Monday Mailbag #48
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When I first read the Force Unleashed, I felt that it was a good study and agreed with the findings for strong, direct prediction tricks, but thought it had some limitations on other uses of forcing. Your more recent post on Casualness and Clarity has highlighted what I think is a potential flaw: The Force Unleashed was a study on what forces are best from a clarity perspective only.
[L]et's take a standard cards across plot and let's say that after having done the set up in their hands, you now need to force the number three to have three cards go across (and let's stick to card forces here). In this situation, I think it would completely reverse the Force Unleashed findings, because going for extreme clarity draws undue attention to something that should be trivial and forgettable. Saying "just grab a card - what have you got?" is a much more casual event than "Say stop as I deal these cards down. Do you want to keep going?".
Another example of card forcing where I think casual would be better is if the force is just there to show that you could do something with any card, rather than the importance of a specific card. So for example, Gary Kurtz's ambitious card forces the card, so that later he can have time reverse to before the card was signed. Having a very fair selection procedure would draw extra attention to something that should be completely trivial before the trick has even begun.
So to sum up, I would say that Clarity forces would be best for predictions, but Casual forces would be better for incidental parts of routines or anywhere where the choice of cards doesn't play a major part in the plot (from the audience perspective). —DF
Yeah, I think we’re pretty much on the same page here. The Force Unleashed testing was about which selection procedures felt the most free and the most fair to the participants. So the results there are valuable in the instances where it’s important to emphasize the fairness of the selection.
There are certainly other routines where you want a particular card in play without focusing too much on how it’s selected—primarily because it would slow down the routine. In those cases I might use a dribble force or riffle force or a gimmicked deck.
I still wouldn’t use a classic force though. The eye-opening thing about the force testing for me was that the action of the classic force is something that’s really only associated with deception. It’s associated with magic tricks and forcing. In fact, the act of spreading something between the hands for a selection is so associated with something being a “trick” that people will make that joke whenever that action happens in another context. If they’re offering you your choice of Kool-Aid packets, or something like that, they’ll say, “Pick a Kook-Aid packet, any Kool-Aid packet,” as if it’s a card trick. So whether I’m going for the most fair choice I can or the most casual, I’d avoid the classic force altogether.
On a separate note, the only thing I’d really disagree with here is the contention that choosing a card to select a number for Cards Across should be “trivial and forgettable.” Cards Across is significantly stronger when they feel the number of cards that went across was:
A) Of their choosing
and
B) Determined after their cards had been isolated
So personally I wouldn’t feel the need to rush that moment. I would want them thinking, “Wait… I picked the three myself… if I had changed it for another card—like he offered—then a different number of cards would have had to come into my packet. But that packet was already in my hands!”
Might as well make it seem like a really fair choice. If you’re having them choose a card to choose a number you’ve already given up on casualness at that point.
I’m still using the technique in this post to allow them (most of the time) to determine how many cards go across. It continues to work very well for me.
Hi Andy, I have some questions for you.
1) What does Pre-Show look like for the Amateur?
2) How do you practices sleight of hand and routines?
3) What is your opinion of doing coin rolls in routines?
—CE
What does Pre-Show look like for the Amateur?
There’s a sort of weird state-of-mind you go into if you ever leave a traditional job and start working for yourself. At first it’s really freeing and exhilarating. You think, “This is great! I never have to go to work!” Then it dawns on you that while you never really go to work, you’re in a sense always at work.
Being an amateur magician is sort of like that. You can look at it as there’s no “pre-show” because there’s no set “show.” Or you can look at it like everything is pre-show, because a magic performance may happen whenever.
I would consider “pre-show” for the amateur to be the act of always keeping a small part of your mind attuned for things that are said or done that you might be able to take advantage of at a later date in a trick. (Even though it didn’t work out as I planned, the section in this post titled “Magically Delicious” is a good example of that.)
How do you practice sleight of hand and routines?
I practice sleight-of-hand very half-assedly. Learning new sleights is not a part of magic that I enjoy. I don’t feel a great sense of accomplishment when I finally nail something. It just doesn’t do it for me. If I can’t practice it with half my brain while watching tv, I’ll never practice it at all. So don’t look to me for tips on that.
As far as practicing routines go, I wrote my current system up in this post. (Which came out after I was sent these questions.)
What is your opinion of doing coin rolls in routines?
Well, I avoid any type of flourish because I want to do my best to get them to forget they’re seeing a “performance.” And flourishes say “this is a performance” and also, “I’m skilled.” I don’t want to emphasize either of those points.
If I had a different viewpoint on flourishes, then coin rolls still might be one of the flourishes I avoided in performance. The reason why I’d avoid them is because they’re extended flourishes and they serve no purpose. A one-handed shuffle shuffles the deck. A fancy cut cuts the deck. A wand spin takes a split-second and can be seen as part of a magical gesture. So these are all little moments of “beauty” that enhance something that needed to happen in the effect. But a coin roll takes multiple seconds to sink in and serves no purpose. Coin rolls have a real dorky, “Look at me!” vibe to them. This is why many (most?) performers feel the need to undercut them with a line like, “And this is why I didn’t get laid until I was 36.”
However!
Coin rolls are one of the most useful flourishes for the amateur magician.
How so?
Don’t use them in a routine. Use them as a Hook. Let’s say you’re at a bar or somewhere where change might be in play. You’re in conversation with someone and you’re absentmindedly tapping a coin on the bar. Tap-tap-tap. Without breaking eye-contact you start to roll the coin along your knuckles. It’s not a “flourish” it’s just a kind of nervous-tic. It’s “flourishing” in the “Distracted Artist” style. If they notice it and comment on it, then you can use it to steer into some kind of trick. “Oh, yeah. It’s something I learned as a kid. There was this guy in my neighborhood who knew magic and he’d teach kids tricks if they could master this move. It was like his barrier to entry. I practiced it for months before getting it down to the point that he would teach me other stuff. Now it just happens automatically when there’s a coin nearby. Anyway….” If the person is interested and likes magic, they’re going to hop on that and pursue it further.