Ye Olde Magick Blogge

The series of articles that I wrote on exposure for the old blog were all done before I started working professionally in Vancouver, and aside from some professional experience in Korea, I was coming at the problem from the point of view of an amateur. Over the course of the last year, I’ve done approximately 50 or so close-up gigs, and have had a chance to re-think much of what I wrote before. There’s a certain irony to the fact that it was a failure to fool kids with the Ambitious Card in Korea due to exposure that led me to abandon the trick and take up exposure as a topic of interest, only to end up where I am now, no longer really worried about exposure and actually doing the Ambitious Card on a regular basis for audiences.

So, how do I feel about them now?

Part 1′s Key points: You don’t have to abandon a method just because it’s exposed. Keep the method and change the trick. Spectators remember the effect first and the method second.

For the most part I think this holds up, but it can be taken further. If Juan Tamariz’s work has shown us anything, it’s that’s it’s possible to do a trick that’s been exposed, using the methodology that’s been exposed, and still fool people with it. If you’re not ready (or able) to do the harder work necessary to accomplish that, then the recommendations in Part 1 should be a good short-term solution. That sounds a bit snottier than it’s meant to, but it’s true — put in the hard work and thoughtful study, or else invest in a good routine that somebody’s successfully performed for a long time, and you’ll find that you don’t have to worry about the Masked Magician as much. Really, what we’re talking about is putting some time to craft out not just the method, but the method’s surrounding context. Obviously, if you change the trick entirely, there’s going to be a more drastic change in context, but you don’t always have to go that far.

Part 2′s Key Points: Gimmicks and gaffes are your friends. Don’t shy away from them.

I wrote this originally when it was a situation where I was spending a great deal of time studying sleight of hand, and I was discovering to my dismay that some of the sleight of hand techniques I was doing were getting “out there”. For the most part I agree with what I wrote, although again there’s a more general point to be taken away from it — there’s more than one way to skin a cat. If they’re expecting you to do one thing, then being ready to do another will help. That said, it isn’t necessarily about switching away from sleight-of-hand to gimmicks (or vice-versa) — you don’t need to be that drastic. I’m not using a gimmicked method to do the Ambitious Card, but I’m still able to fool people with it. Still, it’s probably worth point out that it is a very potent combination to take your polished sleight-of-hand skills and then introduce a physically unfair condition of some sort, such as an extra ball or a pull or a thumbtip or something, and using the two in tandem. Look how well it’s worked for Tommy Wonder and David Regal.

Part 3′s Key Points: If you don’t want to get busted on a method, eliminate tells of the method. If the process contains within it the necessarily information to deconstruct the effect, then obfuscate the process.

I still agree pretty much with this one, as well as many of the pieces of advice involved in obfuscating the process, most of which are gleaned from good advice other magicians have given. I think maybe John Carney’s point about the retention of vision false transfer wasn’t the best example, though, since it needs to be brought into a larger discussion. The ROV FT can be used to accomplish a specific aim, that of adding a convincer that the coin is really going into the other hand. Even if you get rid of the ROV FT because it looks too move-y (which is a fair opinion to have) you still have to deal with the fact that spectator’s suspicions will evolve over the course of the trick, and you’ll need to find some other way to deal with them. It’s not enough to just drop the ROV FT and assume your magic is getting better. Consider Carney’s construction of the Cylinder and Coins trick, where he starts with the FT principle, before moving to stealing techniques, a strategy that deals with the problem. Also, in pretty much every trick of repetition, it’s harder to misdirect off the process since it’s naturally going to come under more scrutiny. Still, the general idea of eliminating tells holds up.

Part 4′s Key Points: You can use an audience’s knowledge of exposed methods against them. Understanding what they know can allow you to switch up methods or even use the method they actually know.

Yeah, I still believe in the key points there, although it’s worth pointing out that you really want to figure out what your audience’s suspicions are going to be when they’re going to witness your effect. Tyler Erickson made the point that Michael Close’s approach to the Invisible Deck uses a methodology that, while impressive, would probably come too close to the intuitive solution, if you asked a spectator how the magician might have done the trick. Yes, Close can hand out the deck afterwards if he wants, but is this really what they’re thinking about when they see the ID for the first time? Here’s a situation where switching the method based on what you think they know might not be the best idea. Still, the larger idea I believe has merits, which is that understanding your audience’s suspicions offers its own potential points of leverage for a magician to take advantage of.

It’s worth mentioning that at the end of the essay I talked about being more willing to abandon a routine rather than go about trying to oversell magic as a cause to a skeptical audience, and confessed that it was probably laziness. I was right — it was laziness, and tackling the problem I had with the Ambitious Card allowed me to basically reclaim a routine that I’d long shunned. Now, I’ve got a routine that I’m really happy with, but I’m not kidding about the fact that it took some work to design and takes some work to execute — for that routine alone I use about a half-dozen methods to pull it off, and it’s a very tricky trying to make each and every phase indistinguishable from the other. It’s tough, but it’s also worth it.

Part 5′s Key Points: The harder the method, the fewer people are going to be using it, and the less likely it will end up being something exposed. The easier a method is to grasp, the more people are going to want to use it, and the more likely it will end up being exposed.

I think, for the most part, this holds up — I can understand that some methodologies are just so inherently fascinating that they’d be interesting subjects for exposure, but I think that the easier a method is to grasp, the more likely it’ll be remembered, the more people will be able to pass it along. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for somebody to explain to somebody else the complete workings of Tommy Wonder’s Watch in Nest of Boxes? But it doesn’t mean that you’ve got to turn every trick into a weird Rube Goldberg construction just to fool people. Basically, I’ve found that if you take the time to really embrace an effect, you can find lots of ways to add details to it that help the illusion and complicate things for those who try to figure it out. But there are perils with this as well, I think. Just as changing methodologies might lead to you improving a trick worse, it takes work to keep a complicated methodology from leading to a complicated presentation. Bruce Cervon had a version of cards across that I found pretty difficult to enjoy, because even though he’d managed to find all of these great convincers for his take on the trick, it didn’t have the clarity of somebody who’d taken the “Mind Movie” approach to designing the effect. Yeah, the signed cards travel, but three people besides the magician are involved, two different spectators are counting cards, and after the counting one of them and a third spectator each have to spread through half the remainder of the deck to find two cards they like to sign them, sometimes cards are being counted onto the table and sometimes into the magician’s hand, the points of focus are constantly shifting, the magician is touching cards all over the place, and there’s a handkerchief involved for some reason… Even if simple methods are more likely to be exposed, sometimes simpler is better.

Part 6′s Key Points: The Internet is a double-edged sword. It’s great for helping magicians get good information. It’s also great for helping the wrong people get good information. We might need to start throwing some more barriers up.

I’ll be honest with you — the more I perform and analyze the people I’m performing for, the less I worry about the average spectator being some sort of dirty magic secret hunter, and the more I construct intelligently, the less I worry about the dirty magic secret hunters when they do show up. That said, one of the best ways to keep a secret is to keep the damned secret, and right now, we as magicians aren’t doing that. It might have been easier to keep secrets prior to the internet, but in all seriousness the proliferation of magic techniques out there is really our own fault. Trust me, I know how tempting it is to want to share good information with your magician buddies, but if we want to slow down the dialogue of magic technique outside the magic community, then we should probably think long and hard about the dialogue we’re having on magic technique within the magic community. Their knowledge is coming from somewhere.

Part 7′s Key Points: The more they’re entertained, the less willing (and arguably able) they’re going to be to use their cognitive faculties to figure out the trick. If the only thing separating a magician from his audience is that he’s privy to the secrets, then they’re going to be more likely to care about the secrets.

While I don’t know if I wrote this up as well as I could have, I do think there’s something to this. Guys like Blaine, Copperfield and Angel have done good work on making sure that the effect is put front and center, and maybe that’s the key to their successes, but I think it also puts them at greater risk for being targets of exposure. I think, with success, comes responsibility — Derren Brown’s been very good about making sure that his magic can withstand the greater scrutiny that inevitably comes with being a more public figure, and for the most part he’s simply not giving audiences enough information to figure out the tricks. But does that mean that we need what Derren Brown has in order to be successful and resist the effects of exposure? I don’t think so. Whit Haydn made the point that a great magic trick executed competently can be a powerful experience for a regular spectator regardless of who performs it, and while I think that’s true, at the same time I think that should be the minimum standard that we apply to ourselves. Entertainment can be leveraged to get their minds off the methodology. One can go too far with this, and in an effort to add entertaining bits sacrifice the clarity of the magic, but for the most part, making sure that they like the process of watching your magic can help keep them from wanting to destroy it in their minds by picking it apart looking for methodology.

Part 8′s Key Points: It’s possible to construct a routine so that you can deal not just with exposed secrets, but with any possible non-magical explanation for what you just did. Aim high, deal with and destroy every suspicion, and you’ll not only effectively combat exposure, you’ll have magic that fewer and fewer people will be able to penetrate. Study Juan Tamariz, his theory of false solutions, and cancelling methods.

This is probably the single greatest piece of advice in this whole mess of pontificating. I have no doubt that one of the reasons why my Ambitious Card routine construction has been successful for me is that it takes advantage of this mindset. If they’re looking for one thing, they’re going to get evidence that dispels it, but if they switch thoughts and start looking for something else, they’re going to get evidence that dispels that. I’ve also had a chance to try out Tyler Erickson’s construction for the 2-in-the-hand/1-in-the-pocket plot — it cancels as well, and it’s also proven tough for regular people to figure out. Dai Vernon’s Cups and Balls, Al Flosso’s Miser’s Dream, Whit Haydn’s Teleportation Device, Carlyle’s and Grippo’s Homing Card, Tommy Wonder’s Ambitious Card routine… all of these strong pieces of magic take advantage of the benefits of cancelling methods, and they’re all available on Youtube to study. Being exposed to Juan Tamariz’s thoughts on all this really was the turning point where I stopped being scared about exposure. I’m telling you from personal experience there really isn’t anything to be scared of, if you’re willing to put the work into your magic.

Part 9′s Key Points: Penn and Teller’s may expose, but they’re not bad for magic. Arguably, their routines are more thought-provoking, and their way of dealing with the audience is more honest and less insulting to their intelligence than your average magician’s.

My thoughts on this are pretty much unchanged, and I think it’s a symptom of what happens when you empower yourself so that exposure can’t hurt you. You don’t have to like them, but you don’t have to fear them either. What’s more, if you’re at all interested, the Jester archetype which I describe within this essay, pretty much accurately describes my current performing character. I’ve found it to be a very workable way of relating to audiences.

Part 10′s Key Points: Quit being lazy, and quit worrying about something that isn’t going to go away. Construct effects well so that people who’ve seen an exposure video ahead of time will still be fooled, and learn presentational strategies that will shape their memory of the trick so that people won’t be able to find what they need from exposure videos after your performance. If you’re an amateur, you might even have more weapons against exposure than a professional.

Most of these ideas aren’t mine, they’re Tyler Erickson’s. Still, much of it has proven itself true. One thing that I think is particularly potent, and which I suspect not enough magicians take advantage of (I know I’m certainly not), is the idea of trying to morph their memory of the effect you’ve just performed. I do know from experience that spectators frequently leave tricks with exaggerated ideas about what took place — many times they’re predisposed to doing it with no help from me. If there’s a chance to take this further and improve the trick that exists in their memory of the effect, why not do it? (Note to self: starting doing it.)

And that’s pretty much that. I’m fairly positive that this essay won’t be the ultimate last word on exposure, but I think it’ll be my last word. Despite the fact that I was originally quite worried about exposure, I honestly, sincerely believe that the current situation isn’t anything to be afraid of for magicians who are willing to put work into their magic. And if I can say anything from the humble successes I’ve had over the course of the last year, it’s that the effort is worth it.