In today's lesson on
how to do magic tricks, I want to discuss rules that you must remember.
We just picked up a new trick. Excited, we run off and show it off to our friends. During the trick, a something unexpected happens: Oh no. We’ve just ruined our reputation. No one will ever want to see my tricks again. Why did this happen?
Successful performers, and yes that’s what you are, excel because they adhere to rules. They know that if they skew away from these rules, even a little bit, their reputation is shot, and that’s the end of their career!
Enough already, I want to know these rules. Alright, below are basic rules that every magician should have down. Think of it as your foundation. Once you’ve mastered these rules, you can add to them, as long as it doesn’t affect those rules.
Study / Learn- We have to master; know the trick inside and out. Just like a singer must know the lyrics to a song and its meaning, you must know what the trick‘s goal is. You are telling a story with your performance.
Practice- We’ve all heard the phrase, “practice makes perfect”, or something like that. Couldn’t be further from the truth. As performers, we have to be on top of our game. Repetitive practicing engraves the trick in our subconscious, just like a baseball player taking daily batting practice.
Bring Out the Performer from Within
- I keep pressing the fact that as a magician, your success greatly depends on your performance. It’s not just abracadabra, hocus-pocus, yada, but the whole package. Your body language, eye contact, the background music, comedic gestures all play as a big role in keeping your audience engaged as you perform whatever trick it is that you are performing. If you do not have a video camera, then rehearse in front of a mirror to observe what your audience will see.
Keep Your Distance
- Until you’ve mastered controlling an audience, it’s best if you keep your distance. In the beginning, you will be nervous, and you don’t want to get all flustered and mess up your trick in such close proximity, where you reveal the trick. Only with time will you gain courage and trust your abilities (especially physical maneuvering), will you be able to get closer with your audience.
Awry Tricks
- You’re doing an awesome trick. It’s going beautifully, then all of a sudden, something happens where the performance fails and you’re thinking to yourself: this is a disaster. It happens even to the best of performers. Do you just fold everything up and go home? No. You should be prepared for the worst. Always have a plan B, C, etc. for performances that will fail. The trick here is, how you take away the focus from the disaster to something else, so that you can re-group, and compose yourself.
How did you do that magic trick?
- You will always be asked to reveal tricks. As a performer, what makes you stand out will be your performances, the illusion! You do not want to disclose that. It’s your bread and butter. Granted, this site is all about teaching you how to do magic tricks, but it’s up to you how you will take the lessons and make them your own. That’s the key. The trick itself is nothing without the performance. It’s just one piece of the puzzle.
I hope you enjoyed this article, as it is very important that you master these rules.
Good luck.
