Derren Brown: Archive
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From: ganetauk
Date: Wed Dec 18, 2002 8:00pm
Subject: magic ...welllll.....almost
few more notes from the modelling...all this information free? wow
lol .......freeeeeeee...
There are several techniques that help in creating a successful magic
illusion.
1. Ask a question that is inherently flawed.
"How did the handkerchief move from here to here?" The audience
struggles to solve the problem and never succeeds because they have
accepted the floor rules of the magician in trying to answer a
question that never can be answered when the handkerchief never did
go from "here to here." (The proper question would be "How did I do
this trick?" which is a question magicians rarely ask in such words,
especially when the handkerchief never moved in the case where the
trick was performed by pre-setting a duplicate or other technique
outside of the realm of the question.)
When the answer to a question is not immediately obvious, people tend
to seek answers of greater and greater complexity which brings them
further and further from the truth.
2. Guide the audience toward a complicated way of solving the problem.
It is human nature to think that when the answer to a problem is not
immediately obvious, to seek greater complexity in the explanation of
the problem.
("I don't know the answer to this, therefore the answer is not easy.")
3. Misdirection is easier to accomplish if you inflate the language.
A big word creates more mystery than a short one. A technical term
uncommon in ordinary discourse is better than a common one. Words of
another language help especially. Words that establish an assumption
of a truth that has not really been established, especially when that
assumption is implied in a subtle way rather than stated, are very
helpful.
4. Do your best to create the impression that years of special
knowledge and training are needed to perform the trick or even to
understand how to perform the trick.
This technique can even work on the smartest of people trying to
figure out the mystery of the a trick that could be performed by a
ten-year-old an hour after purchasing the trick at a magic store.
This also helps to increase the effectiveness of directing the
audience toward answers of greater complexity. Give yourself a title
and never refer to yourself without the title. You are never
just "Steve."
5. Point out differences rather than similarities.
When a particular technique is used more than once during an act as
the component of different tricks, new terminology and different
explanations and setups will keep the pattern from being recognized
and keep the mystery intact.
6. Claim that you are invoking forces beyond mortal understanding.
Basically this means that you involve religion. Those who believe in
religious ideas that conflict with physics, common sense, daily
experience, logic, and personal self-interest are the most likely to
believe that the magician is performing "miracles."
7. In the act of performing a trick, never direct your gaze to the
place on stage where the mechanisms of the trick are actually being
played out.
When trying to figure out the explanation for a mystery, you can look
forever to find an answer that will never come if you are looking in
the wrong direction. (It is amazing how helpful a dramatic wave of
the hand can be in misdirecting an audience in the performance of an
illusion. The audience will think the hands had something to do with
making the magic happen when the entire trick was performed by stage
hands working behind the curtains.)
8. Use social misdirection.
Most people are basically insecure. They ave been trained to believe
that they must be humble and accept the wisdom of society over their
own ability to think and decide. Let them know that what they are
about to witness "has astounded many thousands of people on five
continents." Most will immediately assume that it is not even worth
trying to figure out how it is done if thousands of other people
could not figure it out either. (Sometimes tricks have been figured
out by people with forms of autism which inhibit their ability to
catch social cues and understand the misdirection, so they have an
easier time using logic to see how a trick is done. This, by the way,
describes the "nerdy" nature of many people who go into performing
magic.)
If you have ever observed people trying to figure out how a magic
trick was done, you will see them struggling through different
stages. At first they will believe that they can figure out the
answer, but the longer and longer they go without solving the
mystery, the more complicated the theories they then present to try
to explain the trick. The next stage is to beg for clues, sometimes
in ways that imply that they now believe that the magician has
knowledge beyond their immediate abilities. Eventuallly the
frustration is great enough that they begin to believe that
they "will never figure it out."
What I find the most interesting is what happens when you do show
them how the trick is performed. Professional magicians don't tell
their secrets mostly because it makes people really mad. The answer
to the mystery is always much more simple than imagined. Intelligent
people will not only become mad when told the answer, but will often
argue that the explanation is wrong until they are walked through a
repeat of the trick with the mechanisms exposed or until they learn
to perform it themselves.
The rejection of a true explanation of the trick can come from an
angry reaction concerning status when a person is stumped by somebody
they consider less intelligent or with lesser status. As a person
gets caught up in the progressive misunderstanding that greater and
greater complexity of theory is needed to solve a problem, they don't
think such a problem could possibly be solved by somebody of lesser
intelligence. But the answers are always more simple than they think.
Don't you recall?
Terry - now, i know you know i know, you know?
