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Presentation (A How-To Guide)
by Danny Davis

La versión en español de este artículo está disponible en BlogDeMagia.com.
Haga click aquí para leerlo.

In many magic books you will see many bold statements such 90% of a magicians success is due to presentation and the other 10% is successful execution of the trick. As getting into such percentages is debatable, it is safe to say that a large amount of a magicians success is due to its presentations. But why is presentation such an important part? Why so much emphasizing is placed on it? And why does it bring success and also how can I make good presentations in the effects I do?

All valid questions and all ones I will endeavor to answer, but first let’s have a close look at what presentation can do for you. Besides the most obvious of things and that of bringing entertainment value to the effects which you perform presentation also brings in an element of utility and versatility.

Strengthen weak points of effects
To demonstrate my point I will use mathematical card tricks as an example. Mathematical cards tricks usually suffer from two main problems: Mostly, they are not terribly entertaining, and it is often obvious that the method has something to do with mathematics. This in turn creates another problem of reducing the trick down to an intellectual problem.

The answer to this issue is coming up with an interesting presentation and has some emotional appeal and gives the trick some meaning. To prove this I will use an effect that most magicians can relate to, the feared and dreaded 21 card trick. Feared and dreaded because this is the most likely the card trick that layman will show you if they know any card tricks and it suffers from the two previous mentioned points. It’s required the performer to deal three rows of seven cards from left to right and the card the spectator thought of being indicated in one of the three piles. This process is continued one or two more times.

Ed Marlo has done a favor by adapting this effect so the dealing process is required but once, not sure of the name but something like 21st Century card trick I believe so if you have access to his version I would recommend it. Lets continue on and see what presentation can do remedy these problems. Below is a presentation of the 21 card trick. Remember what the presentation needs? To be interesting, have emotional appeal and meaning.

Items required:
Newspaper hat with police written across its front (you know, the ones you made as a kid)
1 pack of cards (naturally)

Performance:
Ladies and gentleman it’s becoming apparent more then ever that on the news and Current Affairs shows that bad news is good news. Very seldom do we hear a good news story these days.

So I'm not to be the one that breaks the trend lets keep that ball rolling.

Watching the news lately or not you may have come to realize a serial card thief has been terrorizing the magic community by sneaking in through windows during the middle of a performance and stealing cards from the magician’s deck leaving him with less then the required 52. It’s a shocking problem and one that I have come prepared for today.

Could I ask you to be my watchful eye in case he comes? Yes? Great then put this hat on. But its not just any card this thief steals but a particular card. Now I don’t know what card it is as I have not been robbed yet by I figure if we can find out together then maybe we can remove it from the deck.

Like a police line up I will deal these cards in three lines and you are to pick up one and think of the card you think is the thief’s preferred card. (The cards are then dealt in three rows of seven as traditionally required for this trick) To make double sure the card is the one the spectator suspects in the one.

I’ll gather the cards up mister police man and put them in your pocket. Now this is where I need you to act your part by following my directions. Place your hand out and say “stop in the name of the LAW”. Do this a quick as possible (this is repeated a number of times in a fast and quick fashion until an instruction is given to reach into his pocket and pull out a card)

Now what card was it that you chose? The Six of clubs? It looks like we apprehended the offending card. (In the hands of the spectator with the newspaper hat on his head is holding the selected card.

Analysis
In summary the three things that we needed to achieve are interest, emotional appeal and meaning both as I said before required to fixing both weak points apparent in mathematical card tricks.

The emotional appeal element is achieved in the sense of the magician trying to be serious with a completely far fetched and unlikely explanation of the card thief. Added to that the ridiculous physical appearance of the hat on the spectators head is bound to get a humorous response.

The meaning element is introduced in a number of ways, both in the meaning of the tricks as a whole and elements of the trick. The trick is solely and wholly to remove a card in the deck that may be open to be stolen. Then on another level the dealing of the rows of seven is explained as a police line up which seems natural given the nature of the theme up to this point.

What about interest? Well you’re always going to maintain interest if you keep your audience involved throughout your performance with wise crakes, silly antics or the alike even at the point of the dealing of the three rows of seven. This has been done fully and completely during the above presentation.

Having said that lets look at another thing that presentation can do.

Misdirection
When you hear the word misdirection you closely relate sayings like “the hand is quicker then the eye” which is to insinuate misdirection is a physical action. This is not true as there such a thing a verbal misdirection. To demonstrate lets look at the old and well known cross cut force which can be found in many elementary books on magic.

The deck is put forward towards a spectator and asked to cut a small portion off the deck and place it crosswise on the remainder. The magician says, “You had complete freedom of choice as to where to cut the cards. You could have cut off a big pile, a little pile, what ever you chose. Now have a look at your card." You point to the card he is to look at.

The secret to the cross cut force has less to do with the physical action of the cutting process and more to do with what is said. Look at what I have typed in italics, its that part that makes the cross cut force work or anything else you would like to insert at that point. When delivering this line all attention is brought away from the cards and focused on the spectator outlining the conditions that will make this experiment a impossible one. The time the above line also lengthens the time of when the cards have been cut to when the card is revealed further treating the cards as a non-event.

The line also adds a number of conditions to the force that really have no bearing to the effect as we know but further misdirects the spectator from the truth that the card he is looking at is really the original top card of the deck. This is why this force is so effective yet appears so simple.

To give another example try this, take out a match box and place a five dollar note inside it and ask a friend to match it. After both notes are in the matchbox draw, close it and make the following offer to your friend.

Offer to your friend that you will sell the matchbox and it’s contents (the ten dollars) if he pays 7 dollars to you. You further say that he is making good on this offer because he is getting three dollars more then the seven dollars he paid for the matchbox and the money inside it in the first place.

What your friend is neglecting to realize is that half of the ten dollars was his in the first place and what he is giving you is two dollars more then what you contributed. But this point is lost on your friend because of the misdirection given by directing your friend from this to another fact on how he will benefit. You will find this will work majority of the time. The only draw back in this little con is that it sounds to good to be true, which it is, which may bring a little hesitation in your suspecting victim.

NOTE: Don’t use this to con people but as an educational aid only.

Appealing to Different People
To this point we have shown two examples of utility that presentation can bring. So now I won’t to show how presentation can bring versatility. I think that value of a magician’s room of props would increase ten fold if more magicians looked in how they can use what they already have but in different ways. I have proven on more then one occasion that the same effect can appeal to two different types of audiences. As I sure that most of us are familiar with the normal adult presentation of the cards across effect, I wont to present a children’s version of the effect.

Presentation: "Hello boys and girls, my name is The Wizard of Aus, and I won’t to ask you guys a very important question." With these words a very serious look graces the face of the performer. "You see, I want to know what the first letter of the alphabet is, do any of you know?" a number of children soon tell the performer what the first letter is. "Yes, that’s right, ‘a” is the first letter of the alphabet, but do you know why “a” is the first letter of the alphabet?” "It’s because it’s the fastest letter in the alphabet, but many people think “f” is because it's the first letter in the word fast".

“Who would like to see how fast the letter ‘a” is?” After a varied response from the audience the performer picks two children who stand to each side of the performer. The performer hands the deck to one child and asks him/her to deal seven cards, which when finishing, the magician hands the remainder of the cards to the other child who deals ten into the magicians other hand. "Now if we need to show how fast the aces are, we need the aces", which matching the actions to words the performer extracts the three aces from his pocket. "We will place them in this pile here", which he places the aces in the pile containing seven cards making the total ten. "To make the first ace travel, we need this", upon his closing words the performer takes a flag gun from his case. "Could I please have another person come on stage here and hold this in the air, and on the count of three pull the trigger", following the magicians instructions the helper does so and the flag pops out of the barrel of the gun with the word BANG. To the humour of the children you count the cards to reveal there are but nine there.

"One has left, now we need to get the next ace to go, but this time I want everyone to pull the most ugly face they can so we can scare the next ace to the next pile", "Ok on the count of three...one...two...THREE". After the laughter has died down you recount the pile you counted previously to show there is only eight cards there now.

Now we have to make the last ace go, boys and girls, now how should we make the last ace jump to the next pile, does anyone have any suggestion?” no doubt at this stage you will hear a number of suggestions which can be very humorous sometimes, but the performer takes one of the suggestions and then uses it to make the final ace go over to the next pile, repeating the count to show seven cards this time. Its worth for backup reasons to have a third humorous way to make the final ace jump in case the situation occurs where no good suggestions a made. One such example is to find a queen from the remainder of the deck and say to the kids that this queen is the final aces girlfriend, so all the kids are to wolf whistle, to make the final ace jump, but I leave this final part to the performers own discretion.

In summary
Now presentation can help so much in this area but is can also be limited depending on effect you’re performing. Dealers have this habit of giving effects out with fixed presentations with prop fixtures that have floral patterns or cartoon characters. This means that your presentation has to fit the physical description of your props, because theirs nothing I hate then seeing a hard man act using a blooming bouquet. This also I feel contributes a lot to the cookie cutter image some magicians get as the work is already done for them and in turn stifles creativity.

Having said that what value would you place on an effect that pack small but plays big, appeals to more then one type of audience and has many more possibilities? It’s a no brainier really. So I hope that I have answered three of the four questions I posed at the beginning.

Why is presentation such an important part?

Why so much emphasizing is placed on it?

Why does it bring success?

If you want to explore the power of presentation and what it can do I recommend you read a number of publications on magic theory as there are many great titles.

Having that being said, that leaves use with the final question. How can I make good presentations in the effects I do? Stay tuned for the next installment.

Now, the final question, how can I make good presentations in the effects I do?

Well below is what I would consider guidelines rather then rules, as I believe that rules suggest ridged instruction that must be followed with in its parameters. This sort of mind set stifles creativity and the only the true rule is that you should be only limited by your own imagination. With this sort of boundless creativity you can stray in many directions and bring about many results and that’s fine if you hope to just perform one effect to friends or family. In unison with other effects however, this may seem to your audience as a crazy mixture. So the guidelines I suggest are rather to bring focus to your presentations and your creativity, not to restrict them in any way.

Let’s not forget as well why we are doing this exercise, and that’s so your audience is entertained. That being said lets start delving into the guidelines.

What to Choose?
I’m not going to suggest that you should choose one presentation over another but rather try to explain external factors that may influence your choices. The most obvious factor is your audience; an audience of children is going to influence your presentation as opposed to an audience of adults. Mannerisms, body language, words and jokes need to be in the realm of understanding of your audience. There is no point in putting an adult joke in a kid’s show or the other way around.

That being said there is common ground presentations that appeal to both types of audience. Not on the same level necessarily, but appeal none the less. An example of a common ground presentation is one where the fun and physical antics of your presentation may find itself entertaining to the children element of your audience but the under laying message or theme may hit home with the adults. School show performers with stranger danger, anti bulling and other such themes find them selves in this common situation.

Another influencing factor in presentation is where method is combined, as in my first post where I described the reason why the cross cut force works, it’s the element of misdirection provided by way of your presentation. With that line removed from the force, it would simply not work. This is a fixture in your presentation that you will need to work around. The secret in doing this is trying to make your modifiable presentation elements blend seamlessly in to the fixed ones.

A close relation to presentation fixtures is Physical Fixtures, things like pictures on props like what is often seen in children section of you local magic shops. These need to be catered for in your presentations, other wise they are simply meaningless distractions to your audience that will arouse questions. If you got a picture of a fluffy rabbit on a prop and all you talk about is ducks then what the hell is the rabbit for? You’re manner of performance will be effected as well by physical fixtures. If you’re going to be a super hero Mandrake (DC Comics) style, then you don’t won’t to associate your self with cute and cuddly animals.

The above things this far have been straight forward elements of presentation that a magician should consider. Not all things are as straight forward however. Henning Nelms (Magic and Showmanship) states quite clearly that his stage show where he has had great success in most cases has fallen flat in some situations among different audiences. I believe this is has a lot of what Jay Sankey calls, gauging the level of the room. There are a lot of magicians that are very adult only type performers using very four letter word in there vocabulary and also the English gentlemen type performer that never steps on the side of profanity or rudeness. Yet I have seen both, and both work extremely well. Why? This is because of the very first point I made at the very beginning, it’s the type of audience you have.

To further demonstrate my point let me relay as little story to you. In 2004 in the city of I attended the 2004 Australian Magicians Convention Hosted by the renowned Tim Ellis and his wife Sue and one of the guest lectures was Aldo Colombini. Also attending was a Phil Cass one of the most successful professional magicians in today. The lesson I learned here was not at any lecture or talking to magicians as going to the next event on our busy schedule, but long after when the convention had ended for that day. Some after those days’ events retired to the convention hotel for refreshments and to mingle.

A conversation broke out between Aldo and Phil about Phil’s performing style. For the record Phil and Aldo and there styles of performance are on different spots of the spectrum. Phil is the more adult performer and Aldo the more English Gentlemen. Phil style was along the sucker trick line where his presentation was at the expense of his helpers or assistance and the many funny situations that they find them selves in.

Aldo, I believe, was trying to make the point that through his style clearly brought him success here in , it would not always translate to other communities in other country’s. Phil was clearly trying to understand this as one time he had traveled overseas and had the unfortunate situation of being banned due to some magicians not liking his approach.

The conclusion I had drawn is that you can’t be all things to all people. The cloture in that country was not of the Australian way of not taking yourself too seriously and able to laugh at your self which was most likely why he is a hit here in and not there overseas.

But how do you gauge this sort of thing?

Jay Sankey said it best, he says to perform an effect that sits on the fence line where you currently are and deviate ever so slightly too where you hope to go. Did it get a mediocre reaction? Did it get a bad reaction, or did it get a great reaction? These will determine what will fly and what will not.

Also the element of routine creation will affect your presentation choices. Below is a basic routine structure I follow (taken from my Routining How-To Guide).

Opener
Gets attention
Must set the tone of your act
Transitions

Body of Act
Fits theme
Uses variety
Maintains interest
Transitions

Closer
Must be your best effect
Leave them wanting more
Leave on a high note

Stated in that How-To Guide I give many points on how to fulfill these elements of routining but presentation can aid greatly as one of these points. To demonstrate, Bridging words and phrases can make effective transitions—such as “of course,” “in addition” and “consequently”—can show that you're moving on. Transitions help that unified look of an act and not a thrown-together bag of tricks. It also helps your viewer to move nicely from one effect to the other and make that connection that we are obviously trying to make.

Lets not limit ourselves ether to think that the spoken word is the only form of presentation. Go to any stage production and generally things a have clear start, middle and end. When everyone has taken there seats and the theater lights start to dim and music starts to play, it’s a visual and sound queue that things are about to start happening. This gains effective attention, one of the points in my list above.

Now I think I have given many examples on things that could affect you decision making of what presentations you should use, lets now move onto our next Guideline.

Emotion
Think of any day significant in your life, whether it be the day you said “I do” to the love of your life or the birth of your first child. It’s not surprising to hear people saying “It was the proudest moment of my life” or “I remember it like it was only yesterday”.

I don’t know about other magicians but I think the recipe for long lasting performances in the minds and hearts of your audience can be found in these sentiments. The key to all of them is how they felt at that time, proud, sad, happy, in love etc. So why wouldn’t you inject emotion in your performances? The tricky part is trying to apply emotion. The first place to start is your self, making sure that you act projects that emotion in the most convincing way possible. Make sure that a clear connection is made. Look at ball room dancers for example. Doing dances like the tango, foxtrot and so on it is clear that a connection between the male & female dancer is there, staring into each other eyes intensely to an equally intense piece of music.

They also tend to relay emotion in a more hidden way; more happy songs tend to make the female dancers wear brighter and free flowing clothes where the more serious dances more dark and sharp garments. How things are said as opposed to what is said gives a whole new perspective on your presentation. When something is said in jest or in fun or in all seriousness adds to conviction of your presentation. If you ever ask a good joke teller or comedian what makes something funny is the delivery. It’s what comes before that makes the punch line or climax of the joke twice as funny. So don’t rush to the end so fast but make each spot in the road a memorable one.

What some magicians do is script their acts, and all though doing this has its advantages and disadvantages one of the main disadvantages is emotion. Emotion does not always translate well on paper then as if you had seen it or heard it, and if you would describe each detail of how a line was meant to be said as detailed as a romance novel your script would be blown out to many more pages.

Scripts also lend them selves to latent memorization which zaps all emotion out of the performance. I liken this to someone who politely laughs at a joke they clearly didn’t find funny which despite best intentions just comes across generated and insincere. There is of course people who can memorize a script well still having emotion and conviction in what is said. People like this are professional actors or people that have taken acting lessons and if your one of these people then you could probably do well not to take this advice. I’m thinking however that the majority of my readers have not had this experience so I will depart this advice for them.

The secret of reading a script well maintaining emotion in what’s said is by not memorizing everything but memorizing sign post points and gaining a general outline of what’s required in the in-between points. Gaining general gist of what said means that you now know what needs to be said but not bogged down with memorization which frees the mind to concentrate on other things. If you’re into comedy I recommend Billy Connelly’s Tour of New Zealand. He goes on stage each time without a set routine and plays things of the cuff. But where ever he goes he delves into the cloture and history of the region, add a funny perspective which constitutes the content of his shows. Nothing is written down, just an outline in his mind as to what needs to be said. The bonus of Billy’s approach is that his audience will be able to relate to his comedy and there is really no need to feel the level of the room as discussed earlier.

Having said that as I finish this post I will say that next time you consider presentation of your effects, that you place a bit more consideration on aspects that may influence what you choose, as I hope that I have outlined here today. I wish you well.

Danny Davis