Monday Mailbag #66
/How are you feeling about Lloyd Barnes new effect Lux? They spent a week or two doing a completely corny hype campaign which had the opposite effect they intended on me. All I could see when the trick was finally revealed were the flaws. But maybe that’s just confirmation bias. What do you think? —SC
Yeah, I get being turned off by the advertising campaign for this trick. It does make me feel like, “If this trick is so good… why do you have to try so hard to sell it to me?”
That’s not to say this trick isn’t good. I think it’s a good tool. It’s not (as advertised) “the most powerful everyday carry item ever created.” It’s a fucking UV marker and flashlight. Certainly the most powerful everyday carry item should look like something that people carry with them every day, right? Yes, a UV light and marker is something you could carry with you every day. If you’re a fucking weirdo. But let’s not devalue the usefulness of the EDC (everyday carry) designation so that it’s just synonymous with “small.” EDC in magic and mentalism should suggest not only something you can carry with your everyday, but also something that a normal human might reasonably carry with them everyday (and also something that requires little to no set-up to get into). That’s what “EDC” should refer to if the term is to mean anything other than that it fits in your pocket.
Because I’m in the midst of the book mailing, I wasn’t able to get this out to a new Virtual Focus Group to get their thoughts on the effect in the trailer. I did however show it to a few lay people who I know personally to get their thoughts. I would say the general consensus was that they thought it was a cool trick, but when asked if they had a guess how it was done, they all had an idea. Their ideas were wrong. But that doesn’t matter. To a layperson, a satisfying explanation is no different than the right explanation. And most laypeople have heard of disappearing ink or ink that appears with heat. So if they think this trick is just that technology applied to UV ink, that’s what they’re going to think.
That’s not a flaw of the prop, that’s a flaw of this particular usage of it. If you draw an X in UV ink and I make it disappear and then reappear on me. Your first thought might be, “Cool!” But your next thought will be, “Oh, there’s probably something special about that ink.” (Again, that’s not the solution, but it’s an “obvious” one.) If not, why would I have done it with UV ink and not a Sharpie? With a little bit of thought, the logic of the trick falls apart.
But I will still get this. I’m going to get it to do a perfect version of Teenage Dream aka Out of This World with cum covered nudie cards. In this version, all the cards would be treated with the UV ink, and you’d just make the necessary cards glow. So there would be no required "handling” for the OOTW portion. You would just hand them the deck and have them deal it into two piles. No switching. They wouldn’t even have to be even piles.
I would hesitate to use this with a trick where the UV ink appears or disappears. That will definitely be the tempting way to use it. But I’ve found it’s not a great idea to do something magical with something people don’t already full understand. Most people don’t have a firm understanding of how UV ink/light works in the first place. It’s already sort of magical. “I’m going to do a trick with this thing you don’t fully understand” is a less-than-ideal situation.
If I was going to do that, I’d prefer to have the UV ink at least be used in a context that makes sense to an audience. Perhaps a hand-stamp from a club or concert vanishes from one person’s hand and appears on another. (“This is how I go about getting me and my friend into the club, while only paying for one of us.”) Even better if you could secretly stamp someone at an earlier point and then the image could appear on them.
This idea presumes that the type of UV ink used in this effect is the sort of thing that can be purchased for use in stamps/stamp pads. I don’t know if that’s the case. If so, this type of idea may already be addressed in the instructions.
Regarding the post: Extinct - An Interactive Effect (Don’t read this email if you haven’t read that post yet.)
That was fun and it was a perfect demonstration of your style of performing that you’ve been discussing the past few weeks. Even though I knew it was all fiction, I found myself really wondering if it was true. I knew it was a trick, but simultaneously, I was second guessing my memory. Knowing that it was all fiction, I found myself wondering how much was fiction and how much was true.
It basically played out as, “Clearly all the NLP stuff is BS… but maybe I really did forget the deer? No, I know for sure I didn’t see it there… but maybe I wasn’t paying as close attention as I thought? Well whatever it is, it definitely isn’t NLP because he’s basically making fun of NLP. But maybe there’s a little validity in it? He said it only works for 35% of people, so it has to be something psychological I guess.”
Obviously, all of that is taking place on a subconscious level in my “layman brain” and at the same time, my “magician brain” knew it was just a clever change of the site. But even still, I found myself WANTING to believe the fiction and consciously pushing aside the fact that I knew it was just a trick because believing in the fiction is more fun than discovering the trick. —MH
The “Extinct” interactive magic post from a couple weeks ago garnered as many emails as almost any post I’ve ever done on this site. It was all essentially positive feedback, although there was a subset of respondents that seemed to think I was genuinely suggestion the trick was accomplished through psychology and “wonder words.” I wasn’t. I was screwing around. (Given that I haven’t championed psychological methods in the seven year history of this site, it would be weird for that to be my thing now.)
But a lot of the responses were similar to the email above, in that they described a kind of ping-pong’ing of their understanding of the nature of the effect. With many readers thinking it was a joke at first, to then realizing the trick “worked,” or maybe it was a joke and they just also happened to forget that word, or maybe the psychological elements can actually influence people, but no it was probably just some kind of trick.
It’s not an impenetrable mystery because with a little bit of effort, it’s a trick that can be figured out. But for a few moments it seemed to nicely mess with people, and have them really questioning themselves, which I was happy to hear.
Now, what I do is I try and take that feeling, and instead of thinking of it as something that just happens during the trick, I try to instill it in people over a lifetime of performing for them. That’s my goal with amateur/social magic. To have them in a state of questioning things. So they don’t get bored or find the interactions predictable.
I’ve been helping my friend work on a new magic show called the M@gic Piz-za Guy. [The actual name isn’t that wonky, I just wrote it that way so this site won’t show up if someone searches for it.] Essentially you have a party completely unrelated to a magic show, and he arrives at some point in the night pretending to deliver extra pizza, which kicks off a "Twilight zone-esque" immersive fictional experience.
While getting ready to pitch this concept to a potential client she pointed out this to us,
“ Well, magic relies (imo) on the agreement between magician and audience that magician will lie and deceive, but it will be benign. The audience, by agreeing to watch, knows what it is getting into. Unexpected magic may lack that agreement, which could be disturbing or upsetting. Like the dupes on carbonaro's show- THEY don't enjoy the experience. The show is about seeing them confused.”
I thought the comment about the reactions you see for the people in the carbonara effect show really are much different than what you see and like a David Blaine show or a David Copperfield show was the most telling insight.
What are your thoughts about getting consent from people to participate in a more immersive Magic style experience? In your work it seems like you’ve got a lot of on ramps to get people to buy-in to the experience, whereas what my friend is doing is looking more to spring it on them in a way that they’re not expecting. It’s not quite as hit and run as what you see in the Carbonaro effect, and they do have to buy in and participate in order to get the most out of the story line at some point, but now I’m putting myself in the mindset of someone who finds himself having to play in escape room without having consented to participate in such an activity ya know? That sure doesn’t sound fun.
First, I love the idea for this show. I think it sounds great.
As to your question, I think it’s so easy to fool and deceive people when they’re not ready for it, that I can’t imagine wanting to do it, really. It would be like taking pride in having sex with the most attractive woman in your office while she was in a coma. That’s not really something to brag about.
If I was putting on a show like this, I would want people to know they are going to see “a type of magic show” or “a type of immersive theater.” Or something at least. I’m not saying I would spell out exactly what’s going to happen. I wouldn’t say, “There will be a pizza guy. But he’s a fake pizza guy. And that’s actually the magician,” and so on. But I would want people coming in with some expectations. Not just thinking they’re there for a party, and then being confused, and then having to sort of “figure it out,” and then be like, “So do I have to stop this conversation I was having in order to watch this thing I didn’t know about and didn’t come here for?”
This goes along with my overall approach to performing which to establish that things are “just a trick,” “just fiction,” etc. And then do all that I can to pull them into the moment and get them to “forget” it’s just a trick and for it to feel legitimate. That’s a seduction. You can take pride in that. That’s wooing the hottest woman at the office before she’s in a vegetative state. So that’s how I would handle it. Although reasonable minds may disagree.