Ye Olde Magick Blogge

This article was originally published on the old Ye Olde on March 5, 2007.

As I previously stated, the more I think about exposure, the more I’m thinking it’s less exposure I’m focused on, and more how it relates to getting busted. I guess it’s because that’s my own personal history — I’ve found that I’m more likely to get busted on effects that have been exposed, and it’s that moment of getting called out that’s embarassing as hell for a performer, especially a professional one, as I was at the time. Of course, I had my moments of bad technique as well, but that’s my own fault and preventable. Those other times, though, what could I have done to prevent it?

We’ve already covered one pre-emptive measure you can take — creating your own effect so that it has no chance of getting exposed. But there’s more to it than just that. It’s entirely possible that I can create a unique effect and, through a poor choice of method and routining, still be busted on it.

Take a look at one of the most beautiful and illusive sleights in magic, the perfectly-executed retention pass with a coin. If you’ve seen anybody competent pull one off, you’ve probably had your mind blown. David Roth on Expert Coin Magic Made Easy Volume 2 demonstrates the technique over and over again, and you’ll swear that each time he puts it in his hand, it’s really going into his hand. He’s not the best I’ve seen, either — this one time I was hanging out with a bunch of Korean magicians and this one guy’s retention pass was incredible — instead of giving it a last-second flash from inside his closing left fist, it actually seemed outside, on the left side of his fist, meaning it was on the far side of the hand it would eventually have to travel to. It was as though it vanished from view, travelled all the whole way through his closed left fist, and ended up in his right hand — his timing was that good. It’s a move that just kills me whenever I see it done well, and I’m filled with admiration for anybody who can pull it off. Which is why it was a bit of a shocker to me when I found out that one of the greatest sleight of hand artists alive today doesn’t like to use them.

John Carney writes about this in Carneycopia and talks about it in Carney on Ramsay, and he’s got a point, if you think about it. In the end, we want our audience to believe that we took our magic wand, waved it over the coin, and it vanished. That’s exactly what we want them to believe. Now, this is an out-and-out swindle, and no worldly spectator is going to be stupid enough to believe that our magic wand is capable of real magic, and that means that if he’s going to try to deconstruct what it is you did, he’s going to attempt to recall each part of the process. And what makes the retention pass so deceptive, at the same time is going to highlight it as part of the process.

Let’s look at that idea more closely. That flash from the retention pass is a signature of the move. You actually rely on it to create the deception of the coin being in the fist. And therein lies the problem — that’s what they’re going to remember once you’ve fooled them with it. In other words, their memory will have correctly pinpointed the exact moment that we were trying to fool them. That’s a salvageable situation if and only if this spectator NEVER sees a retention pass again, because the next time they see that last-second flash of the coin, if they’re the sort who is determined not to get fooled and they take a certain pride in it (ie: the typical personality of the guy who busts you), they they’re going to question what they see. In essence, it’s another aspect of exposure — any signature of a move, too closely connected to an effect, exposes the effect. They might not know exactly what you did, but they’ll know you did something (and they’ll be right), and what’s more, they’ll be on their guard to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Even Roth points out that after the most perfectly executed retention pass, if they see the coin vanish from that hand, they’ll assume it’s in the other one, which is where he goes on to stress the importance of routining. The mere fact that it’s not where they think it is does NOT finish the effect in the spectator’s mind.

Carney’s solution? It’s actually not a difficult one. According to him (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here), always misdirect off the process. In order to fool people with a false transfer, you can’t just make it seem like they didn’t see the falseness of it, you need them to almost forget a transfer happened in the first place. You want them to remember nothing of the process that leads up to the vanish. As such, you’ve got to routine meticulously — everything you do needs a reason, however superficial, whether it’s to pick up a wand or retrieve it from under your arm. Sleights should always happen on off-beats, as well. And Carney asks, why would you put a coin in your closed fist, anyway? If you think about it, THAT’S a signature as well. As such, when he’s doing the Cylinder and Coins, he seems to vanish each coin while he’s holding it at the fingertips, and you’ll only realize as a magician what he did to make the coin vanish, but it’ll be after the fact, and you’ll be using your magician’s schemata to figure it out. Throw in the subtleties he uses, and your average layman doesn’t have a chance.

And this is where we as amateurs (make no mistake, I’m an amateur magician myself) need to re-evaluate what we’re doing. If our patter is constantly reinforcing the process (“I’ll just stick that card right here in the middle…”), rather than misdirecting away from it, we’re begging to get busted. Our patter needs to either not acknowlege the process at all, or it needs to appear to focus in on only those things necessary for the effect, not the process. Part of what made the ACR such a bustable effect in my hands is that the process was direct and recognizable. Other routines are going to fall to same fate as well — the double-lift itself when done during Darwin Ortiz’s critical interval is a move with a VERY strong signature. Think of it this way, as a magician, you know when another magician is doing a DL, right? There’s a reason for that, and unless you’ve got a reason to be making the motions involved in a DL, your spectators are going to notice it as well. There’s a reason it’s being exposed as the “double flip”.

It’s unfair, if you think about it, because moves like the retention pass require a great deal of skill, and so badly we want as magicians to be recognized for our skill. If we’ve got a classic pass with cards they can’t catch, we want to do colour changes for them. I think we also have a certain amount of jealousy for other magicians who are able to do these perfect sleights. But what’s at the heart of this is ego, and we can’t afford to let ego get in the way of fooling our audience. That’s a signature as well — whenever we do a routine that focuses so heavily on the process, and we fool them, the hidden message is an egotistical one: “Didn’t figure out what I did there, did you? Heh heh heh.”

Just think of it as another signature we need to get rid of.

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This article, an addendum to Part 3, was published on March 7, 2007.

I think that last editorial about exposure didn’t have enough constructive ideas in there about how to get their mind off the process. Consider this one a follow-up. Basically, if you agree that too much focus on the process opens up exposure-related dangers, how do you take their mind off it? Here are some ideas, and like most things that seem like rules, they can be broken. Just make sure you know why you’re breaking them. Also, these really are just a summary of the ideas — to see them fully-fleshed out, dig into your books on magic theory. This essay should not be seen as a substitute for you doing your homework.

So, here’s what you have to do in order to downplay the process…

No play-by-play patter: Every word that comes out of your mouth should focus on the effect, not what you’re doing leading up to the effect. If you have to stress conditions, make sure that it’s only done to make the effect seem as impossible as you can make it, not to set them up for a mere reversal of expectations. If you’re going to talk about what it is you’re doing, make sure that you’ve already done it. What’s more, you’ll notice that a lot of teaching DVDs have extremely bland patter that is, alot of the time, play-by-play descriptions of what’s going on. This isn’t for you to emulate, it’s for you to replace. Everything that comes out of your mouth should be appropriate for your performing character. What’s worse is, if what you say is stock patter, it’s highly likely that it’s going to sound the same as another magician’s stock patter and give away what you’re going to do before you do it. Even worse, if the effect’s been exposed, there’ll be someone in your crowd who knows how.

Avoid flat assertions: It’s better to ribbon spread a deck to show it’s shuffled than to state that it’s shuffled. Audiences that are clueing into a process may be tempted to disrupt it or complicate it. If you state that the deck is shuffled, they might not believe it unless they get to shuffle it themselves. If this suspicion lingers in their mind, it will something they remember when they try to recreate the process. If you say nothing, they might not even think a shuffled deck is important until after the effect is done, at which point they’ll remember that you DID start with a shuffle — although they won’t know that the shuffle you did’s got a special name.

Avoid sleights with tells: If your pass has a hop to it, don’t use it until it’s been smoothed out. Don’t overuse the DL, and try to avoid using it at all during the Critical Interval (Darwin Ortiz’s term for the time period between when the spectator believes the trick has begun and when he believe it has finished). Consider ditching your retention pass if the rest of your coin display skills aren’t also very flashy. And as for that Critical Interval…

Do the process outside of the Critical Interval: This is not always possible, but if you find that you’ve got a trick where you can actually get ready before the audience isn’t even aware that the trick is begun, or clean up a false display of a climax after they already believe the trick is over, their understanding of the process is going to be handicapped. Refer to Darwin Ortiz’s work for some ideas of how to accomplish this.
Study misdirection: Read Gary Kurtz’s Leading With Your Head to figure out what displays can draw attention. Study time misdirection as well. Let a little time pass between any sleight you have to pull and the effect it accomplishes. Always get their eyes off your hands when executing the sleight. This is much easier if you’re not spending all of your routine stressing the process.

Motivate every action: Make sure that there’s a reason for everything that you do. If you get their eyes off your hands when executing the sleight, if you’re doing a motivated action, their eyes will have no immediate reason to go back to your hands. It will also obfuscate the process, because in order to see their way from the presentation to the method, they’ll need to know that every action you made had more than one objective (eg, getting the Woofle Dust).

Keep your subtleties subtle: Make sure that any subtlety you use camouflages itself in your regular, natural actions. People with a flourishy display style have a bit of an advantage here, since their gestures can convey a lot of information. The mistake is in breaking from your natural way of doing things just to do something that points out that your palm is empty. There’s also the side effect that a subtlety done in an overt manner might point them in the right direction as to the actual method. Think about the Ramsay’s Subtlety with coins… Are you always stressing the emptiness of your hands before every effect when working with any prop? If not, it’s possible you’re not being as subtle as you think you are with that coin you’re holding out.

Perfect your technique: Another Carney saying paraphrased: “Perfect technique is a cover for poor misdirection.” The more you’ve fooled them, the more focused their attention is going to be. That might make them easier to misdirect in some ways (such as with a feint), but since you can’t be guaranteed to do it, make sure your technique, if you have to do it under intense burning, is flawless. If your technique is invisible enough that it looks like a natural gesture, it takes on the same characteristics of ALL your natural gestures, thereby making a process harder for a spectator to nail down. Consider this insurance.

Save tension for the effect, and relaxation for the process: If a certain amount of process is necessary to set up, try to get the audience in a relaxed state of mind about it. Humour’s good, not giving them something specific to focus on is good, even the aftermath of the odd feint can be good. Some things just shouldn’t be done at all during a tense moment — the classic force is most effective when the magician appears to not care about anything at all. If a force is done in a stressed moment, even if they don’t know how, they might remember that the card selection was important, and they might want to disrupt that the next time you want them to select a card.

Multiple Climaxes are your ally: Used sparingly, a multiple climax can be a strong ally. If your process is obscure enough for your first climax, then it might be impossible for them to figure out your second climax. Just make sure that any extra climaxes don’t actually tip the method for the first climax (refer to Ortiz’s Strong Magic and Designing Miracles for more on this). A climax can also be used as a moment of relaxation and/or a moment of misdirection away from some other bit of business.

A Magician-in-trouble plot can be your ally: Used VERY sparingly, a routine whereby the process doesn’t seem to be working for the magician can throw off an audience. The danger (and it’s a massive danger that can turn them against you) is to make sure that the audience doesn’t catch on that it’s a hoax, lest they resent you for the manipulative tactic. Study Tommy Wonder to see how he does this. He begins the process, people are following it, and yet an effect occurs that’s unexpected. Because people assume that a magician would never screw up on purpose, there’s an immediate disconnect between the apparent process and the apparent effect. Again, even he cautions against its overuse.

Offer a counter-process: I’m willing to bet a steak dinner that not one magician in 100 uses the DL to set up a pseudo false deal. And yet think about this. If they are convinced that the card is in the middle, and they know that some card cheats can deal from the bottom or middle naturally, and then with a quick wave of the hand they see you deal off the necessary card in a way that does not appear like you snatched it from the middle (with a little bit of motion to cover the process), how can they not believe that you’re capable of dealing a card that’s anywhere in the deck? Notice that this is a blatantly false exhibition of skill, but in trying to figure out how one can deal that card out from the middle so cleanly, they’re asking the wrong question. They’re looking for skill when they should be looking for a magic technique. This is covered in Designing Miracles and Henning Nelms’s Magic and Showmanship, but the crux of it is this, you can keep them from figuring out the process by making them ask the wrong questions.

Don’t repeat a method used during a tense period (ever, if you can help it): Nothing can bring about suspicion of a process than the little unexpected consistencies that occur from repeating a method. Even if they don’t know that a method’s in play, if they’re always choosing a card the same way, they might wonder if it’s really ANY card that can be used for the effect, as you seem to be claiming.

Be funny: Easier said than done, of course, but if anything can get their minds off the process, it’s making the process as funny as possible. It relieves tension, can be used to focus attention which is useful if the thing that’s funny misdirects away from some dirty bit of the process, and so on. There are potential pitfalls when it comes to having the humour detract from the overall effect, but if you read your Strong Magic, you’re not worried about that…

Get them focussed on YOU: You’re the show, not the props, not the process, not even the climax, YOU. Find whatever qualities you have that people find interesting and USE them. Only a magician’s club will hire you back out of appreciation for your technique.

Again, I can’t recommend Carney on Ramsay enough. He touches on just about all of the above in the process of describing a single coin vanish with a wand. It’s great stuff. The other books listed above are also extremely helpful, for this particular topic as well as a host of others.

One other tip, which is a tactic often used (in teaching videos, anyway) when the process cannot be avoided, is to ask, “Is that fair?” I guess the idea is that, if you can’t run away from the process, you might as well confront it head on and force the spectators to agree that at the very least it was fair, and to verbally commit to it. That’s another way to approach the problem, I suppose, but I can’t help but think that there must be a better way to approach a routine presentationally.