How often has one said to you , that they saw a magician on vacation, or a cruise or whatever and then try to describe their act they can't get anything right? Happens to me all the time. Last night, hanging with some friends and doing magic, someone of course asked about cheating. I went into part if my gambling demo which includes Darwin's Combination Cull. I've been doing this about 10 years and I love it. Afterwards, they all applauded and gasped. One guy says "I saw that same thing on tv once. Except he used the whole deck, and there was something about a guy at a club, and 4 queens..." Yeah, he went in to describe Sam the Bellhop. This has convinced me that most spectators can't remember magic. They just know they saw eye candy.
I once had someone describe my act to their friend like this. "He had a brand new unopened deck, never asked my name, told me to just think of a card, when I opened the deck he told me to shuffle, then look for my card, it was gone and then I looked up and it was stuck in the ceiling with my name in it!" She just described 4 tricks at once.

The most memorable 2 routines in my working set are card in walker and my cup routine, be it 1 or 3. The just remember those baseballs and fruit coming from nowhere. On several occasions, they tell their friend that the signed card came from their own wallet. I hate to argue with them, but no, that's not what happened.

Then lets not show them eye candy. Lets show them magic.

Let them have their fantasies. They won`t remember anyway.

Ray

How does one go about that?

Wasn't it Dai Vernon who said effects should be able to be described in one sentence? It's probably a simple matter of magician showing them too many tricks or card effects at once, which is why it was all jumbled in their mind. I try to limit my card work to one or two strong effects per group/table while working.

I've not heard of this one! Do you work in retirement communities much?

Sorry - couldn't resist!

It's not a matter of them not paying attention, it's just that most people don't remember events that they witness exactly as they happend. People tend to forget different details and even embelish things that never actually happened, I guess it's just human nature. But as long as they are entertained and leave with a feeling that they witnessed something entertaining, it doesn't really matter if they can't piece together the details.

Part of it, I think, has to do with the prop: to some laypeople, almost all card tricks look the same.

I once did a trick where I asked a person to name a card. Some magical stuff happened, and then I found his card. He remarked, "wow, how could you know what card I was THINKING?????" Uh, you told me. He swore that he never told me. Granted that's an unusual case because this fellow was unusually dumb, but it's a lot less frustrating than drunk patrons who genuinely confused their three of spades for the three of clubs. It's worse when they console you, "hey, that's close."

Yeah, I know. I've heard it all before. Describe it in one sentence, don't overdue your card material, eye candy is not magic. The point is not that they liked it, but just can't differentiate one card trick from another. The same guy told me that I folded and put a signed card in the zipper in my wallet when "no one was looking." When was that? Later that night, a group of young teenagers came to a table to watch me, (from behind) after they saw me earlier. Of course, I'm well aware of my angles and did a different set. They kept saying....do the coin trick. I did coins across for them, when they demanded the coin trick, I did Charming Chinese Challenge. They were shocked that I knew more than the 3 they saw earlier. Everyone loved what they saw, but they just can't tell you what it was. I think Cain is right, they just think that all card tricks look the same.

I think that when many of people see a trick, half their mind is on trying to "see something". You know, just watching carefully. So any plot or progression of things that occur isn't quite remembered as well as it might in a non-magical setting.

Just a guess.

Most people cant remember much after a comedy show either even if they had a great time and if not for lecture notes most ideas not mentioned in books wouldn't be remembered. I think humans can have an amazing time and not remember much, they will remember thou the next time the comedian or magician etc I in town and go again and recommend it.

in addition, I just forgot what I was gonna say

Could be that the specifics of magic shows matter a lot less to people watching than to those performing.

If you don't have a special interest in something, then you tend to pay less attention to it.

Also, us humans are incredibly bad at recalling events accurately. There's a lot of research out there to prove this. It also doesn't help that magic tricks tend to be abstract in nature and often use unfamiliar objects. If you're interested in memory recall, and the research that has been done in this area, I recommend you look into the work of Elizabeth Loftus. Her TED talk is a good place to start.

Marty

For informal performance, sets of three items might be best. Take a short break after performing three tricks and talk to people. Then, if they're into it, perform three more. The "less is more" concept suggests that stopping there might be the best thing. Leave them wanting more. Make them think about what just happened without loading their memories with too many things.

Material that's "high concept" is most memorable. "High concept" basically means that what happened can be summed up in a sentence or two e.g. "Those sponge balls jumped around and then appeared in MY hand"; "My signed card kept jumping to the top of the deck"; "Those coins started in a square and ended up under one card"; "He stabbed a knife into a bag of cards and came out with mine on the knife", "my ring was floating in the air", "the entire deck changed color"; "one guy named a card. Another guy named a number. The named card was at THAT number!"; "my card shot out of the deck like a bullet"; "He cut the deck four times and each time he cut an ace."

Who can remember something like "I dealt the deck into four piles and then shuffled each one. Then I selected a card in one of the piles. The magician shuffled two of the piles together. Then someone else took a card in one of the remaining piles and returned it face up. The magician shuffled the last two piles together. Then two guys dealt down simultaneously until one guy dealt the face up card. The card dealt by the other guy was his own card!"

It's magic but the process is so complex that it's difficult to describe even in a stripped down fashion.

In a longer (e.g. 30 - 45 min) formal show, it's more difficult to create a permanent memory of every effect. I think that the best you can hope for is that each person will remember several items and be able to describe them to friends. Of course, most importantly, you want them to remember you, your name and how you did the most impossible things effortlessly.

Mike

Hi, Pepka.
Lots of good feedback on this topic. (I read every post! I especially agree with Mike's comment on keeping a set to three effects.) The only thing I have to add is: don't be offended if, in the remembering of an effect, the spectator has embellished it beyond what you actually did. That's a natural reaction, and really it's kind of flattering.

I wrote about this before, so I apologize for repeating myself. A few years ago I did two card tricks for one of our summer interns. One was You Do As I Do, and the other had at least a few sleights in it (don't recall precisely what it was myself). But at the end, she paid me the best compliment: "You didn't even DO anything!" This was great -- not only did it reinforce to me that you can get just as good a reaction from a self-working trick as from a more sleight-heavy trick, but it also made me feel good that my sleights were basically invisible. To paraphrase Harry, not only did she not see something questionable, but she didn't see anything that might have caused her to think something questionable had occurred.


So if your spectators are a bit confused on the details of what you actually did, you can at least take comfort in the effectiveness of your performance! (If that makes sense....)

People aren't seeing the point. This was not a gig. These were friends. I know how long a set should be.

Surely this is something you use to your advantage. Like asking them what card they were thinking about when you know full well it was a force. The logical disconnects you put in a routine make it hard to remember accurately after the event and therefore more baffling.

Great post Mike, and good advice. Maybe if you really want a person to more accurately remember your magic, you should only perform a single "high concept" trick for them? Conversely, if you want your audience to focus on you as a personality, maybe you should perform several tricks including a few lengthy ones?

Marty

I'm not sure if Mike's advice was necessarily aimed at you Pepka, as it is quite clear you have a fair amount of experience performing. The thing I find so interesting about this behaviour is the false memory aspect. I'm sure, as magicians, we could make better use of this, although this does raise some important ethical questions.

Marty

Other artists experience the same sloppy recall in their audiences. The poet Maya Angelou said:

I've learned that
people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.

That can be a useful thing to understand and harness.

(Heck, politicians make a career out of understanding and exploiting it.)