Hi guys, I'm sure most of us are aware of this unwritten rule of magic: never tell your audience what you are going to accomplish, otherwise there will no element of surprise.

Makes alot of sense doesn't it.

But, some magicians, when performing some tricks, will usually annouce what he's about to do. Like if i'm not wrong, David Roth tells his audience that the coins are going to jump from one hand into the other even before he starts his trick. Most coin through bottle is performed telling the audience exactly what u are going to do and where exactly the coin is going to penatrate the bottle.

So what's going on here? What's up with this contradiction. By telling your audience what you are going to do, you take away the surprise. But why for these people and these effect, if seems to help them more then hurt them.

So is this about performer's personality? Or is it about the nature of the effect/routine?


ZiAn

Personally I feel that when you tell an audience what to look out for, you are leading them into what you have already planned. Of course it is also good for those who are a little slower and do not understand what you are trying to accomplish.

In most cases after you have told an audience what is going to happen, you are way ahead of them already thus it would not 'defeat the purpose' in any case.

Allowing an expectation to sink into the minds of your spectators also acts as a very natural and deceptive form of misdirection. Using your example of coins travelling. You tell them to watch the 4 coins in your right which will soon travel to your left empty hand. People would be observing the right hand and for the more skeptical try to 'catch' the point of transition.

Also giving them a brief sypnosis of what is going to happen finally is always a good thing to do when you want to end with an unexpected finish like a jumbo production for instance.

My 2 cents =)

Hmm.. Depends on what you perform.

Sometimes you "tell" them to misdirect or put the audience at ease, and in that moment of relaxation, you do your magic.
EG: Akira's Jet Coins
He will say, "Look, I'm going to make this coin on my right hand jump to my left hand." Then do a f**e pass. Then he will relax, show the coin still in the right hand, then show the empty left hand and then M pass.

Or like what Mark has said, to explain to the audience what's going on.

Unwritten rule? I've never heard of that. It all depends on what you perform. That was never a rule.

Some you do, some you don't. It all depends on the nature of the trick.

Read Darwin Ortiz's Strong Magic. You'll get a better idea of this.

Yes, there is such a "rule", but I do not think it is a hard and fast one.

It depends on the method (whether it allows for it) and effect (whether you want it to be a surprise, or whether you want people to anticipate it and hence build to the effect).

Well, it depends on doing what type of tricks. As for some tricks, you need to tell to audience that what you going to do before hand is because you need to let them feel amaze of what you going to do something impossible.

This is to capture audience attention and make them feel eager of what you can do at that moment like for example:

"Well, Do you believe that I can use your borrow coin(or even signed coin) and penetrate through this bottle just like that?"

To audience, they will think in their mind that "HUH?, is it possible?" or eager to see what amazing trick they can see from this magician.

As for those that involves story line presentation, you need to bring the audience into the story and also make them feel surprise or eager to know what is your next action as the story moves on.

I also think that not all tricks that need to tell audience of what you are going to do before hand. It really depends on the story line and how you present the magic. :)

I think it really depends on the performer and what he wants to achieve.

While it's generally simple to simply "not tell" and let the magic happen,
sometimes it's also good "to tell".

If a performer is confident that even after telling,
the spectators would still be impressed then.. why not?

The element of surprise is good...
but sometimes letting the spectator know what to expect could have a strong effect.

I once did a 2CM but I told the dude that I would be changing both cards to something else...
He held on to the cards even more tightly and said "impossible"

Here's where the spectator knows what's coming.. tries his best to prevent it from happening...
then gets totally blown away because to him it IS impossible.

It ultimately depends on the performer.
Some performers never explored that form of talk before...
Maybe we shall all try both aspects and decided which works better for ourselves :)

cheers,

R

For some tricks, u might give away the secrets if u tell them the outcome before hand. However, tricks like most of the mentalism requires u to tell ur audience what u are going to accomplish. I guess it depends on the magic u are peforming