Dusting #64

The site will be away for spring break next week. (Spring Break = Getting my taxes finished and starting the book mailing.)

Regular posting resumes April 25th.

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Before we go further I want to clarify the upcoming schedule for current and (potential) future supporters of the site. “Clarify” might be the wrong word. I want to “finalize” the schedule because what I’ve said recently has been a little up in the air due to certain factors. But here, as of now, is the planned schedule:

This Weekend - An email will go out to supporters collecting their shipping fee and current address for the support rewards package.

Next Week Thru The End of the Month - The support packages will ship out.

May 2nd - The new support “season” will commence, with a new support structure in place. Current supporters will have first dibs on the available supporter slots. Depending on the interest of current supporters, I’ll decide if I’m going to keep going with the site and associated content. If so…

May 6th - Unclaimed supporter slots will be made available via this site.

That’s the plan.

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With my concerns about the supply chain setting back the production of the books and decks this year, one thing I failed to consider was that it would have a negative effect on my ability to get packaging. In past years, I’ve had custom-sized packaging printed for all the orders. This year that was going to set us back weeks. So, sadly, supporters won’t receive your book in a box like this

Or last year’s box which was cleverly disguised as a box of “luxury pinecones.”

Fortunately, the packaging we are using does an even better job at protecting the book, despite being much simpler than what we used in the past (a box built to the specifications of the book, inside a padded envelope).

If you look closely at this gif of a dryer, you will see two things inside. The first is a beach towel. The second is stiff white envelope inside which is this year’s book and deck of cards.

I was testing the new packaging in a dryer to simulate a book being tossed around by careless postal workers. (The bath towel is there because that’s what I used to sneak the package into the laundromat. I didn’t want people seeing me toss a package directly into the dryer like a goddamn sociopath. “Young man, that’s not a mailbox.”)

When I took the book out of the package it was in excellent condition. So the packaging might not be as fun this year but it will do the job of packaging, at least.

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Julien Losa is releasing Ted Annemann’s Jinx magazine, with a new layout and format for about seven bucks a month.

As he describes it:

Every Friday, one issue of The Jinx, retyped, corrected, with a better layout/design, making it a more comfortable experience to discover or rediscover the best magic and mindreading magazine of all time ! + Two videos a month with demos/tips of some tricks of The Jinx !

At first I thought, is this really necessary? But now I think it’s probably a pretty good idea.

I have the three-volume Tannen’s (?) set of the Jinx and while the material is great, it really isn’t the best reading experience—small font, and jumping around to finish an article and stuff like that. This could be considered part of the charm of reading the Jinx. But it also could just be considered a pain in the ass.

I think Julien’s enterprise is worthwhile, especially if you’ve never worked your way through the Jinx. Getting one issue per week could be a fun way to do it.

Here is the first issue of Julien’s re-formatting, so you can see if this is something you might be interested in. If so, you can sign up here.

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Remember last year when I did a week or so of posts on artificial intelligence? And I even had a contest for people to make videos inspired by those posts?

Well, somehow this video on how to be a magician was not one of those contest videos. This is a real thing, put out by a real youtube channel, presumably to be a helpful resource to people.

It’s a crazy video. Not as crazy as the content created by the AI that I was using for those posts last year. But it’s somehow weirder in a way. Like some of the advice is on the border of being legitimate/useful. And then thee’s stuff like, “Make sure your vest pockets are big so you can vanish plates.” I’m not 100% if the video was written by a robot, or just a very dull idiot.

Oh, and that same youtube channel put out the video below on how to french kiss. I figured a loser like you could probably use this. It’s three minutes longer than the video on how to become a magician. I guess that speaks to the relative difficulty of each enterprise.

Extinct - An Interactive Effect

I want to try something a little different with today’s post. Today I have a sort of interactive trick for you. If you’re distracted and aren’t able to give this post your full attention for the next few minutes, come back to it later. It definitely won’t work if you don’t follow along carefully. Read it straight through at a comfortable pace.

Besides your focused attention, you won’t need anything else to take part in this trick.

The trick we're going to do today deals with animals. Before we go any further, you need to remember these three animals: a bear, an elephant, and a goose.

For real, don’t continue reading until you have those animals fully memorized. I know it’s not a huge task to memorize a few animals but it can be more difficult than you’d imagine. So burn them into your brain now. I’m going to test you on them at the end of this post and I want to see how well you retain them without being reminded.

Once you have them in your mind, I want you to give some thought to the animals you’ve had in your life. Don’t focus too much on a current animal, focus on one you’ve lost.

Recently I remembered a traumatic experience from my childhood where I went hunting with my uncle.

Generally, you assume when you’re going hunting that you’re going for a trophy or meat or maybe both. But my uncle was just sadistic. He just wanted to kill something. He didn’t care what it was. The second animal we saw he just <BOOM> obliterated it completely. It was just gone.

Ever since then I’ve been a little skittish about owning or being around animals. They just seem too impermanent to me. So I never had pets. No dear animals for me.

That’s pretty much my history with animals.

That’s also why I probably never got into tricks with rabbits or doves or anything.

Heaven knows I couldn’t handle a trick utilizing a gun or something like that. Too traumatized for that.

Each of you should now be thinking of an animal from your past. I want you take just a second and imagine, in your mind as that animal vanishes. That’s it. That’s all the preparation you need.

Do you want to experience the trick now?

Everyone should look at the gif below for a few moments.

Each time the center of the gif turns red. I want you to think, “Gone.” Do that three or four times.

Ready?

Okay, that’s the end of the set-up for the trick. In truth this is probably only going to work for about 35% of you. But I’ll still consider that a success.

There was a group of animals I told you to remember at the top of this post. If this has worked, some of you will have forgotten the deer.

Now, how did I do that? The gif, of course, has nothing to do with it. That’s just there to distract your mind. In reality this trick is accomplished with neuro-linguistic programming and the power of some Kenton Knepper style Wonder Words.

I kept on talking about a “lost” animal to prime your mind to forget one of the animals mentioned.

Some of you may have forgotten one of the other animals listed, but I attempted to focus you on the deer (without specifically naming it) by mentioning its position as the second animal in the list.

“The second animal we saw he just <BOOM> obliterated it completely. It was just gone.”

“Each of you should now be thinking of an animal from your past. I want you take just a second and imagine, in your mind as that animal vanishes.”

I even told you, “No dear [deer] animals.”

And, of course, I’m sure some of you noticed (at least on a subconscious level) that the first letter of the paragraphs between the list of animals and the gif spelled out FORGET THE DEER.

Hopefully this trick worked on enough of you that you will put a lot of time and energy into creating effects that are based solely on psychology and the manipulation of words, as many people were doing 15-20 years ago after Derren Brown came on the scene. I think this trick proves that the manipulation of thoughts via language and suggestion is a real thing that really works well enough to base workable tricks around. It wasn’t just a 10 year detour that the most gullible mentalists went on because they confused Derren’s presentations with his methods. With any luck, the success of this effect has shown how strong and truly powerful a method that is SOLELY psychological can be. And it’s so much better to use those types of methods than to rely on some cheap trick.

Monday Mailbag #65

I’m breaking this first question into pieces to make it easier to answer.

Thanks for sharing the 3 act structure for audience members who you've just met. The 3 examples you gave [for the “third act” Audience-Centric trick] though all seem very believable.

The examples were:

1. “If you like that, you should see what my mentor can do.” (Third Party presentation)

2. “Actually you could probably learn to feel the colors if you want to try it.” (Spectator as Magician presentation)

3. “You should see this strange object I picked up from this weird guy at a magic convention.” (Unusual Object presentation)

Take the second one for instance, and let's say you go into some pseudo explanation of some phenomenon before doing OOTW. Isn’t the most natural response to accept the explanation at face value: believe that you are saying all this sincerely? (Which is what you don’t want).

Hmmmm… I”m not sure that’s the most “natural” response. Think about it this way…Imagine I performed OOTW in a magician-centric way as the “Third Act.” So you’ve seen two tricks and then I say, “I’m going to cause you to separate the red cards from the black cards via my my powers of mind control.” Or whatever.

How would you describe that full interaction? Well, you’d say you saw three magic tricks.

So now let’s imagine it with an Audience-Centric presentation. Maybe I guide you through this breathing technique that triggers a release of a certain chemical in your brain which briefly heightens your “color intuition.” (That’s not a particularly good example, but it will work for out purposes.)

Now, how would you describe that full interaction? Would you say?

“He showed me two magic tricks followed by a completely legitimate demonstration of heightened color intuition.”

Probably not. What I think you would say—or at least what I’m shooting for with this structure—is something like this:

“He showed me a magic trick. Then he showed me this new trick he’s working on that’s not completely finished yet. Then he showed me this thing which… it must have been a trick… or maybe?…hmmm…. Well, I was able to separate the red cards from the black cards. And we did this breathing technique beforehand which supposedly affected color intuition… but… that was probably just a story. I think? It had to be… I’m pretty sure. But the thing is, I did separate the colors. So how could that have been a trick? But also how could it not have been?”

You see, I want to play with your belief. (Belief is the medium.) That’s my goal at least.

In isolation, perhaps the “natural reaction” to the Audience-Centric trick would be for someone to believe you. But when it’s on the heels of seeing two magic tricks, I think it’s more likely that they’ll be fairly certain it’s a trick, but there will be elements that seem “un-trick-like” to them. The biggest of these “elements” being the fact that I’m not taking credit for what they’re seeing. Which goes against what people expect from a magic trick.

Lastly, what is the spirit of the performing style? Is it tongue in cheek, or matter of fact? —RK

I don’t do anything “tongue in cheek.” I don’t do anything with a wink. To me that feels like infantilizing the audience. “If I didn’t change my tone to suggest I’m not serious, then you would believe me when I said I can read your dog’s mind.”

If I’m ever concerned someone is taking things too seriously, then the “tool” I use to fix that is just to present something even more unbelievable with the same tone and attitude I present the thing they believed. Eventually people will catch on that they should engage with these interactions as they would any other piece of fiction. If there are elements that seem real or feel real in the moment—great. But it’s not my goal to get them to believe in the breathing technique, or the “area of reverse-gravity” in my kitchen, or the leprechaun who gave me the lucky coin.

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Do you do a pass, and if so, which one? Is there an “amateur’s pass” or something like that? —SS

No, i don’t really do a pass too often, other than in some very rare circumstances.

One thing I learned when helping to conduct the “suspicion testing” many years ago, is that holding the deck with two hands is enough to pique people’s suspicion. So just getting into the position to do a pass can already put you at a disadvantage because that alone can seem questionable to people. So if you do do a pass, that’s something to consider. When are you naturally holding the deck with two hands? When turning it over. When replacing a card. When squaring it up. If I was doing a pass I would always try and anchor it to one of those actions. Because otherwise it doesn’t matter how “invisible” your pass is, because what they’re noticing is the moment you hold the deck with two hands for no reason—not necessarily the moment you actually shift the packets.

I’m sure these are ideas that are well-discussed in circles where the pass is done frequently. I’m just mentioning it because in our testing we saw actual hard data that supports this.

Is there an amateur’s pass?

Yes, kind of. There is in the sense that there’s a secret deck cutting action that is more useful for the amateur performer than the professional. And that’s the Charlier Cut. The Charlier Cut is, of course, a completely visible cutting action. But, as an amateur performer, you often only have one set of eyes you need to account for. So as long as your spectator isn’t looking at the deck in that moment, you can get away with a visible cutting action, because it’s not visible if no one is looking at it.

If I’m performing for you and I’ve put your card into the middle of the deck, and my hand drops down. I can now stand next to you and focus your attention outward and the deck is completely out of view. This is perfectly natural. We did something with the deck, and now I’m just holding onto it casually until we need it again. The idea that I’m doing something with one hand without looking at the deck is not something that is going to occur to most of the people I perform for because that would be giving me credit for a skill I’ve never really exhibited to them. (If you’ve openly done a lot of one-handed cuts and shuffles, that might be different.)

I could even make an argument that holding a deck in one hand below a table edge as I focus on the spectator or something on the table, is less suspicious than the deck held above the table in two hands.

So yeah, the Charlier Cut is what I would consider the Amateur's Pass. Not because it’s easy, but because you can get away with it as a hidden action more in amateur performing situations than you could in professional ones.

(Getting from a pinky-break to a Charlier cut isn’t too difficult but might take a few times to get the feel for it if you haven’t done it before. You simply kick the top packet to the left and then lift it up with your thumb to get into the Charlier cut action. If it’s a little messy, that’s okay because you’r not doing this as a flourish.)

Dustings #63

There is a moment of sheer terror I face once a year. It’s the moment when my new book gets delivered to my publisher’s house. I meet up with him there and we crack open the first box. What will we find? Will it look as we planned or will it be totally jacked up in some way I didn’t expect? You might think, “Well, Andy, don’t you see some sort of proof copy of the book before they print all of them?” No, not really. There is certainly some way to do this, but my publishing schedule is so tight that taking the time for this step never seems worth it. So we just look at a pdf proof and roll the dice from there.

I think I have PTSD from my second book, Magic For Young Lovers. I can’t remember if I told this story before. Probably. But anyway, the cover for MFYL had a silhouette of a couple looking at each other.

It seemed like a fairly simple cover. But what no one at the book printer mentioned to us was that some of the detail on the cover was too fine for the pigment stamping process that we were using. So when the books were delivered to us, instead of looking like they do above, they looked something like this. (This is just a bad photoshop recreation)

So details in the hair and lips were covered over. And it was clear pigment was in areas it shouldn’t be in because the stamping process debosses the image and there was splotches of color all over the raised areas as well. (You don’t need to be able to picture it. Just trust me that it looked jacked up.)

So when I opened the first box of books to see how they came out, I was like:

So what do you do at that point? It’s not the sort of issue you would get the printer to fix. Even if you did send back a pallet of books, you’d end up waiting weeks or months to get them back. Do you just ship the book off to people and tell them to deal with it? I had no clue. What we ended up doing was getting some small knives and razor blades and painstakingly scraping off the excess pigment on the areas of each and every cover where it shouldn’t be. It sucked.

That’s why book #3 had such a simple cover. I wasn’t going to fall into that trap again.

I got my balls back with book #4 and we did our most intricate cover yet.

With the upcoming book we changed the type of cover, printing and binding we did with previous books. So I was once again holding my breath when we cracked open the box to see what we would find. I was relieved to see the books looking almost perfect. (There was an issue of something not being perfectly centered on the spine due to the inexactness of the book printing/binding process, but I can deal with that.)

All in all, I think the new book looks dope, and I’m excited for supporters to receive their copy.

I’m waiting for the shipping supplies to arrive. An email will go out to supporters collecting their shipping fee and current address next week. Then the books will be sent out over the course of the rest of the month.

(For those who have been wanting a supporter slot for upcoming seasons of the Jerx, I will be launching the new support structure later this month. I’m not going to be adding any more full-supporter slots. But some current supporters are very likely to drop out due to the change in structure. So if you’re interested, that will likely be your time to grab a spot.)

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Supporters will also be receiving the next Jerx Deck.

It’s a very bad marked deck. A concept I first described four years ago in this post. But unlike the deck I mentioned in that post, the markings aren’t small. They’re simultaneously obvious, and also completely incomprehensible. It does work as a marked deck. It’s just a terrible one.

If anyone ever accuses you of using a marked deck you say, “Are you kidding? Have you ever actually seen a marked deck? They’re really not like you imagine. The type of marked deck where you can just immediately know the card by looking at the back is the stuff out of movies not real life. In reality, marked decks aren’t that useful. I think I have one I can show you. Hold on.”

You come back holding a deck.

“Okay, first thing to do in order to determine if someone is using a marked deck is to check the case. By law they have to mention that it’s a marked deck on the card box. See here?”

And you take it from there to explain to them how a “real” marked deck works.

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Our boys over at Vanishing Inc are going to solve the Ukraine issue this weekend in the only way it can be solved… with a virtual magic convention! So long, Mr. Putin, your days are numbered!

Actually it looks like a good line-up and it’s a good cause. The schedule is here. And you can sign-up here.

I mean, what else do you got going on this weekend? A date with some attractive guy or girl you won over with your charming personality? Let’s get real, we both know that’s not the case. Your options for this weekend are either this, Elden Ring, or that thing you do where you go to a public bathroom and you “accidentally” forget to lock the door so you can get your sick thrill when someone walks in on you with your pants around your ankles.

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How awesome would it have been to see Tom Mullica redo this scene, except with like 40 cigarettes crammed into his undoubtedly disgusting mouth? That would have been the best.

Quinta Ideas

If you don’t have Phill Smith’s Quinta, in one of the many forms it has been released, you can skip this post. It won’t make much sense. I’m not going to explain everything because I assume if you own it then you’ll be able to put two and two together. (Or instead of skipping this post you can buy Quinta. His Penguin Live lecture gives the basics of the effect. And his ebook gives a real deep dive into it.)

When I perform Quinta, I like to have the rules of the procedure clarified verbally (or printed somewhere) so that I can’t change anything. So the audience always know I’m counting from the left and starting with the first object as number 1. If you know Quinta, you know that requires me to control two variables. I have a number of techniques I use to control those variables. Here are a few…

[I’m almost positive these are my ideas, but I’ve learned Quinta from Phill in a bunch of different formats, so it’s possible one of these ideas was mentioned there and I forgot that’s where I learned it and thought I made it up. In which case, Phill, let me know so I can update this post.]

Idea #1

Number choice for two spectators.

“We’re going to try and create a synchronicity. Adam, think of a number between 1 and 50. Bob, I want you to try and focus in on Adam’s number. Adam, give him a hint. Is it odd or even. Okay… now Bob. Do you have something in mind? 40? Adam… what were you thinking of? 8. Hmm….

“Okay, that’s not actually the synchronicity I had in mind. I was just hoping for some dumb luck. As you can see on this sheet. Before the show I wrote some instruction. The first line says to add up your two thought of numbers…”

Idea #2

Number choice for one or more spectators

“Okay, we’re all going to write down a secret number from 1-30 on your napkin. Don’t let me see. Then we’re going to add up our numbers so we have one ‘group number’ none of us could have foreseen.”

Everyone (including you) writes down a number and places their napkin face down on the table. You go around the table with each person turning over their napkin to reveal their numbers.

By paying attention to how many odd numbers are revealed you’ll know if you have to say, “And my number was 12,” or, “And my number was 21.”

You can do this with just one other spectator. Or, however many you have. But after four or so people, the number could get pretty high. I don’t actually mind a high number myself. I like the time it takes to count. But I’m weird that way.

Idea #3

Pre Count Positioning Technique

This is an idea that can be used on its own, but for the sake of this description, presume it’s used with the previous idea.

On the table is a set of instructions that look like this

In each circle is a coin. The instructions are folded over so you can’t read them.

Now, depending on what the total is, you either do this

In which case the circles on the sheets are seen as placeholders for where to set the coins.

Or you do this

You let the coins slide out, and now those circles are just an illustration of what the spectator sees before them.

Either way, the instructions are so direct and definitive it would seem very unlikely the spectator would be able to think of this as a force.

Now, would I go to this trouble to force one in five coins? No, most likely not. I’m just explaining a basic concept here that can be extrapolated into a routine that has some meaning. This particular technique with the paper doesn’t need to force coins, of course. it could force any small flat object (which could be representative of some larger object or concept).

I have a similar technique to this that I use which works with any small non-flat object too. But that’s for another day.

Monday Mailbag #64

I recently performed Any Man Behind Any Curtain [From the JAMM #5] for family. I couldn't convince anyone to be the magician so instead I used an auto text app on my phone to send the texts at different periods throughout the night (with options to adjust the final message). To be honest no-one even looked at the texts it was just enough that I checked my phone occasionally. Everyone was blown away by it, including me! So refreshing to perform without being the centre of attention. The magician in question is now a legend in my family!

There was one interesting ruffle in that the pack of cards I found had the jokers in. I chose to leave them in, adjusting the positioning of the cards accordingly. What I didn't count on was that the person dealing through the deck got to the joker (they went with Clubs so were dealing face up) and went to put them aside as if they didn't "count". I just said "Oh I think we should include the jokers" and put it back on the pile. Funnily enough this increased the mystery as on the reveal they said "we even changed our minds about including the jokers!". My participation did not occur to them in the slightest, wonderful. —TC

Thanks for sharing your experience. Any Man Behind Any Curtain is an ACAAN effect done with a Third Party presentation (meaning, a presentation where someone else besides you is apparently behind the trick, and you are just another spectator).

This is one of my favorite ways to perform a trick. It takes the heat off all kinds of moves or techniques that might otherwise be questionable if I was taking credit for the trick myself. Things that would never fly with a Magician-Centric presentation are often completely unnoticed when your role is also “spectator.”

Third Party presentations allows us to capitalize on the idea that magic tricks are frequently done to serve the magician’s ego. When people believe that, on any level, they are completely disarmed when you are are seemingly someone who is equally confused and amazed. It just doesn’t occur to most people that you would be behind a trick and not take credit for it.

Third Party presentations are particularly useful when you have a person in your life who you feel might be holding back a little with their reactions. You get to model being fooled and find excitement in it, and they will see that succumbing to a magic trick doesn’t have to make them feel dumb. It can be a joyous thing.

Once you try it, you’ll likely want to do Third Party presentations a lot. I would recommend against it. At least don’t do it too often for the same audience. As I was writing last week about breaking up Magician/Audience-Centric presentations, if you do this too much it won’t be special. It will soon be just “the way he shows people magic tricks” by pretending someone else is doing them. Two, maybe three, times a years is a good limit for how often you show the same spectators something in this style.

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[What are] your thoughts on [the] new trick, Minted?

I bought this at Blackpool a few weeks ago partially on the basis that I own Industrial Revelation but don’t use it very much because of its weight and (in the hands on determined alpha male types) its secret mechanism is discoverable. Minted solved both of those problems for me by being lighter, more portable and the tube shape makes it even harder to pull apart unless you know exactly what you’re doing).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the trick and can’t watch the video above at the moment, Minted is a trick where you push an object down the middle of a roll of Lifesavers (or something similar). Then you reveal that what’s inside the roll is actually a solid brass tube.

The predecessors to this trick are things like the traditional Matchbox Penetration and Industrial Revelation. I don’t own Minted, but I have owned those tricks and other similar ones in the past. And I’ve always gotten a smaller reaction with these tricks than I would have expected. These effects excite magicians but there is a weakness for them with laymen. And that weakness is that it’s a trick that completely happens in the spectator’s memory. It doesn’t happen in real time. The trick is only a trick retroactively. In the moment, you’re just pushing something through a matchbox, or a card box, or a roll of lifesavers. All things which are totally possible. It’s only when you say, “Ah, but there is a brass thingy in here!” that they’re supposed to be impressed.

This feels like it should be a strong structure for a trick. And in a way it is. But when you talk to people after they’ve seen a trick like this you will very often hear something like, “I must have missed something. I didn’t know what to look for.” They will give this answer regardless of how clean the effect/handling is.

You need to tell people what to notice. “Don’t say the card box is empty, just flash the empty box.” This type of standard magic advice can only come from people who have never really talked to their audience about what they’re thinking after the effect. You can’t just assume people remember everything. Especially in casual situations. (For more information on this, read this post on establishing the condition of your effect.)

So here are a couple of different ways I’ve performed the Matchbox Penetration to eliminate the Easy Answer of “Oh, I didn’t know what to look for. I must have missed something.”

Version 1: Eliminate the Surprise - I would say during the penetration, “You might think this matchbox has matches in it. Or that it’s empty. But actually there’s a solid brass block that fills the whole thing. Yup. A solid brass block. Impressed much?”

Yes, you lose the surprise element here. But not completely. If you act like you’re not going to show it to them and you just want them to take your word on it, then it can still be a surprise at the end when there really is a thing of brass inside there. And, importantly, by telling them what the effect is, they know to look closely. Your hands are empty. There’s nothing poking out the back of the box. The match is really going through the middle, etc.

Version 2: Filmic Evidence - This is how I’ve performed these types of tricks in recent years. Here’s the thing, this sort of trick tends to be VERY CLEAN. But then we end up performing it in a way that doesn’t take advantage of that fact, because the spectator doesn’t know to notice how clean it is in the moment.

So what I do is I ask them to record a video on their phone of something I’m working on. Then I make sure they have a good close-up on everything. I show them the match penetrating the box. “That’s clear, yes? You can see the match going through the center of the box, yeah?” Then, without the box ever leaving the frame, I will take the phone and drop the box in their hand where they can open it and reveal the brass block.

So they still get the surprise of the brass block, but now they can’t say, “Oh, I must have missed something.” Well, they can still say that, but now they have the recording on their phone to rewatch. I would say at least 75% of the time they immediately go to watch it. Which is absolutely fine because there’s nothing to see, so they just end up more fooled.

I’ll admit, this doesn’t make for the most “enchanting” presentation. For whatever reason, it’s very difficult to pull any emotional resonance out of a penetration effect, so I don’t particularly bother. But in situations where I’m looking for a quick, solid fooler, this is a good option. (Sadly, it’s very googleable.)

The Three Act Immersion Strategy

No post today. Sorry guys.

April Fools. There is a post. And you’re reading it right now. Oh my god. You totally believed it. You big dumb dummy! You were like, “Duhr, okay… I guess I’ll go to some other site because there’s no post today.” Holy shit. You should see your face.

No… seriously. You should see your face. See it like I do. See the beauty I see in you. You are beautiful.

And that’s NO joke. That’s just a scientific fact. You’re beautiful, Dave.

(Oh, man. Can you imagine if your name is Dave and your favorite magic blogger just called you beautiful? I bet you’d be freaking out. And you’d feel ready to take on the world. But I know your name isn’t really Dave. It’s Matt.)

(Holy shit. Can you imagine if your name is Matt? And you just read that thing about Dave and you’re thinking, “Did he just throw a random name in here so it would apply to some certain percentage of his readers?” And then I specifically call you out and say, “No, that’s not what I did. This message is for you, Matt.” You probably don’t know what to think right now. But yes, I have to admit, I did just throw a random name in there so it would hit for some of you. The truth is I actually know your name is Chris.)

Where was I…

Wednesday’s post, which talks about how I split up Audience-Centric vs Magician-Centric material, also offers you a very, very simple, fast—but not abrupt—way to introduce alternative types of magic presentations to your spectators.

Now, this is a process that I normally take my time with, just because that’s what I prefer. But this is a way you can do it much more quickly. In fact, you could even do this over the course of one interaction with someone who hasn’t seen you perform before.

It would be a three-step process.

1. Magician-Centric Trick

2. Unfinished Magician-Centric Trick

3. Audience-Centric Trick

So you start with, whatever, Ring Flight, for example. You perform it in a standard sort of way. Borrow the ring, make it vanish, and it reappears on your keyring. Your spectator applauds this useless skill.

Now, it’s very rare to perform a trick for someone and have them immediately change the subject to something else. If you find this happening a lot. that suggests an issue with your performance.

So after the initial Magic-Centric trick, while the subject of magic is still in the air, that’s when you say something like. “Actually… would it be possible to get your help with something I’ve been working on? That thing with the keys and the ring is just an old sleight-of-hand trick. I’ve been trying to branch out and learn some…. more unusual…types of tricks. But I sort of need an outsider’s feedback to see if it works.” You’re setting up the idea that you want to show them something else (either now or at a later point in time). This thing you want to show them is something unfinished. They’re getting a peek at something that others haven’t really seen yet. And this is something stranger than the type of trick they just saw. All of this is going to build upon the interest you generated with the first trick.

So now you do your Unfinished Magician-Centric Trick. Let’s say you read their mind of a word they’re thinking. It’s a little rough, and not completely direct, but you bring it to a successful conclusion.

Now, because they’re seeing the “behind the scenes” of a “work in progress” it makes perfect sense that you’d be talking about how you go about learning these things or how you initially got into magic or something tangential to your actual performance.

That makes it very simple to transition into an Audience-Centric trick.

• “If you liked that, you should see what my mentor can do. It’s insane. He can do mind reading stuff even when he’s not in the same room. Wait, let me text him.”

• “I guess I initially got started when I was a kid and my neighbor taught me how to… intuit, I guess you’d say… the colors of playing cards. We wanted to get good enough so we could cheat at cards. We never got that good with the technique to know full cards. But being able to sort of feel the colors isn’t too difficult. I could probably teach you.”

• “Actually, I was at a convention they hold for magicians recently, and there was this one guy off in a corner with a folding table who was selling something really strange. I have no clue how this works. If you ever stop over my place, I’ll show it to you. Oh, actually… wait. I think it might be out in my car.”

Or whatever your Audience-Centric presentation might consist of.

The nice thing about this is that each trick provides a Hook for the next trick. It’s a little three-act structure where the tricks don’t need to be tied together thematically. Instead they’re tied together by just all being part of the same world. “Here’s a finished trick. Oh, you liked that? Well, maybe you’d like to see this work in progress. Oh, you like that? Well, maybe you’d be interested in a further peek into the workings of magic, or the interests of someone who studies magic.”

The power of this structure is that it allows you to get to some far-out places pretty quickly without it being too jarring for the spectator who has only been exposed to magic presented in a traditional manner. Does that make sense, Chris?