Im sure everyone is always seeking out for the most powerful effects they can possibly perform for their audiences. In this topic, i hope to discuss a little about such effects.

Here's a disclaimer. I don't know too much about magic. And I do not, for one second claim that i do. The effects i mentioned here are IMO, what i'd consider as powerful effects. You may second that, or otherwise.

To me, there are mainly 2 kinds of powerful effects.

The first, would be one with a kicker ending.

In every trick, usually people have a rough idea of what it is like. If i were to take out a coin, then someone might already have the impression that im going to vanish it. For cards, if you have someone select that, the audience automatically assume that you are gonna lose it somewhere and find it again.

Magic works because of assumptions to start with.

And powerful effects, works because of assumptions as well.

Here's an example. For those who does cards, Im sure some would have heard of contact colors by Aldo. Gordon did it during one of the previous magician's gathering and i thought it was one of the best effects done on that day. Even though i've watched the trick before, I could still appreciate that effect by Gordon. Because there is a kicker. Or maybe i should say, there ARE kickers to it.

Another more common effect for many would be ****gazer. Perharps to you, it might be just one trick. But to me, it's 3 effects. 1S, 2S and finally ****gazer. It always gets the reaction. Because no one is expecting it. And many were about to pass it off as just a gag before you finally reveal the magic.

In a nutshell, in this category of tricks, there is a build up. And thus there is a climax.

The 2nd kind of trick, would be one with an extremely powerful effect that people cant even attempt to explain. And usually its something big. Like maybe how Cyril got a burger out of a poster, or how David vanished the Statue of Liberty.

Now here's an example that's closer to heart. In Real secrets of magic, there was an effect, where spectators stop at 4 cards. And it turns out that those 4 cards produced coins which can then be used for later effects. I personally feel that this is a powerful effect that didn't have other previous tricks to build up on. This is just one effect, but one powerful effect.

In Derren Brown's Evening of Wonders. He did a combination of this two type of effects. There was a powerful kicker. First he made notice to his audience to watch a bannana on a stand. Which was later removed unknowingly by a Gorilla sometime during the show. The 2nd time he did it, everyone thought they caught him. But it happened to be a person swap.
Im sure that you won't quite understand the effect unless you watched it, and i think that every magician should actually watch a bit of his stuff to brush up on our own presentation skills. It might not suit your style, but Derren definately has something that we can learn from.

Having said that, anyone reading this might be wondering what I'm trying to get at. I don't think its alright for me to ask anyone to share their favourite effects, (which was my purpose for this thread) but here, I just wanted to hear your opinon on the subject and perharps how should one routine their performances such that the effects compliments one another.

"Magic works because of assumptions to start with. "

I don't fully agree. Some magic spoils because of assumptions or something similar.

These magic cannot be build on assumptions and telling the people before hand.
For example, ONE COIN ROUTINE. If people assume you are to vanish and produce the coin, they are going to be tracking your moves instead of being directed by your movements.

But of course for matrix, you do can tell what they are to expect because then they will understand the effect when it occurs.

Though they may have a rough idea, if you still going to find their card and vanish the coin, they are going to be surprise still unless their mind chooses to ignore the element of surprise because they do not want to believe.
However, their experience will not be the same as of the first time unless you approach it differently.


And for KICKER ENDINGS.

I think it is pretty much optional in cases and they don't normally work the SECOND TIME.

For example, a JUMBO COIN production at the end of a flurry. It won't impact someone as much if he had seen it done seen already because he could pretty much expect it. And this assumption of a JUMBO production is bad and the JUMBO is no longer much of a kicker.

Long effects can have kickers/climax but short tricks(which should be a kicker themselves) will not have them.


And for the "2ND KIND OF TRICK"

I think you mean illusions. They are unexplainable.



I just want to say it is hard to define powerful because different people's minds work differently.

Loyalover, I don't think you made your points very well, mainly because the topic at hand is too massive to be covered sufficiently in one post like this. I'm not sure I'll be able to clearly point out what is missing or what is wrong, just that it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. I won't be able to do a good writing on what exactly are powerful effects either.

I would say that Darwin Ortiz does a fine job and has written about this in 2 books: Strong Magic and Designing Miracles. Ortiz does make several noteworthy points on the use of kickers.

Anyway, I thought I'll provide an example:

The ambitious card itself is a very powerful effect when structured and performed well. The plot is simple, the spectators "kind of" knows what is going to happen at each phase, there is no kicker involved or required yet it plays out to be stronger at each phase. What contributes to the strength is on the construction of the effect.

If you ask me, in general, the strength of an effect depends on its construction and presentation. Your first kind of factor: Kickers is a part of the construction. The construction and the presentation then lead to your 2nd point, on the effect being unexplainable. Both your 1st and 2nd points are not related to each other and cannot be listed out side by side like that. I hope you understand what I mean.

IMO, it is the impossiblity or degree of difficulty that is perceived in "achieving" the effect, not neccessarily due to the kicker.

Sometimes we are just amazed by the fact that the effect actually "worked".

Eg:

i) metal bending... we are just amazed that the spoon actually bends.

ii) coin vanish... if we have done our retention well enough, they would be just as amazed that it actually vanish when they have been looking so carefully.


And generally, kicker effects are better for magician audience.

Ah. Im not really looking for any answers in particular, perharps just your opinion towards achieving powerful effects. I've never been good at expressing myself, or organising my thoughts. So pardon me for that.

MagicalLobo. Magic works because of assumptions. To me this is the basis to everything else. If people didn't assume that the coin is in your hand after you did a false transfer, there will be no magic to start with. I think u misinterpreted it and you may not have an understanding towards my point in this.

So here's a simple example. A coin is placed in the hand. Left hand is shown empty. The assumption here is that the coin is kept in the right hand since the left hand is empty. That's why complete vanishes can be pretty amazing from time to time.
Any the case, its not a debate. haha. So im just saying thats my view.

With regards to kicker ending. I agree that kicker don't work twice. I never said it did. Maybe i didn't phrase my views right. So.....yea...

Finally, my "2nd type of tricks" aint illusions. My example with david stone wasnt an illusion.

I think Axl gave a pretty good explaination about how i feel about the 2nd type of tricks. Its probably sometime that amazes even magicians.

Jlowhy - Pardon me for a topic that made u feel uncomfortable. Will try to be more careful next time. Haha. Im not good at putting my thoughts into words.

Any the case, thanks for your comments. I think Ambitious routine is a good one that has a great potential to be a "powerful effect" by my defination of one.

Oh, don't worry. I meant uncomfortable in the sense that I didn't see myself agreeing with what you said and that it just didn't register well with me. That's why I felt a little uncomfortable about some of the things you said. I found disagreement with it.

But I'm not uncomfortable about the topic. The topic is fine and makes a good discussion.

About kickers not working twice... well, here's some food for thought:

I believe that we could say that any finale to a cups and balls routine is essentially a kicker because it is a surprise ending that is unexpected. Does this however diminish the effect of the cups and balls on repeatable performance? Probably the surprise element will be gone but the routine itself will still be sound because the main reaction would be: Where did those come from?

Kickers should be used sensibly, if they rely purely and heavily on surprise, they will fail to work on a repeat performance. Kickers however that have more than just the surprise element will still be able to keep the effect relevant. Also, well constructed kickers in effects will rarely seem like kickers to a lay audience because they will seam in with the entire effect.

Cheers,
Jon

Fully agreed.

Like a jumbo coin kicker is a logical surprise to a coin flurry per se.

But I've seen some magicians being overly creative and making the mistake of an illogical kicker. A hypothetical example, doing a 2 card monte, and then suddenly the deck is of a different colour.

Doesn't make any sense at all because it has no logical progression from 2 CM to CC deck.

Pardon Me. I admit that in the first place, I have mis-interpreted your meaning of 'ASSUMPTION'.
Partly I think you did not bring out your point as well. I suppose what you meant is the following and if it isnt entirely so, my apologies again.

Let me start off with an experience a while back. I was watching REEL MAGIC EPISODE ONE (thanks to Magicdow), they had this 'TRY IT AT HOME' section. What they wanted us to do was to:
1. Take out a bunch of coins
2. Fake taking
3. 'Transfer' the coin
4. And 'vanish' it.

Garrett Thomas reminded me that, magic works because of the human mind. And I have read or heard this somewhere ago but forgotten about it. The only thing I remember sometime back was "Our mind chooses what it wants to see". To make it clearer, our mind works in the way that we interpret actions as truth because we have seen it as truth for many times that if he does this and this again we believe it is the same thing and of course these actions should be strong and natural enough.

And just a few moments back I recalled Dean Dill's Vanishing Matrix. I still remembered I was badly fooled by it. There was a part which employed the similar fake take and the rest was clean up with enough camouflage/misdirection, it so clear and you have enough reasons to BELIEVE that there was one coin under each card. (But in the end they all vanished lah.)

What I'm driving at is that assume could be a weak word. Part of the reason why I mis-interpreted LoyaLover. I thought he was saying assuming 'what is going to happen'. If he means assuming the coin IS in your hand, I think it would better off being BELIEVING the coin IS in your hand.

I remember how much I assume but never did dare to accept it as fact.
And I remember how much I believe that I was willing to swear by it and die for it.

In short,

Believe in what you are doing is magic, then your audience will believe that it is magic.

Because what you portray is what the audience caught.

Anything can be a powerful effect, even a simple French drop could be a mystery, if you do it right and well.

You don't need Pyro, blast to make it a WOW WOW magic. And you don't need tons of stage hand and gimmick product to do it also.

Believe in Magic, and it will do wonders for you and your audience.

sorry for reviving an old thread, but just want to say my two cent here:

I think magic's effect largely due to the blindspot of the magic logically/visually.
To explain this i would like to use the removing of thumb illusion as an example:

Assuming the magician presentation is perfect why does it seems so obvious? Coz everyone know that we couldn't possibly remove the the thumb, we just hide it some wherebehind our palm

in comparisson to coin penetration into bottle:
If i were to show the bottle and coin are perfectly ok, it is easier to wow people because they couldn't see the logic behind it.

Lastly, the relevance of the magic also wows people:

My drama teacher told me a best performance is when the audience would think back about the performance and try to relate with themselves.

Same thing with magic:
Vanishing a poker card would not wow people very easily because poker cards are not related to them at all

however if the magic was to appear unlimited of coins, people would wish they have that ability to appear so many coins for themselves, and thus immerse themselves in the magic.
Notice this, the audience related the perfomance to themselves.

Sorry if i wrote anything wrong cause ya i am abit new to both this forum and magic, i just want to voice out lol.

Edit: and i do believe in the power of believing:
To convince others, convince yourself

cheers