September 5th, 2008
You know what separates a great magician like Chris Angel or David Blaine from an ordinary one? They take a basic magic effect and design it into a master illusion. Now you can be the next Chris Angel. All you need to understand is basic magic design.
Most people think that there are thousands of magic tricks out there. In reality there really aren’t that many. According to Dariel Fitzkee, author of The Trick Brain, there are only 19 basic effects which govern all magic tricks and illusions.
All nineteen of those basic effects rely on some form of magical apparatus. Sometimes the items are real but the majority of the time the items are tricked or faked to accomplish some magical effect.
It has been my experience that there are only three basics that govern how all 19 magical effects work. All magic tricks are made up of one or more of the following:
1. Camouflage
Every magic apparatus from the smallest to the biggest illusion makes use of camouflage. This is the most important fundamental in magic. Perhaps you want to produce a big item from a small box. You can use camouflage to make the box look smaller so as to suggest the big item doesn’t fit. Maybe a piece of apparatus has a secret pocket to make things appear and disappear, camouflage can hide the secret pocket.
2) Secret Movement
You can also make things disappear or appear or even seem to come alive with a secret movement. You see an empty box, as the magician closes the door a screen on the inside drops and when the magician opens the door again, it appears a horse, bicycle, or even an elephant has appeared. Perhaps you’ve also seen the recently popular trick, The Floating Card. The magician spins a playing card around his body, or perhaps he floats it between his hands. The power for this comes from a small and practically invisible thread and the movement of the performers body. The whole feat loses its mystery if the audience were to suspect the actual means by which the effect is produced.
3) Mechanical Transformation
The final of the three is the mechanical design to produce a visible transformation. Perhaps you’ve seen a magician take a red scarf and pass it through something and it comes out blue. Perhaps a silk that changes into a cane. Torn and Restored effects also fall into this category. Perhaps you have even seen in a comedy show a clown or other performer pull out a gun and when fired a sign comes out the end that says “BANG”. Tricks like Metamorphosis that are done under cover are usually governed by some sort of secret movement and are not transformations in the true sense.
By learning the three basic concepts of design, you’ll be able to create and make magical apparatus that is unique to your magic act.
Ready to take a break and learn a free magic trick? Read
Easy Magic Tricks Revealed – How To Turn A Person To Stone
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September 5th, 2008
You can be the hit of the party and impress your friends and family by simply taking easy to perform, simple magic tricks and turning them into mind-blowing miracles. See the world and achieve untold riches, this is all possible as a person who can perform miracles.
The first thing you need to do is to break a simple magic trick down into the components that make up the trick. For example, you’ve probably seen a million times the simple trick of a spectator picking a card from playing deck and the magician finding it. Simple enough. Here’s what actually makes up this trick:
1. A spectator selects a card.
2. A spectator returns the card.
3. Magician finds the card.
A beginner may just fan the deck and have a spectator pick a card. The current method most all magicians are now using is a riffle of the deck while asking the spectator to stay stop. This actually makes it appear that the card they selected is a random one. You have probably seen magicians do this with their card tricks.
Unfortunately, we want to do miracles. So let’s take the selection component of the magic trick and turn it into a miracle. What if we picked someone from the audience? We gave them a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. We take a deck of cards and fan it open, facing towards the spectator and away from the magician. We ask the spectator to just think of one of the cards. No touching of cards. Nothing is removed from the deck. At this point you have a 1 in 52 chance of getting the card right (of course you’ll get it right everytime).
I believe this method of selection causes a much bigger impact because the spectator is only THINKING of a card and there is no way anyone could know except a true magician
Now we move to the second component. We need a way for her to return the card so we can later announce it in component three. How about if you have her write the card she is thinking of on a large piece of paper. You have her fold the paper into fourths so it’s about the size of a paperback book. Then you have her initial the top of the folded paper. She then holds her arm high so everyone can see the paper with her initials and with her holding it (not the magician).
Now it’s time for component three. Find the card. There are many ways to accomplish this. Here is one you may be familiar with. The magician picks up a deck of cards and throws it again the wall. While the deck falls to the ground, one card is seen stuck to the wall. Is it the selected card?
You ask the spectator if she has ever let go of that paper, of course she says no. She’s been holding it in plain sight the whole time. Without the magician touching it, she unfolds the paper to show the card she was thinking of is indeed the card stuck to the wall.
By following the blueprint I have set out here, you should easily be able to dissect any magic trick into its components. By taking those components and finding ways to make each one seem impossible, the combined resulting effect will seem to be a miracle.
For more of my secrets on performing magic, please read:
Learn How To Perform Magic – 5 Things You Must Do To Be A Success
Need more tricks you can convert into miracles?
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