Mailbag: Reader Feedback
/Here are some recent emails in reaction to posts from earlier this week:
Regarding yesterday’s post about the way in which time affects memorability when it comes to magic tricks, JH writes:
Counterpoint to your argument about 2-3 minute tricks not being memorable...most rock songs are about 3 minutes. I read somewhere that The Beatles had perfected the form. Of course, part of that length is due to the format of radio back then. —JH
But how many times do you listen to a song, compared to how many times you see a trick?
I don’t think it’s a counterpoint, I think it reinforces what I was saying.
When a song becomes vital to you, it’s usually because you’ve heard it multiple times over the course of days or weeks. (Or, if you get super obsessed, maybe over and over again in one sitting.) In other words, you have more time with that song.
If you just heard a 3 minute song once, it’s likely you wouldn’t remember much about it a week or two later. Even if you really enjoyed it when you heard it. (That’s not always true. Sometimes it’s like, “I heard this song once walking through the mall in 1987 and I finally tracked it down 30 years later.” Those situations exist, but what makes them notable is how rare they are.)
Time is just one variable when it comes to memorability. (Those who have my previous books can read more on the subject.) But it’s probably the easiest one to manipulate, so it’s worth focusing on.
Returning to your thoughts on the Pro Caps effect, did you see Craig Petty’s weird 40 minute video defending the trick? I thought it was a joke at first. He performs a few different effects for the same person. All of them are tricks where coins are vanishing and reappearing under soda bottle caps. When the tricks are over Craig asks him if he knows which items are gimmicked and the guy starts saying things like, “Is it the deck of cards? Is it the table?” He dismisses the bottle cap even though Craig whisks it away every time coins vanish from under it. It almost seems like a parody video you would make about how people WISH spectators would react. The spectator is clearly totally coached up. I was curious if you had thoughts on it. I’m a Craig fan, and own this trick too, but this video is so desperate I feel it undermines what he was going for.—CA
Look, there’s no way I’m going to watch a 38 minute video about a trick I’m not interested in. I did watch the first performance on the video and it told me everything I needed to know, even before any magic happened.
The first trick is a coins through table effect. At 5:45 in the video, the first coin goes through the table. You don’t see it go through the table. Nor does it visually appear in the glass under the table. The only evidence you have that the coin has gone through is the sound of a coin landing in a glass. But that glass is under the table, completely blocked from view. So all a spectator knows watching this is that a coin was dropped in the glass under the table. Nothing magical has happened yet. And yet the spectator’s reaction is, “What the fuck!?” Again, nothing has happened but the sound of a coin hitting a glass under a table where 5000 coins could be hidden at the moment.
So, I’ll take Craig at his word that this guy’s reactions are real. But if that’s the case, he’s the most undiscriminating magic spectator that has ever existed. He gave a WTF reaction before anything magical even happened. While that makes him a wonderful spectator in general, it makes him a bad surrogate spectator to demonstrate these tricks on, because he’s reacting in a way that is atypical. You do come across people who react like this from time to time. And if you have a person in your life who reacts like this, hang onto that big dumb dope with both hands. They’ll make you feel like a million bucks.
With that said, scanning through the video I can see that Craig is routining these tricks in a way to do his best to take the heat off the cap, which is a good thing. I just don’t really see that as a substitute for the traditional version where you don’t have to direct their attention so much. With the brass caps you can have the spectator cover the stack of coins while you’re across the room. Then, when they say go, the coins can transport to your hand while you are far away and they can turn over the cap themselves to find nothing underneath.
Ultimately it’s going to come down to what you prioritize with this effect. Do you want to do a version that’s more hands off and examinable? If so, do the traditional version. Do you want to do one that looks more like a recognizable object? Then Pro Caps might work for you.
I would definitely avoid any routines that use this part of the gimmick though…
The part that’s supposed to look like the plastic ring on the bottle the cap is attached to.
While carrying around plastic bottle caps is odd on its own. It’s hyper odd to also be carrying around that part of the cap. The whole purpose of that piece is that it doesn’t come off the bottle. That’s its function. So to just casually have that bit of trash on you that you WRENCHED off a bottle for some reason seems a bit harder to justify.
Regarding Tuesday’s Trick-Shot post, PM writes:
For some time now I've struggled to present mentalism seriously. I don't think there's a purer form of "Look how amazing I am" than with most mentalism presentations.
But the frustration of not being able to be wrong speaks to me. I've considered for a while now to present mentalism modestly, even apologetically. But I'm just not quite there.
I imagine if you could learn to read minds, it would be horrific. I can't imagine how rough life would be if nobody lied to me successfully ever again. Never being surprised by a gift, ever. Birthday, Christmas. No need even wrapping them.
But I'm not sure where this takes me for a presentation. I'd love a sentence or two of guidance if you can spare it. -PM
Yeah, that’s going to be tough to pull off as a premise, I think. The problem is this… almost all mind-reading has some process involved. So how would you justify engaging in that process in the first place if your goal was not to do what that process was designed for? You know what I mean? Like why would you have them write the word down and put it in your wallet if you didn’t want to read their mind of that word? It doesn’t quite make sense.
That’s why, with mentalism, if I’m trying to take a backseat role, I transfer the “power” to some third person or object. Then it’s my “psychic friend” reading their mind. Or, this “weird fortune telling game” that I learned about. That way we can follow some sort of process but it’s not my idea, and it’s not me gaining the accolades.
That being said, I’m sure there’s some way to read someone’s mind in the context of not wanting to read their mind. I’ll give it some thought. And if anyone has any ideas, feel free to pass them along to share with the class.