Hi, my fellow magicians!

During my study of magic, I found that I always read something but don't try it on real people. When I read an effect, I always think of the impact on the audiences and their response. A magician who is not a layman anymore will always miss something in predicting the audience's response.

As you know, a 'normal' double lift may shock a very common person. For them, it may be real magic. But as a magician, we know there is the existence of a routine. Therefore, we are trying to construct a 'strong' routine (which is not necessarily strong for laymen). Nevertheless, some so-called strong routines are not strong at all in the audience's minds. Needless to say, this is sometimes a tragedy for us.

When I gain some performing experience, I am trying to orient my magic FOR my audiences, not MY mind. Now, I sometimes test some new and 'easy' (easy for magician's mind) things. Recently, I have done a very simple trick and found that the spectators like it!! I am astonished by my magic as well!

I think, "How can I shock my audience with this trick??" So I begin to think of my thinking orientation. After I read Close-up Card Magic by Harry Lorayne, I was inspired a lot. Lorayne said, "Don't judge anything before you've tested it." It is my answer at this moment. How could I judge the tricks with my magician's mind totally?

Of course, I have to judge to some extent before I perform for my audiences, but if I don't know the answer very well, why not let my audience give me the answer?
To my observation, many magicians nowadays have the same problem. They trust too much on themselves and miss the audiences. How often do you see a magician perform and bore the audience?

To be frank, I see it a lot. So what do you think about your choice of materials now and how would you choose the BEST (I really mean the BEST) materials to perform in just a few mintues with your audience?
Thinking and Doing are what make the difference. If you think too much without doing, you are doing magic for yourself. But the more you do, the more you think, and your magic will become more and more entertaining.

That is my 2 cents on magic. What do you think?

Best Regards,
Alex

At the bottom line, the only way to judge an effect is to get feedback from an audience, and the only way to become a really good magician is to perform A LOT and revise what you do based on audience reactions. I recently performed at a restaurant for a man and woman sitting at a table and the man informed me that he was a magician. I performed two effects - - one a knuckbuster, which I knew would fool him, and another which involves no difficult sleights but which I know slays laymen because of the reactions I've received by performing the effect hundreds of times and revising it a lot based on audience reactions. A month later I ran into the magician in a magic shop, and he told me that he thought the difficult routine I performed was amazing, and the other routine not as good, but he couldn't understand why the "easy" vs. "difficult" routine was the one that the woman at his table thought was incredible. The reason he couldn't understand is that he doesn't perform professionally and doesn't know what can only be learned from audiences.

Through 37 years experience as Tenyo's creator, I have been watching Magician's vs Laymen's reactions to our products. Our customers are almost all Laymen who know little about magic. On the other hand, we the creators are magicians who know much about magic.

We met many occasions when we were suprised that the very good product we believed in ended in failure. For example, Lubor Fiedler's Impossible Pen was a killer for all of Tenyo's creators. I watched it performed more than ten times before I figured out the trick. It is the best miracle I ever encountered.

That is the reaction of magicians. But reaction of Laymen (or Beginners) was different. Sponge ball trick sells much more than Lubor's masterpiece. There was a definite reason about this sales reaction.

It is not good enough to learn what tricks are good for Laymen through real performances. You should learn why such tricks are good for Laymen. If Tenyo had not been learning such things, we would have repeated same failures and paid unnecessary money.

Recently I have been creating card tricks targeting strictly laymen because the clients of my creations are professionals whose audience is lay people.

Hideo Kato

P.S.
I think we should discuss this matter more and in detail, otherwise we will be magicians for magicians.

Hi Folks,

My two cents...:

Magic is a feeling. The magician is there to entertain and elicit the feeling in the audience.

Routines that are written up in a way that makes it clear WHAT will affect the audience and HOW to communicate the magic to the audience are easier for me to evaluate.

Magicians can sometimes be more interested in the HOW of a routine than the act of communication. My brother fixed that for me. He would sometimes heckle/criticize me with, "Why did you do that?" as opposed to the usual, "How did he do that?" The question sunk in.

Okay, time for dinner then the Simpsons. Feeding is fundamental!

Jonathan Townsend

I have encounterd the same thing. I came up with a version of a reverse assembly which ended cleanly. I was so proud of the effect I showed everyone. Magicians truly enjoyed it but laymen didn't truly appreciate it. The very basics are what laymen enjoyed the most. We get caught up in the thinking and creation part so much that we forget about the layperson. They don't care what went into the creation of it or how you streamlined something to suit you.

Halcon

Lay people get something different from magic than magicians.

I was reading some notes from Eugene Burger about performing for magicians.
He pointed out that magicians are watching things analytically. How does
this work? Can I do that better? Can I steal that line for my act?
Magicians don't tend react or involve themselves in the performance.

Lay people are more involved. They often try to see how things work, but
they let go a little more. They have FUN with the magic.

When our primary audience is the magic club, or other magic friends, I
think we tend to over-engineer routines. We do a lot of design to
demonstrate that it's not done by a known method. When our primary
audience is lay people we become more focused on the interaction.

It's a pity that magicians can't be more satisfied with knowing how things
work and more engaged in the theatre that each performer adds. However,
that would probably mean that each performer would have to add some theatre
and present things in a way that is different from everyone else.

Tough stuff.

Interaction with the audiences is our primary tool to make the effects strong. Although I cannot say that engineering the effects is wrong, but magicians should keep in mind that routines are basically for real people(often laymen). So the engineering process should put the audience on the first priority.

After rereading what Mr Kato wrote, I feel that we should know the mechanism of why good tricks work well on laymen. I think good tricks have certain elements that make the trick entertaining. I hope this message can reach all magicians who want their magic to be GREAT!!

Alex

I would not like to stop this thread here, and I am trying to list factors to make magic effective for laymen.

I think the biggest obstacle which causes the failure to give good effects to laymen is that we are not giving proper information for them to understand the effect clearly. For example, in Lubor Fiedler's Impossible Pen, the construction of the props is very artistic, which laymen can't recognize easily how the situation is impossible for the pen to disappear or penetrate.

Through experiences as a Tenyo creator, I know basically the tricks using more artificial settings don't sell more than tricks using natural object. However, this does not mean we should use as many natural things as possible. It is O.K. if the artificial construction of the props can be easily recognized in structure, like Zig-Zag-Cig. I only mean that artificial settings tend to be difficult for laymen to understand the structure.

One more obstacle would be the common sense of magicians. We don't feel strange when a magician places three cards on each Ace, but it might be first time a layman has seen this procedure. He can recognize the situation if you gave a good reason to do so and did it with clear handling.

Maybe the third obstacle would be misunderstanding by magicians on magical effects. For example, Snow Storm never gives mystifying effects, but it gives a beautiful punctuation to the routine. Some magicians are misunderstanding this effects as good magic only because they can get applause. They would applaud, but they get never magically overwhelmed with it. I have one more example. The bare-handed dove production is also an effect I suppose lay audiences hardly find very mystifying. Maybe we can list many more effects which magicians believe good and laymen feel otherwise. (Even if you think Snow Storm and or Bare-handed Dove Production are mystifying magic, please don't argue about it here as I only listed them to illustrate the point I wish to talk about on this thread).

I hope Alex Hui is reading this because although he is young, he is studying magic very seriously and progressing very rapidly lately. I have been inspired many times with the ideas he sent to me privately. If he can progress more in the future, I think this kind of discussion is indispensable before starting creations in quantity.

Hideo Kato

First of all, thank you for Mr Kato's nice words about me.

I would like to begin by stating my opinions on the use of materials or props. I have struggled for a long time in the past as to whether I should use common objects in my acts. My conclusion is--NO NEED. It is because magic is a kind of mystifying art form. The moment the impossibility occurs is the moment of magic. If the audience can follow what you are doing, they can understand and appreciate the effects. Sometimes an unknown object can even increase the mystifying atmosphere of the whole act. So the selection of your props is like selecting decorations: they can make your effects more beautiful in appearance, but are not necessarily related to the total impact of the magic.

I think one of the big problems for magicians is that they know the effects in advance. Try this: do a standard twisting effect without explaining the outcome and do the same one with the brief explanation in advance. If you don't tell them the cards will reverse themselves in advance, their brains have to run to catch up at the first reversal of the card. When their brains catch up, your second card has already reversed. This makes it difficult for them to appreciate your effect. I once did a very good twisting effect for a competent magician friend. His comment is one I will not forget in my life. He said, "I cannot catch up with your effect in the middle of the routine..." I was shocked! How can a competent magician feel difficulty in catching a twisting effect?? Well, but it's the point. If someone shows you 10 effects in 1 minute,will you appreciate all the effects?? But if he/she provides all the information of the effects, you may appreciate at the end.

Though some may say, "I think we will lose the surprise if the audiences know the effects in advance..." But what we are doing today is like doing all the kickers in the middle of the routine. The "Surprise" and "Astonishment" approach is different. We always surprise the audience with kickers at the end of the routine because once the kickers come out, there is no further effect. So there is time for the audience to catch up and understand the full impact of the kickers. However, in the middle routine, if we want to let the audience understand all the impact,we must provided at least one of the following things:
Time, pyschological preparation, expectation and suspension. Surprise is used to catch the attention of the audience and excite them with an unexpected hit, while astonishment is used to hold the attention of the audience and keep them interested. These two approaches should be well constructed in a routine. So we often have opener and kicker in the beginning and end of routine. And in the middle of the routine, we have to make them understand and appreciate the effect.

That's only my 2 cents on magic. I hope these kinds of opinions from everyone can be shared more in our world so that our Art can be improved in the future.

Alex

As Alex commented about common objects vs uncommon objects for use in magic, I would like to clarify that Alex and I commented about different points. I definitely agree with Alex on the common vs uncommon objects matter. I wished to mention about common structure vs uncommon structure. (My writing was not appropriate maybe.)

We can extend the common vs uncommon structure matter into common vs uncommon procedure and into common vs uncommon characters. I think uncommon structure of props, uncommon procedure (handling) and uncommon character in props tend to give unclear information to laymen.

I will stop this writing here as I think I clarified the points I explained in my last post.

Hideo Kato

I think the posts here are quite interesting. I definitely agree with Mr Kato and his thinking on magic. I hope more people can come here and share their views with us.

Alex

In David Regal's Constant Fooling he has an essay, "The Other Side." I don't know if the title refers to "presentation" as the other side of magic or the "audience" as being the other side.

Regal points out that many magicians fail to build an expectation in the audience as well as failing to properly build up the climax. I mention this essay because I saw those ideas echoed in some of the above posts and would like to point anyone interested to this informative essay.

I recently watched Allan Ackerman perform Hotel Mystery on a video clip. I like his magic very much, especially his voice fascinates me. Have you ever trained your voice and narrating?

I am not going to say I can improve Mr.Ackerman's Hotel Mystery by adapting my idea I am explaining below, but I am going to use the trick to illustrate that Magicians' Common Sense sometimes works against good effects for lay audience.

The sweetheart or wife of King of Hearts is Queen of Hearts. This is magicians' common sense. If we disregard this common sense, we can use Ace of Diamonds and Ace of Hearts as two ladies in the trick. (Maybe you can say AH is a heartful lady and AD is a lady who has many diamonds.)

I think it gives a clearer effect if we use AH and AD instead of QH and QD in the Hotel Mystery. Of course, you would prefer Queens if you are story-oriented. But at least, using Aces would be better if you perform this trick for larger audiences.

I believe I have explained enough to clarify the point I wished to mean. The point is that Magicians' Common Sense tends to hinder flexible thinking in some cases.

Hideo Kato

P.S.
Thank you robinson67 for informing us about Mr.Regal's essay.

I have read Mr.Regal's essay and think that the essay is quite stimulating. I have learned something from it.

Well, Mr Kato has pointed out Allan's trick which I have seen once before. The feeling of mine at that time is: I cannot follow and don't understand the effect. The pictures are too confusing and at the end, I think none of the audience (about 40 people) can get it because the magician didn't provide us with a clear concept and information of the effect.

I think the posts of Mr Kato have already explained most of the important concepts of creating impressive magic for laymen. But I still hope that Mr Kato can share more of his views on magic if it is possible because I think this thread is a great source of finding the true reasons why a good trick works.

Alex

Alex, you seem like whipping a horse to bring out my opinions. Whipping is very effective as it really works to bring out thoughts or things I forgot long time ago.

With this whipping of yours, I recollected a trick which is appropriate to show the difference in Magician vs Laymen reaction. I posted it in the Secret Session as Kato's Trick No.66 Only One. Please read the trick first, and come back here.

Did you read it?

When I showed this trick to Mr.Shimomura of Tenyo, he honestly admitted he didn't like it. Why? It is only because he figured out the method and didn't get any magical effect. Later, I showed this trick to several laymen and found this was (in your word which I don't like) a "Killer".

So there is another factor in Magician vs Laymen reactions. Let me state that magicians sometimes can't appreciate the effect of a trick because they can figure out the method.

You must be careful when you hear magicians' opinions--positive or negative. But you must be more careful with negative opinions because you can possibly discard such a trick before testing it for laymen. If his opinion is positive, you will find out whethere his opinion is right or not when you show it to laymen later.

Looking forward to Alex's next whipping,

Hideo Kato

Mr Kato,

When I read your trick, I can immediately imagine the impact of this on the laymen. It is a very good effect.

If you read my thread in the secret session, I have another effect which receives very good reactions from lay audiences but for magicians...you know...

So it is the construction of the minds which affects the reaction of the audience because magicians can 'see' something that is invisible to the laymen. So I think a good routine should be able to construct a certain 'vision' and memory inside the spectator's mind. The effects are not only to show something for the spectators' eyes, it is more important to show something for spectators' minds (the eyes inside their heads). Therefore, with a well constructed routine, it goes beyond the visual side of human beings, it can enter the dimension of mind which directly affects the reaction and thinking of the audience.

I think we can further utilize the mind and perception of the audience to create a more powerful routine. But because it will take a large space to describe the details here, I will post the rest of my thinking here in the future.

Alex

I recalled one more factor on the Magicians vs Laymen reactions matter. Magicians tend to appreciate subtlety in methods which laymen can never appreciate because they never know them.

Especially creators of magic tend to favor their ideas too much and sometimes can't escape from the restrictions contained inside those ideas.

Can you criticize youself? It is the question.

Hideo Kato

It is an interesting question. I think some magicians focus too much on subtlety and miss the effect when they construct routines. I sometimes face this problem as well. But IMO, appreciating subtlety has little to do with the total impact of effect. Subtlety sometimes increases the impact and further hides the method if it is porperly done. But too much emphasis on it will ruin the effect.

But, of course, to construct a good routine, the effect should be the first priority. And it is important to put those effects into real situations for testing.

Alex