Whoever said they aren't interested in magic after see a magic show is lying right through his or her eyes. I strongly believe that everyone would be amazed by magic one way or the other.

Oh, i'm digressing.

Well, many people claimed to have a passion and inate interest in magic, like the many of my friends but none of them have picked magic up as a hobby! Most of them are stucked with their PC games and soccer.

What i'm trying to say is they do have an interest in magic, at first. After seeing some exposed clips which are readily available anywhere in the net or for a price in certain shops, they lost such interest in it straight away.

One perfect example is my friend, Steven. He bought a package deal for $60 from some night market (pasar malam) which includes 10VCDs of teaching materials. After watching 2 or 3 of them, he gave up and wouldn't want to learn them anymore. He looks at the rest of the VCDs to know the secrets but never got to learn them, at all!

I guess this will be killing us, don't you think?

Too many people know some secrets of magic whether the DL or the balducci's levitation. How many of you encountered things like when you performed and have someone come telling you that you did this and you did that? Or worse, he leaked that secret out and everybody else come to tell you what you did.

Magic becomes no fun when that happens.

Even if you are a magician and someone else is performing for you, accept! Don't criticise! You can learn from everyone, the way he presents himself, the misdirections he uses, the way he slid the card in his pocket. Learn and NEVER expose! Don't let the magic market fall...

Always remember the code: Never leak the secret out.

Problem is, how do we this point out to lay people?? darn.

the force behind public exposure is the laymen. they desire knowledge, to satisfy their curiosity, but that does not mean they will take up magic, or take magic seriously for what it is. there is not much point in explaining this to them. magic is getting more and more commercialised, and what we can do is just keep OUR secrets.

i guess another problem is magic secrets are readily available off the net, for free. Just runa search and you'll get to know about many secrets like dLs and ITs...

thats a source of the problems. but it alone cannot cause the problems. when i started off magic, what i initially believed to be too difficult to be practical, too simple to be effective, etc. some turned out to be the exact opposite of what i thought.

something must be around to convince ppl that certain sleights are very useful, certain ideas are good. one of such problems is forums open to public who know the sleight, never expected it to be used (and usually cannot detect it), but found out that it is all the hype within the magic community. (eg. DLs)

Whoever said that everyone is amazed by magic? This is definitely not true. It's not fun to be fooled, and magic is all about lying in some way or another. Most magicians simply do not realise this, because they've never thought about it.

In the same way, some people really don't enjoy magic or is even amazed. They are just that by nature. Even if David Copperfield performed for them, they will not care a single bit.

That's why competent magicians entertain first, and mystify second.

Agree with Farid.

In any cases that tricks are free or whatever, we cant control it. But as a user or people who practise magic, it doesnt really matters to me whether the person knows about DL or IT or second deal, bottom deal. It matters to me whether the person is being entertained anot.

In the net, i always see free magic around and then the same old presentation. But i saw people performing magic, Same trick but different presentation, and i find it entertaining, even though i know how it is done. It is the effect u create on the person, not the effect the trick creates that matters.

The challenge to us is that, whether we can come up with our own style of doing the magic tricks and making it unusual to people, even the fellow magicians. Or we are juz simply people who keep buying DVDs and learn the routine and use it on people. Which i think is simply pointless. It is hard, but if u want to further on this path, you have to. I like Farid's magic, not because his sleight of hand is great, but his own style of presenting the magic.

I hope you guys understand the concept inside what i say.

All i need to say.

yea i understand what you are trying to say.

I guess all of us have to forget about what's going on in the internet of exposing secrets and lay people exposing you. Let's create a unique style for each of us and hope that the presentation style entertain and amaze our friends and family.

just a clarification,

i think a competent magician has to entertain WITH magic. both criterias must be met. but as a magician, our purpose is always to amaze.

"Our task is amazement, not amusement. Always amazement first." - Rene Lavand

"A conjuror is nothing if he only amuses and fails to inspire wonder." - Thomas Frost

of course, let's not discount the importance of entertainment, as that will directly affect your success in magic.

Totally agree

To me, free tricks can do two things..Bring one more potential copperfield to us or create another mindless heckler..

i, myself started magic by searching for free tricks on the net, and watchin free tricks my friend downloaded..
everyone have to start somewhere..layman who're interested in magic most probably won't know anything about basic sleights..much less spend 100 over $ to buy an encyclopedia of basic sleights ...(unless your name is steven)

i think magic's for those who have a little wee bit of determination in them(learnin and perfectin dl is already a lifelong process)those who don't have any determination will quit soon after they start..maybe becomin another heckler..

i think all of us just have to do our job..make our sleights flawless till even our own magician cannot tell..then layman and 1/2 magician 1/2 layman will all be shocked and entertained by us..muahaha..

Yup super true bro. Practise till our hands bleed and blister. Once I did a 'super' pass for a couple of my friends in a routine and friend number one asked friend number 2 this,

Friend 1: How the hell did he do that?

Friend 2: I don't know. I've seen a guy on the net called Brad Christian doing something like this and Brad cuts the deck really fast. Nick isn't doing it though.

So, moral of the story? Make sure your sleights are really good and, if you see Brad Christian, handcuff him and drop him off at my house. I'll hole punch his damn fingers till he says, " Ouch, I've been hole punched ".

Can't stand people who reveal passes. :angry:

haha.. yep! Blackwing i did the "super pass" on my friends too one day at coffee bean and they said the exact same thing. "Some guy did it on the net and he does it really fast, but i dunno how you did it."

What amuses me is that, after my "show" they were taking the pack of cards, coming up with theory of what i just did.

Hmm when I said 'super' pass I meant that I showed them I really good pass. I didn't know that 'super' pass existed.

hmmm... to amuse and mystify at the same time, that's a goal many magicians fail to reach..

about the pass thing... why would you show your friends just the pass only? maybe if u threw it into some trick involving other sleights then he wouldn't go telling everyone bout brad and the pass...

I think this needs to be painted in the sky.

I always find that focusing on the entertainment results in a much better performance than if we spend the entire time worrying about whether or not we've fooled our audience. We're entertainers, so let's entertain. The real trick is to get them to have a good time, not force them to believe we can actually bring cards to the top of a deck.

And who is Brad and what is a super-pass?

Brad - Brad Christian

The magician that publicise ellusionist.com and sell many DVDs now and also some other stuffs. They sell good beginner stuffs, juz that some things are over priced.

Super pass - I dun know also

Brad taught Pass in one of the video and the reveal it in this las vegas routine in the video. Reveal - He show it to the audience how difficult a Pass is and then did the one handed pass to finish off the routine. The routine effect is to give a final blow of the one handed pass on the impossible, but seems like he have also reveal the secret of the pass.

Begging to differ slightly, Brad Christian's website is a terrible example of a magic shop. Everything (not some things) he sells is overpriced! The simplest, and lousiest, tricks are packaged in a cheap video with a US$6 price tag. Con jobs, no less.

But yeah, there have been people I've seen who absolutely will not see magic- they just don't like it, they say, and they never have, even with televised specials like Copperfield or Blaine. Most of these are girls, fyi, can't for the life of me imagine why.

We've talked about this before on countless other threads. But it's good to see agreements. Should you want to be a mystifier, it's very easy to adopt a condescending persona and talk down to your audience. That fulfills the requisites, doesn't it?

Not at all. A magician makes mystifying fun. Yup, you all agree he entertains. Ergo, he mystifies- but everything he does is wrapped in entertainment. Not once should entertainment be dropped out- he becomes an eerie supernatural weirdo. And should amazement be left out, he just becomes a weirdo.

By this comparison alone, we see that the primary role is to entertain! No magician becomes successful just by spooking the wits out of any Tom, Dick or Harry Houdini, stooges or no stooges.

And we know that even simple, stupid tricks which done well can astound the audience. That's precisely what a magician should do! Make the audience feel satisfied they're watching your show. If you keep insulting them, no one will return.

Wait, wait lemme make this clear, there is no such thing as a 'super-pass'. When I said 'super-pass', I was referring to a pass that I invented which is impossible to spot from every angle. And, I didn't name it 'super-pass' so lets just drop the 'super-pass' subject and talk about hole punching Brad Christian's fingers.

I have to admit though, I love King Rising which is from Brad Christian's site but he didn't invent it so screw him anyway.

one of my girl-friend told me the reason why she don't like card tricks...she thinks cards can be manipulated too easily..so she'e seldom suprised...unlike the mcdonald's annie(for jaren)..she probably thinks we're god.. :) !!

Truth is, it's not exactly a good lev, in my opinion. Why do you love it so much?

I find it fails the angle problems, it's extremely weird to prep the whole thing- you'd understand why.

But back to this thread. Knowing magic does not equal being better than your audience. You do not make your audience think you're a god. You do not con them.

King Rising was created by Corey King, btw. Back to hope-punching fellas.