It happens at times when you do a trick and suddenly some people expose you,leaving you with unbearable kind of feelings. The question is, how you handle ? Below are some scenarios which I believe are common when one does a trick. :huh:

Scenario 1 :

You do a trick and in the middle of your show, you heard " Oh ! I know this trick ! You put this card here first then you'll eventually find my secret card there, and then you'll put three cards on the bottom...." . Imagine you're doing a trick and all the procedures which you planned to do are being openly exposed perhaps to the other audiences who do not know exactly what you're doing, what will you do ? :ph43r:

Scenario 2 :

This circumstance is a little similiar to the first except that your sleights are being exposed. " Hahahaha ! I saw you flipping 2 cards "... :wacko: How you handle this embarassing moment ?

Scenario 3 :

The audience is not obeying what you say. For example, a card is being hold by a spectator with initially order from a magician that the card is not supposed to be flipped over; however,he/she does it and as a whole, it "destroy" your entire presentation, what will you do ? :wacko:


After years of performing magic tricks, one may conclude that such things can be minimised when you've mastered all the sleights you know and of course,follow the rules of magic that you're not to foretell what magic tricks you're doing and not to perform tricks to the same audience for the 2nd time. However, maybe the weather is not good and your day is bad, these things happen to you, how you handle ?

These are my handling methods :

For the 1st scenario, I will quickly think of an alternative way to continue my tricks ( mostly direct my show to another new trick ) in replacing the old one while explaning to the spectators that I'm not performing the trick which the spectator ( The exposer ) mentioned. I know I'm lying but what to do ? :(

For the 2nd scenario, I'll just continue my trick to the rest of the audiences. After that I'll explain to the audience the rules of magic and ask for comments for the tricks I've done,pretending I've not really mastered it.

For the 3rd scenario, I most probably will not continue my trick and in fact not doing any tricks to him/her any further at the moment if i find the spectator really meant to do that.

How about yours ? If you do not mind,do share out. :)

Scenario 1 : Chairshot to the head.

Scenario 2 : Chairshot to the head. And then shout "IT DOESN'T MATTER what you saw!!!" and raise the People's Eyebrow.

Scenario 3 : Chairshot to the head...and Layeth The Smackdown on him.

Everthing I know in life I learned from watching pro wrestling :P


Everything you said above except I don't quite agree with scenario 2. And pick your audiences/volunteers wisely. Interesting question really.

Jeff, whos finishing is the people's eyebrow???

I know the people's elbow only

for the above scenario, i will smile and say very good, why not we try this, and proceed to next trick
i will use multiple 100% force to end my trick

haha Jeff -- not bad or just appear a gun and point it right up to that fellow head :!!:


hey jeremy Fu
the 1st one , i agree with you :lol: . can't think of other better solution

for scenario 2, i got another way to solve it but it kinda bit lame :P
XXX: "Hahahaha ! I saw you flipping 2 cards "
me : "hahaha oh really , oh ya 2 cards ha. my hand kinda sticky today"
( then just flip the 2 cards back and do other trick with flipping 1 card, or even nicer if you are doing ambition card.. use other method to get the same effect. B) )

for the third scenario,
ya picking a volunteer is very important.. what i did is , i never pick a boy as my volunteer.weird right :P (if there got no girl then sad la) . girl gave you more crazy effect !!!
if that scenario happened to me, what i will do is,
-if he is going to see my prediction or whatever , i will hold him remind him not to see it till the end
- if he already saw it - ha ha, what to do ..change trick or change volunteer lolz

The People's elbow is from The Rock...

how come Jeff does not agree in scenario 2 ?

For Scenario 1;
I'll probably come up with a line "Wait, you haven't seen the rest of it". This will make that person regain some curiousity into your trick. I'll try to stay calm and continually performe the routine in a much slower beat or you could patter more while trying to change the act/effect at the end. This would save your reputation for the time being.

I always have a backup routine that I don't use.
For Eg, The 4 Aces Trick.
I'm sure everyone knows about it. There are tons of versions being performed out there. What I will do, is that I'll learn at least 2 variation with totally different sleights and effect. During my performance, if someone knows about version A, I can always switch to version B at the end to give those people a big surprise.

For Scenario 2;
I would just come up with a line "I'm sorry, I must have taken too much last night". Any silly patter that you could come up with to convert it into a joke. However, if you've managed to escape once, don't expect to escape twice! So, don't rely on it all the time or your audience would get really bored and upset.

For Scenario 3;
I've not encountered this kind of situation yet as I don't always perform it unless some of my friends asked me to. If I were to meet this kind of situation, I just come up with a silly patter like "What are you doing? Don't hurt youself, I told you it's going to happen" or anything like so and would finish the routine. However, I would be more caution when performing to him/her. You would probably need to come up with a super clean routine to amaze him/her.

But, I must say picking an audience is a performer's responsible. It's always alright and true for an audience to be skeptical or sometimes very skeptical. If you're that unlucky to pick him/her, I would say it's your fault to select him at first. So, picking your audience wisely is very important.

That's all for my views.



Cheers,
Roy JR Foo

i think that if you do so .. you will expose the magic. you gave them an idea how it done. so why don't you do other method to get the same effect, to drive their mind off haha

i also try before, it more even worst then your scenario.
after i finish performing a trick , a card trick and i don't know where he got the explanation and he just explain the trick to the audiences.
it was a Nightmare.. ha is really hard to get back the audiences attention to look back you and ignore that fellow even thought you said you wanna start a new trick.

Scenario one:

Say "Hmm... maybe..." and continue with the effect, or maybe vary it slightly, adding or losing a phase. I'll most probably say "Wow psychic! Not bad ;) Now let's see if that's what happens." too. Another useful sentence is "Thanks for the suggestion. I'll do that."

Scenario two:

I'd say "Hmm... really? I didn't see that haha." OR "Good suggestion maybe I'll do it that way" or if you know that you've flashed and only one of the spectators saw it, just give him/her a wink and that will normally draw them in as part of the trick, just between the two of you and the person will keep the secret.

Scenario three:

I will watch them carefully, and if they show any signs of wanting to turn it over, just hold their hand and say, "Could you please wait and let me finish my effect? Thanks!" But generally I don't do any such effects. The setup is also very important, leading up to the trick. If they feel entertained, they will mostly just follow your instructions.

Of course, these lines may not work for you just because they work for me, due to my personality, which is slightly cheeky and joking with the audience.

My opinion is to swicth trick when all the scenarios happens. It is always good to have one or two back up tricks, just in case anything happens.

Other lines that I have used: -

That's just the appetizer to catch your attention.

Hey, I'm not just showing you, I'm teaching you.

I guess you're not the type of person that enjoys magic. Thank you. (Then, walk away and smile)

Try this, grab a few kids around ages 6-10 and doing a few tricks for them. More often than not, one or more of the scenarios will happen. Not fun but it's a good way to practice. As time goes by, you will be able to enhance your handling methods.

I remember reading a post in the Ellusionist forum about this topic. You might want to check it out.

Wow xron what an idea :!!: Kids for me is hard. Hard for the attention but easy for the amazement gained. Will try that maybe sometimes :rolleyes:

Vincent for your 1st scenario, you were saying you actually agree with the audience. Should he/her/they say a a full rountine of yout trick out and you actually do it that way,would not it be interesting ? If i were you,I maybe give a twist effect at the end. It'll be great :!!:

For your 2nd, I think you're indirectly exposing the magic :ph43r: especially the "winking eye" idea you gave. Perhaps when your perform he/she will keep the secret but after your show is finished it will be most like he/she becomes the hero who preach your sleight. This incident occured to me a number of times last time :wacko:

Well for the 3rd I agree with you only if the number of audience is <5 because if it is >5, your emphasize of asking the audience to 100% follow your commands will create some suspicious. Thus,I think if you are to perform to your friends you know, pick the audience wisely as Roy Foo says. We like performing to new people, don't we ? Thus, I guess luck is another important thing also. You lucky the got it,you unluckly,you had it. :!!:

I agree with your handling ways ^_^ Perhaps we are of same surname-I'm fu and you're Foo :!!:

In Scenario 1 I think I may have phrased my words wrongly, my apologies. For the first two sentences I leave it hanging whether I follow what the person does, but for the third, I most probably should change it to "Thanks I might do that, let's see ;)"

In Scenario 2, I feel that the first two methods will still work, as they only hint at the possibility, although the third one is a bit dodgy, I have to admit. I might omit that from future performances, although I don't usually flash when I perform, so that's very much a rare occasion ;)

Lol in Scenario 3 how many people do you require to follow your instructions? Shouldn't be more than two or three right? Usually one? Also, I would make it sound casual, as then the audience will not feel so tempted to go against your instructions. Once again, audience selection is important.

Thank you for your points. I appreciate them.

Love the chairshots! haha...takes a while for me to learn how to "not get emotional"....

when i started performing a few months ago... when i asked my friends to cut the cards, some of them will go, "shuffle can or not?" :blink:

when i asked them to hold a card, they will flip it over straight away sometimes....

:angry:

think the chairshots will come in handy here... haha..

I always start off by giving the deck to my spectator to throughly mix and shuffle until they are satisfed and had enough with it. Even after they have handed me the deck, I would make ask them "Are you certain that they are truly mix? Do you want to shuffle again? Is everything all fair? ", then only I would start the routine. Thus, they will not want to shuffle the cards when you ask them to do cut the deck as they have already shuffled it "n" times.

If you think they have a tendency to flip over when you handed them the card, simply just ask them to sandwich it with both hands, hold on to their chest, put inside their pockets and etc. If you have a table, simply just ask them to cover the entire card with their palm as some people might have itchy fingers to flip them ove. So, if you ask them to cover it, it's will be less frequent to occur tragedy unless he/she really intend to mess you up.

That's good advice. Thanks!

the shuffling part i was actually using a stacked deck. so i did some fake shuffles at the beginning...so cannot let them shuffle first...so guess it's not good to use a stacked deck for opener...better to let start off with a few tricks then only switch to the stacked deck....so they won't request for shuffling... ^_^

It's all depend on your situation actually.
If you intend to do only 1 trick with a stacked deck, that's fine.
However, if you intend to do a short routine, then you'll have to judge the audience by yourself whether or not to perform a stacked deck trick or a quick visual trick as opener.

Using a stacked deck as an opener is great too by stunning your audiences with some impossible situation at first, so they'll know what is going on and it'll build up the rhythm of your performance. After the opener, you can hand them to shuffle the cards and proceed to your next trick which doesn't require any setup.

However, if you experienced and skillful enough, you do not need a deck switch as you can actually stack/setup your deck in front of them while pattering, gestures, jokings or telling even a story that relates to your next trick. This would keep the heat off your hand as the audience are looking at your face when you make eye contact with them. However, if you want to make your life easier, I would say go for a deck switch then.