Learn to Surprise Your Audience

First things first. Watch the video below. You must watch it from beginning to end. Otherwise, the rest of the article will make no sense. So here it is:

You may be familiar with this concept of anamorphic illusions. Tom Stone recently wrote an article in Genii Magazine About this concept. My intent wasn’t, necessarily, to fool you by showing you this video. However, I did want to take you on a journey, a journey of building to wonder.

Root:

Let’s Remember Our Roots. This Month’s Root: Surprise. There are many legitimate feelings that a properly performed piece of magic can invoke. For the most part, there is no right or wrong feeling to invoke. I would argue, however, that surprise should be at the top of the proverbial list. Think about this: most of the time you pull out a deck of cards, what does the spectator say (or at least think)? Either: “I’ve seen this one before.” Or: “Great (with sarcasm) a card trick.” But what if suddenly the deck of cards exploded into a ball of fire and from the fire a 50 foot Python appeared!?

Would that surprise them? Would they be amazed? Would they be expecting that? The answers are yes, yes, and no respectively. The would NOT be expecting that for sure. However, if you simply removed the deck from the box, spread the cards and said, “Pick a Card,” I’m sure they “saw that coming.” No surprise there.

But what about this: take out the deck and hand it to them to shuffle. That’s a little bit unexpected. Then ask them to remove a card from the deck themselves and shuffle it back into the deck. That’s a little bit more unexpected. Then you take a cocktail napkin from the table and light it on fire. It bursts into a ball of fire from which you pluck their selected card. That’s totally unexpected . . . a full on surprise. Yet it’s still basically the “pick a card” trick. When you watched the video above, my guess is you didn’t see it coming when they showed that the globe was just a picture. But you kind of saw it coming when the baseball was revealed to be a picture. Then, of course, when they showed the sunglasses, you “knew” it was a picture, but it wasn’t. Surprise #1. Then suddenly you realize the entire tabletop is a photograph. BAM! Surprise #2! I bet you didn’t see that coming!

Why isn’t our magic like that?

Branch:

Let’s build our branches. Your challenge: Surprise your audience. Do not confuse “surprise your audience” with a “kicker ending.” Sure, a kicker ending can be/is a surprise. But why save it for the ending? Why not surprise them in the middle of an effect? The beginning of an effect? Take a page from the video shown above. It was all about structure. Structuring the moments before the moment of surprise to condition the audience putting them in a particular frame of mind right before you destroy the frame and leave them suspended and surprised.

Take the time to look at your current repertoire. Do you have enough surprise? Look at your routines. Where can you change your handling, method, effect, etc. to set that stage and walk them up to the door of surprise? As always, this column asks that you examine yourself and your magic. Surprise your audience and yourself. Post your results below.

Now go study the classics and go discover your true magical self.