Introducing the Virtual Focus Group

Back when I was doing my old site, I would get my friends together and show them videos of magicians performing and then I’d write up their comments in a series of Zagat review style posts. These days I do a much more intense version of that sort of thing with the focus group testing I’ve been involved with in New York City.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to do something in between. As I mentioned in this post, this site is going to change going into the next season. The posts are going to be more casual, dumber, and shorter. The total amount of content will remain similar, but the stuff I feel has particular value will come in a monthly newsletter that will expand on the X-Comm newsletters that I’ve done for the past few years.

One of the features I’m planning on having in the new incarnation of the newsletter is a Virtual Focus Group (until I come up with a better name for it). Here’s how it will work. I’ll have a group of 20 laymen that we identify from short-term gig job sites. We’ll screen out anyone with knowledge/interest in magic. Once a month, we’ll send them a few short videos to watch and give their comments on. After three months they will be cycled out of the program (unless they prove to have some sort of incredible insight, then maybe I’ll keep them on in a different role). They’ll get $20/month for about a half an hour’s easy work. I think it’s a win-win for everyone.

“You’re going to pay $400 a month to have laypeople comment on magic videos?” Well, yes, I’m the one writing the check, but that money comes from the people who support the site (hence the reason it will be supporter-only content). I’m happy to reinvest that money and I think it’s the sort of thing supporters of this site are interested in too.

I love the unbiased, unvarnished responses we get in testing. What I think I’m better at than most magicians is maintaining a layperson’s sensibilities about things. But it’s impossible to be as good as an actual layperson. It’s one thing to listen to your audience, but they might be friends, or they might have paid good money to see you, that’s going to color their reaction. You can’t really trust reactions you see in demo videos. And listening to the feedback of other magicians is next to useless.

I’m still trying to figure out the details on how the Virtual Focus Group will work: what questions I will ask, how they’ll view the material, if I’ll do follow-ups, etc. But I ran a little test a couple days ago with five people I picked up off Craigslist. (No, not whores. They don’t even have that section on Craigslist anymore, sadly. Uhm.. I mean… good. It’s good they don’t have that section anymore.)

I sent them five demo videos of recently released effects. I had edited the videos so they just showed the trick, not any of the other promotional information. So even if they wanted to, it would be difficult for them to do further research on an effect.

I asked for three pieces of information about each effect:

• Describe the trick.

• Rate how impossible the trick seemed to you.

• What is your best explanation for how the trick was done?

For a few of the tricks, the response was about what I expected. But a couple received an interesting reaction.

The first comes from Penguin. It’s called Forgotten Princess. It’s a presentational variation on the Princess Card Trick where you—according to the ad copy—”Erase a memory, then bring it back.” So instead of the card just “vanishing” as in the original version, the conceit is that the spectator is forgetting the card. I didn’t really give it too much thought.

But then when I heard back from the respondents, in the area where I asked them to “describe the trick,” no one came back with anything related to “forgetting” or “memory.” A couple people said they weren’t clear on what the effect was. The remaining respondents said things like, “The magician knew the card she was thinking of.” And, “He made her card vanish and then come back.”

Now, I’m willing to concede that they might not have understood the trick because there is not a continuous performance of the trick in the demo. But I think there may be a bigger issue than that. As I watched the demo again I thought, “Well, I don’t think I really understand the trick either.”

From the primary spectator’s perspective what is supposed to be happening? Put yourself in their position. I show you five cards. You think of the King of Hearts. I pull one out and set it on the table. “I’m going to make you forget the card you chose.” I show you the remaining four cards, the King of Hearts isn’t in there. So you assume that’s the card I have removed. But then I put that card back in the fan and show you the cards and there still is no King of Hearts. Then I snap my fingers, re-spread the cards, and the King of Hearts is back. At what point along the way did you apparently “forget” anything?

You didn’t forget it when I showed you the four cards.

You didn’t forget it when I showed you the five cards. (If you had forgotten it, you wouldn’t be able to say if the card was there or not.)

You didn’t forget it when the card came back. The whole time you’re looking for the King of Hearts and that’s the card that came back. From your perspective the card is not there, then it is, but you knew what card you were looking for the whole time. So the idea that I “plucked the memory of that card from your head,” doesn’t really track.

Perhaps, this is intended as a dual reality trick. To the other observers it may seem like the person forgets the card? I’m not sure. It’s a close-up trick though, which is a fairly weak area for dual reality. And the laypeople I had watch the video didn’t “get” the memory thing regardless.

Conclusion: I’m not sure the Princess Card Trick works as a demonstration of a psychological illusion (any more than any vanish would—David Copperfield: “I made you forget the Statue of Liberty!”)

If you want to present the trick in a more psychological manner, I don’t know if “memory” is the right path to take. If I were doing it, I’d probably talk about “psychological scotomas” (blindspots). “Have you ever been searching all over for your keys, and you’re going crazy because you have somewhere you need to be, but you can’t find them anywhere? Then you look at the coffee table for the fifth time and there they are. They were right in front of your face but you couldn’t see them before. Your mind blocked them out. Well, there’s a way to induce this sort of sensation. Are you okay with that? I promise it’s temporary.”

So they think of a card. You do something (don’t just snap your fingers like a lazy all-powerful piece of shit). And when you spread the cards their thought-of card is gone. They see a blank face where the card should be (Or maybe you could have a card with a super blurry image on it.) Then you snap them out of it and their card is back. The idea being you’ve somehow generated a blindspot for them, making it so they can’t see the card they were thinking of.

I’m not sure if that’s any good. But I think there is a stronger logic to it than in the “memory” version.

The next trick that got an interesting response was Card Flex by Mario Tarasini and Ellusionist.

Watch it and ask yourself this question, “What is supposed to be going on here?” It’s something none of the five respondents could clearly answer.

I guess the answer is supposed to be, “The magician pushes a card through a bill. And while it’s through the bill, the card separates in two pieces and then is restored.”

That’s some straight gobbledygook right there. There’s a somewhat glaring issue with this trick. When you do a penetration effect (like card through bill) you want to make sure the audience believes these are two solid objects. You know what really takes away from that impression? When you then go and split one of the objects in two.

Of course, if you could hand out the card at the end, then maybe you could forgive the clusterfucky nature of the two tricks jammed together. But you can’t. So your best case is for someone to say, “That was sort of neat looking. I’m curious how the card is tricked up to allow you to do it.” That’s the best case scenario. (All five respondents said “trick card” or something along those lines for their guess as to the method.)

Conclusion: If you want to melt a card through a bill, use Matthew Johnson’s Melt 2.0. It looks great and everything is examinable.

If you want to do a close-up Zig-Zag, consider Blade by Nicholas Lawrence. I like the business card variation. Again, it’s examinable at the end.

If you want to melt a card through a bill and in the middle of that do a zig-zag trick, ask yourself what would possibly compel you to want to do that.