Hi! It has been a long time since my last post. Life has been busy, especially when I have not fired my boss. I’ve sold my life for a wage. Furthermore, I believe in only putting up genuine and quality content in this website. I bet you cannot find any website on magic that gives you the kind of insight that I am giving you here on my website. If you do come across a better website on magic than mine, let me know. I will visit it.
The Principle of Force
Now I still remember that I am suppose to write on the Principle of Force in performing magic. Before I begin, let me quote myself once again that “the principle of force as the word implies, forces the audience to make a selection that is predetermined by the magician himself”.
Another way of saying that is that the magician forces the audience to choose what the magician wants while giving the audience the illusion that he (the audience) is the one who is making the choice. There are many ways to execute a “force”. No matter which way it is done, a force is always based on one of these principles:
Another way of saying that is that the magician forces the audience to choose what the magician wants while giving the audience the illusion that he (the audience) is the one who is making the choice. There are many ways to execute a “force”. No matter which way it is done, a force is always based on one of these principles:
the use of gimmicks,
sleight of hands and
verbal manipulation.
For today’s article, I will begin by what is known as “The Magician’s Choice”. This is one of the most basic lessons a magician has to learn to perform magic tricks. The Magician’s Choice is done merely by verbal manipulation although not all verbal manipulation in the course of performing magic necessarily constitutes a force.
The Magician’s Choice
In executing a Magician’s Choice, the magician will ask the audience to pick between 2 choices. These choices could be in the form of objects, words, or anything imaginable. However it is easier to illustrate here by referring to these choices as objects.
Say for example, the magician divide a deck of cards into 2 piles which I will refer to them here as the first and the second pile. Let’s say that the magician knows that the card that he wants to reveal at the end of the magic trick is in the first pile. In order to show that everything is done randomly and the final outcome is magical, he allows the audience to choose one of the 2 piles.
The simplest statement the magician could say to the audience would be, “Choose one of these two piles.” If the audience chooses the first pile (which is the desired pile), the magician will take the first pile as chosen by the audience and continue with his routine and finally reveals the desired card in the “chosen” pile eventually.
On the other hand, if the audience has chosen the second pile, then the magician will take the second pile and discard it by putting it aside.
After discarding the second pile that the audience had chosen, the magician now picks up the first pile (which is the desired pile) and continues as in the first scenario.
Notice that the secret lies in what the magician says. He merely asked the audience to choose a pile of cards. But he did not ask the audience what he wants the audience want to do with the chosen pile of cards nor did he commit himself to saying what he (the magician) is going to do with the chosen pile of cards. The idea here is being vague with what he (the magician) says. The magician never commits himself to what he is going to do.
Nasty Audiences
Now can anything go wrong in performing this routine? Yes! Especially if you are performing magic tricks to your friends in a friendly setting, which is is not an official magic show. In a magic show where you are the professional magician and the audience are strangers, they will show more respect to you, the performer, and will not so called, “try to be funny with you” and try to “spoil” your show so as to embarrass you.
Even then, some professional magicians do experience uncooperative audience who tries to be funny in more informal settings such as a close-up magic. So when you are performing magic tricks informally to friends, they tend to have a mindset that it is fun to sabotage you, spoil your show or do whatever they can to figure out how your magic trick works.
So now, how is the audience going to sabotage the magician?
I believe that you probably know how to do that too and will be feeling very guilty as you have probably done that very often to friends who performed magic tricks to you. Nevertheless, let me mention 2 very common scenarios here.
Scenario 1: “I want to change my mind”
After either the audience has chosen the first pile or the magician has discarded the second pile that the audience has chosen, the audience will say,
“Oh wait! Can I change my mind?”
“What if I change my mind? Would it make a difference if I have chosen the other pile?”
The audience may not have said all that, but just one of those things or anything to that effect. So now what should the magician do. Do you supposed that the magician is going to say,
“No! You cannot change your mind. You have already made your choice and that is final.”
A tug-of-war will ensue between the magician and the audience destroying the performance. Let me tell you what. The magician will be very pissed if this happens. There is only one conclusion. The audience is trying to be nasty. He will vow to himself that he will never show another magic trick to this person ever again.
Scenario 2: “I will decide for you what you are to do.”
In this other scenario, after either the audience had chosen the first pile or the magician had discarded the second pile that the audience had chosen, the audience would insist on what he (the audience) wants to do with the pile of cards he had chosen. If the audience had chosen the second pile of cards and the magician discarded the chosen pile, he would insist that the magician take the second pile that he has chosen.
If the audience had chosen the first pile and the magician picked up the first pile that the audience had chosen, the audience would insist that the magician discard away the first pile or the audience insist on holding on to the first pile that he had chosen instead of giving it to the magician. In short, the audience will insist on forcing the magician to do the opposite of what the magician wants do.
Knowing Who To Stay Away From
How do I know this? As a hobbyist (a non-professional magician), I have performed magic tricks to my friends frequently and I have experienced this many times. This is not meant to be a complaint here but to point out that it is useful to test out your performance first before you actually put on the real show to a bigger audience.
These annoying audiences will prepare you for your real performance and at the same time it teaches you who are the people to avoid performing magic tricks to in real life. Don’t entertain these smart asses who are unappreciative. Talking about unappreciative audience, avoid such people at all cost. This kind of people who are all out to examine you as if they have set an examination for you to take or they are the police officers interrogating you as a suspect.
They have forgotten that you are giving them a free entertainment. They will want to examine all your props and if possible strip search you. They will disrupt you in your routine and dictate to you how you should carry out your routine. And in the event that you manage to survive all the ordeals and still perform a miraculous ending, they will say things like,
“I don’t believe that you can really read my mind. Surely there is a trick in it.”
Of course there is a trick in it because it is a magic trick, not sorcery or witchcraft. And of course I am suppose to look like I can read your mind and not really read your mind. That’s why I am only a magician, not a wizard or sorcerer. If I am truly a mind reader, I would rather read somebody else’s mind who has more value and not yours. Some others might tell you that they have not seen such a magic trick before and therefore it is not a magic trick to them. They will insist that you should be pulling a rabbit out of a hat or saw a lady in half in order to call it a magic trick.
Just tell yourself that these people are absolutely not worth your time and effort. They don’t deserve to be entertained. They should be abducted and chained up like monkeys by some aliens and made to perform like monkeys to the aliens. That is what I call ENTERTAINMENT!
Fine Tuning The Magician’s Choice
Alright! After that big side step, let’s get back to how to prevent those two nasty scenarios described above from occurring. A professional magician who is experienced will pre-empt something similar to the above two scenarios from happening. Therefore, he would qualify his words and actions a little more in order to seal off any objections that may arise later. In using verbal manipulation, you need to gather enough experience to handle objections before they arise. How can this be done.
To avoid scenario 1, after the audience has chosen the first or second pile of cards, the magician could say, “Do you want to change your mind? Is that final? Now, notice that you could have changed your mind but you didn’t (or did). You could have chosen the other pile but you have decided to choose this pile.” All these are said so that the audience could no longer go back on his choice.
At the same time, the magician elaborate at great length that the whole process was absolutely random and the audience was absolutely free in making his choice.
To avoid scenario 2, the magician could have chosen to be a little more specific in his instructions instead of being too vague. Let me elaborate on this point. When I first learned the Magician’s Force, I was taught to use the statement, “choose this or that”. More often than not, I encountered scenario 2. The open-endedness of the statement “… choose …” is left to too much interpretation and room for argument.
So instead of just say, “choose”, it is better to instruct the audience to do something without any specification of what it is leading to. In our example of 2 piles of cards here, the magician could have said, “pick up a pile of cards”. If the audience picks up the first pile of card, then the magician will ask the audience to hand the pile of card to him (the magician). If the audience picks up the second pile of card, then the magician will continue to instruct the audience to put that pile of cards aside elsewhere.
So now you may ask, which approach should I use then since I wouldn’t know which scenario will I encounter. I would suggest that you use the approach in scenario 2. And just in case the audience would say that he wanted to change his mind after you have given the second instruction, it would be good to ask audience whether he wants to change his mind after he has picked up a pile of cards before giving him a second instruction such as “hand the pile of cards to me”.
Conclusion
That’s more than enough for today’s post on the Magician’s Choice. In my next post, I will teach a simple magic trick that shows you how to apply the Magician’s Force.
I have just concluded my series on misdirection and I was looking through my earlier postings, namely, “Principles and Techniques Used in Performing Magic“;. In that articles I mentioned about the four principles of how to do magic tricks, namely, “The Principle of Force”, “The Art of Misdirection”, “Verbal Manipulation” and “The Art of Sleight of Hands”. I have also submitted an article on that topic to Ezine Articles and upon comparison, I found that the article that was submitted to Ezine Articles was clearer and more concise. I am therefore re-posting my article here for reference.
How to Do Magic Tricks – Four Key Principles
Have you ever wondered how magic tricks work? As an ignorant child, I was told by my brother that magicians have very fast hands. The magician’s hands move so fast that you cannot see it. Otherwise, magic tricks are done by using camera tricks. To say that a magician uses camera tricks to perform his magic would have been one of the greatest insults directed at a magician. This is as good as saying that the magician is unskillful and uses the camera to deceive the audience. You do not need a magician to do that. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can perform magic using camera tricks.
Generally, magicians design and perform their magic tricks by operating according to a few principles. They are the principles of force, misdirection and verbal manipulation. Besides these, magicians spend a great amount of time practicing what is known as the sleight of hands.
These are skillful hand movements used to conceal, deceive and confuse what the hands are actually doing. It is not true like what my brother told me that magicians have hands that move so fast to a point that the movement is invisible to the audience. Although certain sleight of hands do require the hand movements to be quick but most other sleights do not necessarily require quick hand movements. Sleights done skillfully can be performed before your very eyes and you will not notice what has been done. Some master magicians who possessed such skills are Tony Slydini and Dai Vernon.
The principle of force as the word implies, forces the audience to make a selection that is predetermined by the magician himself. This can be done in many ways. Where counting and mathematics is involved, the magician is using some mathematical formula that work out to a unique answer. Otherwise, it can be done using a gimmick such as a trick deck. Most of the time, it is pure sleight of hands where playing cards are involved. A force is used particularly in magic tricks where the magician tells you what you have selected such as a card or a word from certain pages of a book.
The principle of misdirection aims at directing the audience attention away from what the magician is actually doing. Simply said, it is misleading you to look away in another direction from where the magician is doing his stuff. The master of misdirection is the late Tony Slydini, possibly the only person who could still fool the late Dai Vernon (master of sleight of hands).
One of the way where misdirection operates is to use big hand movement and looking at the movement of the hand intently. This is a body language that will naturally lead the audience to look in the same direction as you (the magician) are looking. At this moment, you (the magician) will be able to do what you need to do quickly with the other hand where the audience is not looking.
I have noticed that Tony Slydini often confused his audience by making repeated hand movements. While the audience suspected him to do something with a certain hand movement, he had not done anything absolutely. However, during one of those times when he repeated the same movement, he would have done something sneaky when the audience had dropped their guard after seeing the same movement several times. Tony Slydini is known not to use any gimmicks in performing his magic tricks. He relies purely on misdirection and his sleight of hands.
Finally, magicians use verbal manipulation to talk you into doing what he wants you to do as well as convincing you of what he has done and predicted. It is like saying nothing and yet seems like having said everything at the same time. The use of verbal manipulation is also another way to operate the principle of force. Fortune tellers and spiritual mediums often use such skills to deceive people who seek guidance from them. Witches back in the dark ages who were burned may not necessarily truly know the art of black magic but merely convinces people of their power by using verbal manipulation as well as a combination of the above principles.
– The Professor
The author maintains a website that teaches and discusses how to do magic tricks. Visit the blog to learn more about how to do magic tricks. Watch magic videos and learn the principles of how the magic tricks are performed.
In the video posted in this article, Tony Slydini demonstrated live to the audience how “Misdirection” could fool an audience. He did this by throwing the paper balls over the volunteer’s head again and again without him noticing it. All the rest of the audience could see clearly what happened except the volunteer himself.
Difference Slydini And Ourselves
You may want to watch it several times and ask yourself why did the volunteer failed to detect what Slydini was doing. Could you have succeeded in doing what Slydini did? Very often when I was taught a magic trick, I would have a lot of objections as to what if the audiences notice what I am doing? ‘What if the audiences do this or that? As I was watching this video, I asked myself, “Why the volunteer did not lift his head as Slydini flipped his hand upwards to throw the paper ball over his head?” These are the answers I came up with for myself after watching the video repeatedly.
Slydini had mastered the distance between the volunteer and himself where the angle of the volunteer’s vision had been greatly restricted.
Slydini had confidently got the volunteer fixated on his left palm where he had him believed the paper ball was to be.
Slydini successfully fooled him again and again causing the volunteer to doubt himself.
Finally, Slydini has mastered the art of misdirection; he knew what he was doing and what he was capable of. Thus, every movement of his body coordinated very well with what he wanted to accomplish. In the case if anyone else would try to imitate Slydini, they may not succeed because their lack of practice or lack of confidence may betray them.
Slydini’s Manipulation Of His Audience
Observe that Slydini had purposely put a lot of paper napkins on the volunteer’s lap restricting his body movement. The volunteer was unable to stand up or move his legs. Otherwise, all the paper napkins would fall from his lap. Slydini then said to the volunteer,
“Come closer. No, no, not your chair, yourself. Don’t stand up. Just come closer.”
What Slydini had done was to make the volunteer leaned forward and had him looking down with his head bent. Slydini further conditioned him by holding his hands in front of the volunteer at his chest level. Observe that the volunteer was bending his head and body very low.
For him to lift up his head to watch Slydini throwing the paper ball over his head would require a big body movement involving not just his head but his back as well. Lifting his head alone would not enable him to see the paper ball thrown over his head.
Next, Slydini had engaged him deeply with his hand movement and conversation drawing his attention to his left hand. Slydini’s head and body were all bent leaning towards his left hand suggesting to everyone in communion with him to focus on his left hand. As he threw the paper ball away, he did it in one swift motion. Only his finger did the job but not his arm.
Mistakes We Would Have Made
If I had taken over Slydini’s position, I might have lifted my right arm slowly because I would be afraid that by flinging the paper ball away with one quick fling, the volunteer would have suspected what I was doing. What I would have done next would be to throw the ball away when I was sure that the volunteer did not look up towards my right hand. This would precisely have given me away because the volunteer would have looked up when he did not see my right hand come down to put the paper ball into my left hand fast enough the way Slydini did it.
Slydini was able to fling the ball away swiftly because he had the momentum as he lifted up his right arm quickly. In my case if I were to lift up my right arm slowly (hesitantly) and stop, I would lose the momentum. And if I were to throw the ball away, my arm would most probably move also causing the volunteer to grow suspicious.
Densenstising The Audience With Repeated Actions
Notice again that Slydini repeated his routine again and again with slight variation each time. I have pointed this out in the earlier videos. Also notice that the first time he made the paper ball disappeared, he made the volunteer checked his breast pocket. So subsequently when Slydini put the third paper ball into his breast pocket, the volunteer did not suspect anything.
Conclusion
I hope that this series of Slydini videos illustrate how misdirection works. Continue to ask yourself everyday how am I to carry out misdirection to the people around me as to what I want to do. When you plan your performance for a magic trick, ask yourself what misdirection have I incorporated to improve the effect of my performance. Gradually you will find yourself becoming a master of misdirection yourself.
In the 2 videos posted in this article, Slydini performed a total of 3 magic tricks. The precious thing in this video is Dick Cavett’s introduction to Tony Slydini and his ingenuity in performing magic.
The introduction is a little long and Slydini only appears at 1:42. So if you are impatient, you may want to forward the video to 1:42.
Modification Of The Paper Balls In The Hat Trick
The first magic trick that lasted until 4:30, is some sort of a modification of the “Paper Balls in the Hat” trick using cigarettes. Notice the hand movement and body gesture are somewhat similar to those when he performed the “Paper Balls in the Hat” trick.
The difference here is that the paper balls are replaced by cigarettes and there is no hat or box. What you see here are cigarettes appearing and disappearing from one hand to another. Apply all the principles that I have discussed in my earlier articles “Tony Slydini – The Master of Misdirection” and “Slydini’s Helicopter Card”. Try to figure out for yourself and do it as an exercise. Just like back in school, the actual learning takes place only when we do our homework.
Slydini’s “Coins Through The Table Magic” Trick
The second magic trick from 4:50 to 6:30 presented to a lady was the same magic trick Tony Slydini performed to Dick Cavett in the earlier posting “Tony Slydini – The Master of Misdirection”.
The third magic trick from 0:08 of the second video (Part 2) to the end of the same video at 2:31 was the “Coins Through The Table” magic trick using 7 coins.
At the end of the trick you will see Tony Slydini put his right hand holding the 4 coins below the table while he put his left hand holding the 3 coins on top of the table. Tony Slydini slammed his left hand on the table and the 3 coins ‘penetrated’ the table and dropped into his right hand that was under the table. Slydini opened his left hand and there was no coin in his right hand or on the table because the 3 coins had supposedly penetrated through the table. As he brought forth his right hand from under the table, there were 7 coins in his right hand.
For the rest of the video, Tony Slydini performed variations of the same trick using different number of coins, but the same principle of the 7-coin trick applies.
The “Coin Through The Table” magic trick using 7 coins could have been done with any number of coins, say only 6 coins. However, by having 4 coins in one hand and 3 coins in another hand creates a stronger misdirection that no coin have been passed from one hand to the other while he showed the 3 coins in the left hand the first time (7:54) and 4 coins in the right hand the second time (8:08).
Coins Through The Table Explained
I will make the explanation of this magic trick here short.
The first time he revealed his left hand completely opened with 3 coins still in the left hand (7:54) was genuine. That was meant to convince the audience so as to make them let down their guard. The second time when he ‘dropped’ the 4 coins from the right hand (8:08) involved a sleight of hands.
Notice that he did not turn his right hand faced up like he did previously with his left hand. 3 coins were clipped with his thumb in his right hand while the one and only unique coin (the English penny among the 7 coins) was dropped onto the table from his right hand. The other 3 coins that appeared on the table were dropped (slid through the bottom) from the left hand. The one coin from the right hand and 3 coins from the left hand totaled up to 4 coins on the table.
Upon seeing 4 coins on the table, our minds deceive us that ALL the 4 coins are from the right hand. Right from beginning of the magic trick, Slydini had emphasized to the audience to watch the English penny (that was meant to fool them). He was setting up a mental trap for his audience. So when Slydini picked up the 4 coins from the table with his right hand (palm faced down hiding the 3 coins clipped in the right hand), he then have all the 7 coins in his right hand.
Conclusion
As a concluding statement, I would like to refer you to the movie “Swordfish” . John Travolta played the role of a ruthless terrorist when in actual fact he was a special government agent. He had fooled the police and the FBI agents time and time again, and in his final act, he faked his own death. Somewhere in the middle of the movie when he was driving in his car, he said something like this (pardon me because I can’t remember the exact words):
“I love Houdini. He could make an elephant disappear from the stage. The keyword is – MISDIRECTION. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.”
In this video, you will watch how Tony Slydini performed 2 of his tricks, namely, the “6 Coins Routine” and “The Helicopter Card”. For each trick, he performed it twice, each time with a slight variation.
Slydini Breaking The Rules Of Magic
It is a basic rule in performing magic that you do not repeat your performance of a magic trick to the same audience twice for the obvious reason that the audience will try to notice how you perform the magic trick particularly at your other actions which they did not notice previously.
Tony Slydini broke this rule of magic and he is famous for challenging the audience. Nevertheless, he did repeat his performances with slight variations from his previous performances. These variations gave a fresh touch to the same magic tricks and at the same time, they gave the audience the feeling that he was doing something different from the previous performances. Tony Slydini was such a master at his sleight of hands and misdirection that he dared to break these rules. His sleight of hands were so neat that even if you knew how to do the magic tricks that he had performed, you still could not catch him doing it.
Secret To Slydini’s “Helicopter Card” Trick
So what is the secret to the “6 Coins Routine”? I can tell you the secret to Slydini’s “Helicopter Card”.
Notice again that Tony Slydini repeated a number of actions to the audience to wear down the audience’s alertness. The first few times Tony Slydini carried out these actions, he would either explicitly show the audience or subtly let the audience notice that he had not done anything tricky. Subsequently the last time Slydini repeated the same action was when he performed his sleight of hands.
In the “Helicopter Card” magic trick, Slydini first drew the audience to a card he put sticking out of the rest of the cards he was holding in his hand. The card that was sticking out was not the audience’s chosen card. It was there to catch the audience’s attention so as to distract, frustrate and to confuse him. Slydini then went on to frustrate the audience by making him pick up card after card on the table to search for his chosen card.
This action also served the purpose of giving a miraculous effect at the end when the chosen card appeared on the table as the audience believed that his chosen card was held together with the rest of the cards on Tony Slydini’s other hand.
As Slydini did this, his hand would touch each card as he asked, “Is it this card?” The last time when Slydini pointed to a card on the table, he actually dropped the card held in his hand just slightly behind (from Tony Slydini’s perspective) the card he pointed to and this action is covered by his hand as he pointed to a card on the table. Slydini then finally directed the audience’s attention into the air and imagined a card had landed right where he had placed the audience’s chosen card earlier.
His sleight of hands was so extremely neat that you won’t be able to notice it. Just take note that the chosen card appeared just slightly behind (from Tony Slydini’s perspective) the last card Tony Slydini pointed to the audience.
Slydini’s Use Of Psychology
I would like to make a statement about Tony Slydini’s use of human psychology when he performed certain actions repeatedly. We repeatedly see something to be either present (true) or absent (false) frequently in our past experiences. As we make the same observations repeatedly, we become very confident that we know all about certain truth without examining and giving a thought about it. We all come to our own conclusion which is eventually wrong, such as “the world is flat”. And Tony Slydini has used this presumptious mindset very well against us.
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