These days with television shows and spotty teenagers on YouTube exposing all sorts of trick methods and other magic secrets, spectators are more aware of magicians techniques than ever before. Sometimes to clarify or to enhance an effect, magicians often state what is magical effect is happening during the performance of the effect. The phrase "it looks like", particularly for close up magicians, may help reduce the likelihood of a more method aware spectator from heckling.
Take the scenario of the performance of a basic coin vanish. Say for example you do a false take of the coin and then pretend to vanish the coin. If you were to state that "the coin has vanished" you have a situation that could possibly arise where the spectator may heckle you. The issue here is that by stating "the coin has vanished", you have blatantly lied to the spectator. When someone detects that they are being lied to, a basic human reaction is to confront that lie. Therefore its understandable that responses like "its in your other hand" or "well, we know that its not really vanished" can occur in this situation.
Now, if we turn this situation on its head and use the phrase "it looks like" before we say "the coin has vanished" we arrive at "it looks like the coin has vanished". This simple change in language gives the same effect but this time you haven't lied to the spectator and they are therefore less likely to heckle or interrupt you as they will see that you are creating an effect rather than lying to them.
This can apply to virtually any effect.
Other examples
- "I give the card a little rub and it looks like it changes to your signed card"
- "I give the coin a rub and it looks like it goes straight through the table"
- "I give the fork a rub and it looks like it's melting
Yours Magically
Solomon
Interested to learn magic for fun or profit? Would you like to hire a magician, hypnotist or an emcee for your event? Visit www.themagicofsolomon.com for more info..
