Always when I see magic being performed by a professional I end up with the feeling of being amazed, amused and entertained. I'm not talking about the specific reaction of a particular effect, I'm talking about the sense that remains with me after a good magic show.
I'm not a professional, but I really want to become one, I've been practicing for a while and now I'm studing magic formally at the magic school here in my country. I'm also trying to perform more and more for real audiences.
There must be something wrong in the way I present the effects but most of the time I get the sense that people feel fooled rather than amazed at the end of the rutine.
In Strong Magic, Darwin Ortiz talks about the win-win approach and I not only enjoyed that reading but also immediately agreed on it. I always bear that in mind but I haven't found the specific things to do in order avoid conveing that idea.
What kind of things you don't recommend doing or saying and what should be done to evoke magic and entertainment?

Pacing helps. If you wait for the reaction, and you have built it up properly, you should get a strong reaction. I would love to go more in detail, but it's almost Christmas I have run out of time. If this topic is still on the board, I'll add more of what I mean. But, I'm sure others will chime in and explain it better than me.

Merry Christmas.

To me what you are talking about here is invoking an overall experience from the audience. It is not so much you are telling the folks, "hey watch me do these cool things with these cool props." Instead you are creating an experience so that you hope the audience leaves with a feeling of, "wow, I had a fun time. That was really wonderful. The magician was so down to earth." Do you see the difference here between the two?

In many cases one direction of thinking is wowing the audience always. There is nothing wrong with the 'wow" factor. The problem is too many magicians hone in on only using this approach. The dangers in it is that you do not give the audience anything else to grab a hold of and enjoy. You are not creating or developing the experience as much as you can for them.

My first question to anyone putting an act together may seem a bit strange or sound like I am being too harsh, but read on and I think you will see what I am referring to. Some of these tips relate to manipulative magic, but the tips can be used for any type of an act. My big question to you is: Why?!!!

I told you that it may seem a bit strange, but let me go on now to tell you about what I am referring to. To a magician, we are fascinated with cards and flourishes and vanishes and anything related to manipulation. It amazes us by the technique and the method and skill involved in doing the executions of the routines. This alone keeps us striving to learn more and peaks our interest and curiosity.

However, this is often not the case with a lay audience. A lay audience does not see manipulative magic in the same way we do. They do not understand the techniques and skills involved, and nor should they if what we are doing is supposed to be magical. With this in mind, the audience often will say to themselves... "why". Why is this magician doing the same thing over and over again.

Why? Because the magician knows he is doing different vanishes and each one is slightly unique. However the audience only knows that the card vanishes, the card returned and now your doing it again. This is why an act of manipulation is very hard to do well if your doing it for 7-8 minutes in a normal act time. You do not want your audience ever going "Why" at any time in the routine.

So how do you work around this problem of boring your audience to tears? Well that is where research and creativity comes into the picture. It gets back to the point that in a manipulative act you must give the audience "more". It is not good enough to simply show an 8 minute act of pure skill alone doing moves that appear the same to any audience.

So how do you give your audience more? Well you can give them more through the use of themes, character, style, pacing, transition effects and emotional response to just name a few. Let me go on to talk very briefly about each of these I just mentioned. Each could be an article all in itself but I will just give you my tips on each one for now in hopes you can grasps what I am referring to.

- Themes: You can give more to your audience in any manipulative act if you simply add in a theme to the act you are doing. This can be a generalized theme in regards to the objects all relating that you are manipulating, or the act itself can be themed around a storyline. In this way you are performing a small 8 min play that just so happens to have magic in it. The audience can relate to the themed objects or the story and get more involved with your act and with you.

- Character: Every act you do should have a strong character present on stage. The audience needs to be able to connect with this character. If you can connect the audience with you, then they become more attached to you and can relate to what you are doing on stage. Ask yourself if your character is suave, comical, athletic, hip, sad, down on his luck. Each of these can become a strong character that can be conveyed in your stage movement and even your music.

- Style: With style, I mean the way you move on stage and the way you conduct and hold yourself throughout the act. It is something that must be learned over time. It is those little things that make a huge difference to an audience liking you or not. It can be the way you pause at the right moment and look at the audience and wink right before a big production. It could be the way you move and look and smile at the audience as if saying thank you without moving your mouth at all.

- Pacing: The way you pace and time your act can make a world of difference to an audience. In many manipulative acts, the audience is being barraged with too much visual input. They can not follow it all the time and so start shutting themselves down from even watching what it is you are doing. You must pace your act and place in it pauses that give the audience a chance to catch up, breathe a bit and give them a chance to applaud you before going into the next sequence.

- Transition effects: These are the simple things you can place into your act that changes it up a bit and ads so called "spice" to the act. It gives your audience something more to watch and breaks up the act from being too repetitive.
For example: You could be doing a billiard ball act. You do a few vanishes and produce the ball. The ball gets tossed up and as you catch it it turns into a white silk. You do a knots of silk effect and the not becomes the ball again. In this way the ball to silk becomes a transition effect that gives your audience something more to be interested in.

- Emotional Response: This is a huge one and can work so wonderful if done well. If done right it can make your audience connect with you long after you have left the stage. It is causing an emotional response in your audiences by allowing them to connect and relate to your character and the predicament presented on the stage. It can also work closely in with the theme you are presenting.

Every person in your audience has experienced something in common. What is common to us all is emotions. We have all felt fear, love, confusion and happiness. These are common to every person know matter who you are performing for. So if you can connect with them on one or more of these emotions, you can get that audience member to really relate to you because they are remembering a similar situation when they too had that exact same emotion or situation happen to them. They can relate.

For example, your manipulative act could be all about this guy at night who is just trying to reach a bus to get home. It is late and he misses his bus and the entire world seems to be passing him buy. He sits on a bench to wait for the next bus and turns on his radio. He drifts off to sleep only to awake moments later. He realizes that magic starts happening to him even though he does not know exactly why it is. Through out the act the magic that happens to him causes him to smile and to realize that life is full of wonder, even if we may not always see it.

Now this is just a very vague example, but you can see how the entire act could be a manipulative routine, but now you are relating to them a story of a very well defined character with a well defined theme. You give them an emotional response to the act because most can relate to being in a similar situation in their own life. In this way they relate better to what you are doing on stage.

Now these ideas are not meant to be the bible for a great act by any means. They are simply some of my own understandings on what I have experienced that has really worked not only for myself, but to other acts that have really "made it." They are meant only to be reviewed and given some thought to. Take even one thing from them and I think you will see your act reaching your audiences in a whole different light.

So I simply ask you to ask yourself. Why?

My 2 cents worth.

Kyle

Thanks magic4u02, that was very complete and interesting.
I'll try to take all of that into account.
I always show magic with a theme involved, I know that is one of the things that tells the difference between magic and trickery.
I'm just developing my character... it is not easy at all.
The question you suggested (WHY) is really important... Do you ask the Why to every effect you perform? or you di that for magic as a general concept?

You are most welcome. Please call me Kyle. It is just more food for thought and is intended to get people thinking in a more creative sense to what it is they do.

Too many magicians perform for themsleves and forget their audience. The question of asking yourself "why" is geared at doing it all the time. It simply means to think about what it is you are doing and look at it from the perspective of your target audience. Think as they do and make sure what you are doing will make sense to them and have the upmost entertainment value.

Hope this helps.

Kyle

Congratulations magic4u02.
Since you are (as I am) concerned with the emotional approach to entertainment, you may be interested in the marketing research published in "Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer's Brain " by Patrick Renvoise, Christophe Morin. This very serious book is based on the recent neurological research of Antonio Damasio (professor of neurology at USC) and published in "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" and "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain".

Basically what Damasio discovered is that the stimuli reach first our emotional brain and then get screened by rationality. Before we used to believe that rationality was screening stimuli before they would reach the emotional brain.

The implications are enormous as the way to communicate with the Emotional Brain conditions our decision system and, as such, not only psychology and marketing but also the art of entertainment. This scientific discovery supports and confirms most of the theories intutitively written in Strong Magic and Designing Miracles by Darwin Ortiz, but forces to reconsider secondary points.

We should however realize that targetting audience emotions is not an option, it's just the way magic works.