform) but in my experience as a musician (I've done lots more of this than magic) if I'm not nervous at all before a gig then I can pretty much guarantee I'm going to give a disappointing performance - it's essentially a sign that I don't care enough. Mark |
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Mr. Woolery Inner circle Fairbanks, AK 2149 Posts
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Oh, another very important bit of advice: finish the trick, even if they bust you on the move. That's part of presentation. Just say something like "keep it to yourself" in a humorous way when they say they saw the move. That way you are not denying, so it sort of defuses the antagonism for a lot of folks. Not all, but a lot.
I once did the Chicago Opener for a group of kids. My DL is not the finest around, but it works from the front. However, I was surrounded by junior high school students, so one of them said "hey, you just turned over two cards!" I said nothing about that and just finished the trick. He was as surprised by the conclusion as anyone else there and didn't say a thing more about the method. I don't know whether he thought he was mistaken, whether he forgot what I did there, or decided it didn't really matter. Everyone had fun watching because I finished the trick. Don't leave a trick unfinished. In fact, if you totally mess up, you can even ask your audience "do you want me to do a different one instead or shall we start over and pretend that never happened?" By giving them the choice, you show that you know that they know it is a trick, you also give them the impression that this must be a pretty hard trick, and you still look confident. As to focus, I'll tell you to pick out a set of tricks you would like to do for a performance act. Plan maybe three tricks that flow into each other. Work those three tricks until you can do them in your sleep. And then work them a little more. Then go out and do that set for a few folks. Think about what worked and what didn't. Add another trick. Or else create a different set. The important point is to think about performing, not just doing tricks. A good performer can do more than one and keep the entertainment flowing. I'm still working on this myself. -Patrick |
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SPONGE KONG New user 84 Posts
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WOW!! Thanks for taking the time to help guys, I'm already putting advise into practise.
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DWRackley Inner circle Chattanooga, TN 1909 Posts
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Agreeing with the guys who said presentation!
It used to really aggravate me when I’d pull out a deck of cards and folks would say “Oh, I know how you do that one!” I mean, SERIOUSLY?!? I didn’t even have the cards out of the box yet, but they KNEW?!? It took a while for me to realize the problem was me. I was presenting a card trick, not Magic. Forget about the how; just fall in love with the MAGIC. Your audience will follow your lead.
...what if I could read your mind?
Chattanooga's Premier Mentalist Donatelli and Company at ChattanoogaPerformers.com also on FaceBook |
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volto Special user 603 Posts
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Magic is just a short play that has it's own special effects. Sometimes people know how the special effects are achieved, but that doesn't matter - the play is still fun. They're having a few laughs and enjoying the atmosphere, the story. The sense of being part of an audience, at an event. So don't stop telling the story! An actor who fluffed his lines wouldn't stop mid-show, to explain that he isn't really a tragically wronged Danish prince. The play itself - the performance, the atmosphere, the story, your personality - are the things that make people want to watch. You'll never convince a rational audience that magic is real. But you can show them what it might look like, if it were. When you start thinking this way, suddenly you don't care if you fool them or not, you only care that you convincingly portrayed a magician, and that the audience enjoyed that portrayal. Your sleights still need to be perfect, but for a different reason.
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Aus Special user Australia 997 Posts
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In my experience much of “I know how it’s done” mentality is sometimes more than just the proverbial chip on the spectators shoulder. We as magicians can bring this on with sucker type presentations where we present things at their expense creating this battle of wits that makes the fertile ground for these situations to happen. In fact advice in the area of magic for children has been centred on such sayings as “don’t do sucker effects for children” for fear that the sting of such effects might swell resentment in the child which they might carry towards magic and magicians not to mention stifle their enjoyment of the show at that time.
I believe how we present magic needs to be taken into consideration when dealing with this problem. Take conventional wisdom on the “sucker trick” front by simply applying the principle of co-astonishment and see the difference, “How did that flower wilt all by itself?” “How did that wand collapse?” Act as amazed at their circumstance as they are and no at their situation and at their expense and see the world of difference. Many more children’s effects that have been traditionally considered “sucker tricks” have opened up to me as a result of that simple concept. Co-astonishment is one way of doing it if we are talking in terms of the sucker effects but in more general terms understanding what makes great magic needs to be more fundamentally understood. Eugene Burger said that effects can fall into stunts or magic, and a great deal of magic is performed as stunts, and I find that the amateur/hobbyists usually fall into this trap. There is usually no plot other than a card is picked and found, or a silk is pushed into a fist and becomes an egg leaving nothing else other than “WOW that’s cool” and “How did he do that?” as the lingering thoughts in the spectators minds. Magic should RARLY be served as is, but instead with all the trimmings as well, that’s why magic is a vacuum for allied arts such as balloon tying, pickpocketing, juggling and dance to name just a few. The side benefit in my view to all these allied arts mixed into the melting pot of magic is not to distract them from the magic but to create an, “extraordinary moment” which is hardly one dimensional as a stunt would be. Well the audience is laughing at a well-executed piece of comedy, or admiring the dexterity of a magician picking someone’s pocket or the skill of a well performed juggling stunt that prefaces a magical climax, it’s in these moments at least that their focus is not on how a trick is done, but rather on how they are feeling, even if it’s only for the shortest of moments. So in summary I guess you could say a benefit could be had in terms of misdirection of attention by pursuing our supreme goal of an “extraordinary moment” in our magic. If the magic happens in the minds our spectators, then lets help shape it, and doing so would have the side benefit of remedying this problem. Wayne Dobson’s “teach” is a great example of an “extraordinary moment” in that a simple multiple pick a card effect is full of entertainment for the audience by the simple comedic value he injects into it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxqBOP9J8bo All the above is well and good if the persons mind is open to be influenced and not determined to simply undermine you, but I think it’s important to point out our role to play in this situation, not just the spectators. The other half of the equation is the congruency of the trick itself. This has been my main issue with mathematical based card tricks that have unusual processes like down under shuffles, or dealing of cards in odd shaped patterns which only suit as bread crumbs for suspicious minds to follow. As I said in my presentation How-to guide where point out this problem (the 21 card trick in that example) I try to use presentation to bring justification for such things if possible if it’s a required part of the trick, but if given the choice would simply select something else that would achieve the same but with less unwanted attention. A non-mathematical effect I had the same issue with was “Hoodwink” by Ben Harris. Hoodwink was Ben’s contribution to the torn and restored card genre during the height of the genres popularity. Its selling point was, it was easy to do, wasn’t the whole quarter by quarter restoration and used only one single card and no extra pieces. This all came at a trade-off of course and that was that the card couldn’t be examined after the restoration. To be fair Ben’s torn and restored card wasn’t the first to have examinable issues as a trade-off for other attributes, but it was this fundamental issue I disliked in his effect and others like it. My reasoning for this was simple, I fundamentally believe that magic effects of given types elicit a natural response from our spectators. For example, if I made a coin vanish the inevitable response would be “where did it go?”, or if I made it magically appear “where did it come from?” and for a torn and restored card in this case “can I look at the card?” Of course it’s hard to say with certainty that this response would be the one given 100% of the time, but it would be my estimate that these situations would happen more often than not and in my case after performing Hoodwink for a while it proved to be the case. Having a method that works against the synopsis of the effect and the natural response it creates in people while leaving you in an untenable position of having to go into damage control because your dirty seemed to me like running a full marathon then told by a race official that I was not allowed to cross the finish line. Effects of this type in my view don’t help magicians when battling the “I know how it’s done” mentality but in fact inflame the situation by arousing further suspicion by going into damage control against something that comes naturally during the course of the effect. So to draw a point on what I’ve said, I would say choose effects that are congruent to their outcome, not ones that work against it. As a supplementary note I would encourage people read my thoughts on presentation and its practical applications in my How-To Guide. http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=41 Anyway, those are my thoughts on how we as magicians from our side of the fence can help ourselves in some regard with fixing this problem. Magically Aus |
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MagicDr Regular user Los Angeles, CA 111 Posts
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Quote:
On 2011-12-14 07:40, Aus wrote: He stretched a simple slip cut into a great performance |
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Jim Sparx Inner circle Far Out, Texas 1144 Posts
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I think people want to be entertained and they really don't care how you do it. I have seen some big name manipulators in my day, Cardini, Slydini, Dai Vernon etc. I had a good idea about the accessories they were using, droppers, servantes etc. but I didn't care because it was the presentation that fooled me and I wanted to be entertained. And I did not care to know exactly how it was done. Knowing that would have kind of ruined it for me.
Kids are a different story. They can see right thru you and want to know so they can do it (I have 5 kids and a bunch of grand kids). It is all about how you present the effect, the showmanship. I never get tired of watching Ballentine and Cooper. Its not how they do what they do. It is the show business of what they do.
Et tu, Spartacus?
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/chispadeelpaso.html |
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vinh31 New user 51 Posts
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I might be overthinking/be mistaken it but I believe there's some sort of doublethink going around when performing a trick. (term coined by George Orwell in the book 1984).
You have 2 different ideas going on in your mind. 1) to present like the magician creating real magic 2) to deceive the audience with clever sleight of hand Those 2 contradictary ideas can live together in your mind, and accepting both of them is doublethink and prevents guilt and cognitive dissonance. -it prevents the schizophrenia where your personality (2) criticizes personality (1) for not being really magical 
When - hopefully one day - you reach unconscious competence (when you don't need to consciously think about manipulations), you only have one idea in your conscious mind: how do I present magically? |
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rklew64 Inner circle 1265 Posts
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Or just make the decision right now to get over it and it is no longer an emotional obstacle now - at least pretend to. No theory, no diatribe. just effing Magician up and do it.
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Erdnase27 Inner circle 2505 Posts
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Quote:
On 2011-12-23 00:37, rklew64 wrote: This is exactly the advice I would give him and the tip I needed to get over my magicians guilt. |
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Posted: Dec 13, 2011 11:20 am 
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