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Baz94 New user Kent/Eng 91 Posts |
Although I perform things that I personally love because they have a big impact, I don't use the best at the end because I can't top it.
If anything, sometimes I do some more 'Gentle' impact things. Sometimes it is good to kind of bring someone away from that "WOW!" shock feeling situation and ease them into a nice gentle reaction. Sometimes, spectators can get quite shaky when you blow them away with something so by bringing them down, they talk about you as a great magician rather than a guy that freaked them out. |
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iSawThat Regular user The Ivory Tower 188 Posts |
I don't believe that spectators shouldn't be blown away in the middle of an act. Many times I've done powerful tricks in the middle of routines, and received strong reactions, but all I do is just to wait awhile, bask in the created atmosphere, before dragging them into another effect once more. As Jon Allen and Flourishdude rightly point out, the closer is only a closer the way a routine is structured. There are some effects that naturally feel like closers because they are designed to challenge all the assumptions the audience have been conditioned to make about the way you do your tricks during the routine (yes, they ALL do try to find explanations, no matter how good we are. In fact, we need them to at least challenge our effects mentally to be fooled by them, the one reason that magic is separated from other performance art according to Nelms and Ortiz).
The invisible deck can be one, for example, because all the while the audience has been conditioned to believe that you use sleight of hand to achieve your goals, but the ID is so clean that they are forced to reassess their whole idea of how your effects are achieved. Same with the card to wallet - palming a card they can fathom, getting the card into something as secure as a zippered pocket in your leather wallet they cannot. In the cups and balls i'm sure there are many laymen who know of the extra ball, even though their senses all scream that it is doesn't exist (hopefully all our routines are so adequately structured!). So when large fruit are loaded into the cups right under their noses, we force a paradigm shift (in the modern jargon...) in their minds, and anything else we do would just enable them to either reconcile the shift - lessening its impact - or serve as an anticlimax. This is why the destination box (to be honest any card to impossible location where the 'location' can be handed out at the start of the routine) the way Jon uses it is so strong. Apart from the fact that it brings the act one full circle and is good from a dramatic point of view, the whole time the spectator holding it would be thinking "what's in this darned (let's assume he's polite...) box?" This builds suspense and interest. Behind the question lies a fundamental assumption that anything that he can see OUTSIDE the box while he's holding it cannot be INSIDE the box at the same time. So when the question is finally answered at the end, the assumption that he made VOLUNTARILY without any prompting from the magician has been turned on its head, and just for that moment he stops believing that everything he is seeing is just tricks, and his emotions override his intellect and scream that it is real magic. That is the point at which it is best to stop, to leave the impression in the spectator's mind. I hope this long and windy post serves as a lesson for us all. I don't like to preach, but too often have I seen magicians merely string a couple of neat looking tricks together and call it a routine without ample thought put into what they want to remain in the spectator's mind once the performance is over. The fine details will all be blurred, all they will remember in the long run is the sense of wonder they were left with, and from that sense of wonder (in a bit of psychobabble) to prevent cognitive dissonance they will rationalise that they saw something really marvellous (otherwise they'd just be stupid people surprised at nothing but a trick, and no one likes to conclude that they're stupid) and it will show when they talk about it. Naturally, I have been cut off several times by the food arriving at the table mid-routine for example, but I've found that if I plan my routine carefully, there are several possible bail out points along the way, mini-climaxes so to speak, all on the path to the massive one at the end. Apologies for the ridiculously long post, thanks for following me all the way here! |
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Dan LeFay Inner circle Holland 1371 Posts |
I like to end with the cups and balls because it leaves the spectators with (what I think is) an aestethic and magical looking end-picture. Since I use hardly any "magical" looking props while doing close-up magic, introducing two steel cups and screwing together a two-piece wand defines (hopefully) a special moment. Also when doing the cups and balls I try to generate as much as audience participation as possible. Add to that my patter which is about "a classic", "my favourite" and "the thing I am most famous for" and I'm shure it will have their interest.
Since the end-picture is all glimmering steel and crystal balls I feel it very appropriate to leave them with that. Is it the effect they talk about the most? Probably not, since they always talk about those darn rubber-bands, but I simply refuse to end with those... I think of the end-picture like Luke, Han and Chewbacca being honored by the Princess in the throne-room. Not the most memorable scene of Star Wars, but definitely a closer!
"Things need not have happened to be true.
Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths, that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." Neil Gaiman |
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