RE: The subject line. We have all seen this as a feature of certain marketed magic effects, but has anyone devised or seen someone go through this process in a manner that is entertaining or compelling? It seems to me that ending an effect by having the props examined has the potential to create tremendous dead air, and really suck the life out of the performance.

I'm not saying it can't be done...

More data needed. Audience of one or many? Is the venue closeup, parlour or stage? Is there an audience representative up there with the magician able to verify that things are legit? Does the performer have basic presentational skills? Does the routine even suggest that things need to be examined?

Everything Can Be Examined Afterwards is not saying that everything must be. Maybe it just means if someone asks to look at something after then its cool.

While I can't see "okay now that the magic is done you can examine the leftovers" as a positive, productive or entertaining way to work, other approaches where examinable props can be of use. For example there's a strategy for dealing with volunteers for tricks where you play off the skeptical loud one by having them move some of the examinable props around as part of the show.

Let's say you have an ad for a automobile. The ad says in effect: It drives great and it look good also.

Ok, you will want ANY car to drive well, because that's it's purpose. That it "looks' good is just a nice extra, that doesn't effect driving, safety, etc.

The fact that a routine's items CAN be examined doesn't mean you HAVE to have them examined. As a dealer I always thought that for those to whom it made a difference it was nice to make note of such a feature, but I honestly never considered for a moment that anyone would have something examined SIMPLY because it could be.

I like Mr. Townsend's post above and might add that I don't believe that the word 'examine' should EVER...or almost never come out of the mouth of a magical performer. Once that permission is given it's bloody hard to withdraw it later!

Want to emphasize that things are ungimmicked or whatever? Have the deck shuffled. Have the coins held. Work the 'examination' into the body of the routine so you can finale and move on, etc.

Best,

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think what he's asking is this.
Could you take the idea of everything can be examined (as stated in many ads) and use it as a premise to provide entertainment for your audience. A running gag if you will. A bit of fun. I can't say that I've ever seen anyone play up that notion in a big way. I could see it being funny if handled in the right way.

To summarize, "can be examined" is more along the lines of "packs flat for shipping". I can't think of a specific example off hand but I do believe I recall some included instructions ending the performance by having the items inspected, which always felt anti-climactic to me.

Once this thread is concluded I will hand it out for examination.

I should probably point out that my original post was inspired by a post on the Right Or Wrong forum:

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......m=177&25

"Can be examined" is a mighty fine selling-point for vendors, y'know. Anything can be examined, after a switch. Even an elephant.

But, why? What could possibly be the motivation for ending a trick this way? I agree with you. "Everything can be examined afterwards" doesn't belong there. It is anti-climactic. It's almost insulting. Handing things out at the end of a trick to be inspected, things like coins, cards, or ropes, is just like saying, "Here's a souvenir you can't take home with you," or, "I'm done. Your turn. Try to catch me. Done with it? Find anything? No duh, Pedro. I knew that before I handed it to you." Moreover, how many people know how to look at things? Magicians look for things, most of the time, but lay-people don't. Instead, they fiddle with it, turn it over once or twice, then hand it right back. What was that for? So the magician can say, "Neener, neener!"??

Patrick:

This post made me think of handing out things that can be examined, which would leave the secret to the illusion visible. In other words, hand out a chop cup, get it examined. "Hey, I think there's a ______ in here." Or some kind of gimmicked card, invisible deck, etc.

I often play with this. I work with some kids who are teenagers. I frequently reveal my secrets to them. I'm kind of intrigued with the idea of revealing secrets. In a way, its a little bit of an insult to switch out a pen and then hand it out after a trick. People want the secret. Kids don't, they make the connection and just kind of pin the magic on you. "Hmm..." they say. "It must have been something he did special, or something he knows."

Adults just kind of get insulted, because they took the magic the wrong way. "Let me look at that" is something I haven't had the opportunity to hear too often, because I get people who want to see magic. But every once in a while there is someone who grabs something they shouldn't.

I daresay that if you perform something with a radical change of state, the final product must be examinable. Something like a torn-and-restored item or a creation of a Permanent Piece of Strange (to borrow Paul Harris's term) demands that the item be examinable. I'd actually argue that if they didn't want to examine it, it means that something about the effect is inherently flawed (eg: they assume a switch).

This is venue-dependent, obviously, but if you talk to regular people, you'll find that one of the big points of close-up magic is that they get to be close to the action. What do you think is going to happen in such a scenario? That they're going to revert to being stage-like audiences, passive clap-machines who're just happy to be there?

As for it being bad theater... If you've got presentational chops, every single moment in a routine has theatrical potential. I was fortunate enough to hang out with Chris Capehart after his lecture in Minnesota, and I watched him in the Applebees get a minute of humourous interaction with a waitress based on which Queen of four they choose for themselves, before the trick even started. Think about that for a second... he made the "pick-a-card" part of a pick-a-card trick interesting, without having yet done a stitch of magic. If you can make that notoriously boring part of a trick fun to witness, then surely it ought to be child's play to let them examine something and not have it automatically turn into dead time.

Andrew, congrats on that post. Great example of thinking beyond the obvious. This tapestry that we weave individually and call magic, is such a complex thing that it should be assumed to breach the limitations of the basic framework. Selling the act or the performer before the show is such an important issue for establishing status, that just the concept of selling after the fact should be an automatic consideration.

This of course doesn't mean that life has to come to a grinding halt, as warned against in this thread, but surely there are ways in which some "post mortem" applications can be quite effective.

I had heard of a similar technique being done with a recently restored newspaper, but I think it may have been Whit Haydn that describe it with a piece of rope (correct me if I'm wrong). The idea was to leave an ungimmicked item on or near the stage after the show. To anyone who would have witnessed the act, this would easily be assumed to be the same item used in the show. The result would be a trick that deepened in mystery, well after the typical framework of the trick had been established, and well beyond the linear "end" of the trick.

As Andrew mentioned, the close-up arena has a set of dynamics that can and should embrace this aspect, rather than fighting it. Similar techniques can be used that allow for simple or thorough examination of items after the trick is done, but while the rest of the act is still in progress. The nature of close-up is akin to any conversation among a small group of people. Much like a hurricane, there is the "eye". Around this, is the main concentration of energy. This is the main thread of the act. But also like a hurricane, there can be random tornadoes that spin off, live a short but purposeful life, before converting their energy back to the whole.

If one person from a group of four or more people, takes a sidebar to check the quarter and the cigarette after the penetration, that doesn't mean that the entire group must wait for the results of the examination, or worse yet, wait for their turn to also examine the same items. It is possible to overlap the action, bringing the majority along to the next phase, with every bit of certainty that the findings of the examiner is sufficient unto itself for the rest of the group, and without risking that our "special ops" spectator will be unable to rejoin the main flow.

In the same way, the progression of an act can be crafted so that individual tasks, such as signing a selected card, do not have to require the undivided attention of the entire group, at the risk of bogging down the main action. People are already used to managing individual tasks as part of a larger group. There is no reason to not take advantage of that when it adds another layer of depth to the performance.

In a round-about way, I'm adding that it is possible to allow for such examination of props at times, and in ways that do not disrupt the flow of the rest of the act.

That being said, the clever magician would recognize how many tools he actually has at his disposal. For all the others, a statement such as "everything can be examined afterwards" is likely to be designed to lure them to the check out lane.

"Hang on to this for me for just a sec..."
"Have you ever seen one of these before?"
"I can never do this one. You'll have to do it."
"Hold this end. How long do you think this is?"
"How much do you think this weighs?"
"My dad gave me this. Check it out. It's pretty old, isn't it?"
"Would this fit on your finger?"

Anything, anything! would be better than, "I'll pass these around so you can see that it's perfectly normal..."

Patrick,

I see what you're getting at, but if you consider that so much of communication is non-verbal, it's often a lot less about specific word choice. Most magic scripts suffer because magicians want the words to do the majority of the communication, and don't take into account extra factors such as context, tone of voice, etc.

Here's a fun project. Go find a screenplay for your favourite movie, and read the lines in print. On the page, they look dry, and it's difficult to see how they could ever have inspired the greatness of the performance that you remember. We frequently mistakenly attribute this to genius on the part of the actor, or perhaps the director for bringing that out. What we ought to be doing is instead practicing what's needed to recreate that same genius in our own delivery.

Our laziness to see the possibilities in this regards is also one of the reasons for the idiotic "The patter in that book is dated" complaints you'll hear often about classic books. It's easy to forget sometimes that irony and sarcasm weren't invented in the last few years.

There's an old exercise about how changing the stress in specific words in a sentence can seem to drastically change the entire sentence's meaning. In other words, "Please pass that around for inspection" isn't the same as "PLEASE pass that around for inspection" or "Please PASS that around for inspection" or "Please pass that around FOR INSPECTION" and so on, and the simple differences between those variations offer a ton of opportunities for additional meaning, including aspects of entertainment. Mundane lines even by their nature allow for the possibility of extra humour in follow-up contrasting lines. (eg: "Examine those cards. Make sure they're perfectly normal. Are they? Yeah, that's why I won't be using them." -- pulls out a different deck of cards, turns to somebody else -- "Please select one.")

Some card guys give the deck away after as a keepsake which does the trick.

The examination of props, the audience committee, and the the police-inspected equipment are even important in stage magic. This tangible, empirical element is a hallmark of strong magic. The challenge is to maintain the drama with no expense to the effect or, rather, to use the drama to build up the effect.

Another alternative is to only use objects that came from a spectator. Next best is to have a basket of junk to pass around from which spectarors select objects with which you perform. This worked amazing well during my Medieval camp-wandering days, but could apply anywhere.

You only have to be good at switches ;-)

All an overt asking that things be examined has ever seemed to me is a declaration that a puzzle is about to be presented...."See, you can't figger it out!" In a subtle way it's as bad as telling folks, "Hey, here I have a 'normal' deck of cards."

And, once again, once you have given overt 'permission' for one thing to be examined you have given permission for EVERYTHING to be examined. "Please examine this....Oh, no, sorry, you can't take a look at that..it's well, er, gimmicked."

Best,

Wednesday night, I saw Armando Lucero perform his close-up show in the Peller Theatre at the Magic Castle. He did stunning sleight of hand magic including his Coin Menagerie. He concluded the show with his signature effect Empanada. Afterword, several audience members were so stunned and enthralled that they were rendered speechless for awhile.

And at no point in his show did he hand out anything for examination!

Wednesday night, I saw Armando Lucero perform his close-up show in the Peller Theatre at the Magic Castle. He did stunning sleight of hand magic including his Coin Menagerie. He concluded the show with his signature effect Empanada. Afterword, several audience members were so stunned and enthralled that they were rendered speechless for awhile.

And at no point in his show did he hand out anything for examination!