What tricks best sell your services as a magician?
What are the effects which get you the job?
Best Selling Trick
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
What tricks best sell you? That entirely depends on who you are, your personality and what you do best. What gets you the job? Not the tricks!!!! You do! (Your coming across as a professional, your personality, your approach, etc.)
PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.mindguy.com
PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.mindguy.com
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
:( Sorry. I was just trying to start a thread that wasn't quite as heated as the other thread in this topic.
I just got a gig based on OTHER people's performances. The guy sat and talk for 45 minutes about other magicians he had seen and how good they were. I smiled and nodded and at the end he said "You know what I like about you Nick, your an ideas man!"
The tricks he 'remember' were far better then anything I have ever seen or done. Its amazing how audiences recreate the effect in their head.
I'd love to see the trick where he a signed and noted the seriel number that goes into an orange that has never left the audiences sight and is opened by the spectator!
Maybe the guy was a stooge and didn't notice!
I just got a gig based on OTHER people's performances. The guy sat and talk for 45 minutes about other magicians he had seen and how good they were. I smiled and nodded and at the end he said "You know what I like about you Nick, your an ideas man!"
The tricks he 'remember' were far better then anything I have ever seen or done. Its amazing how audiences recreate the effect in their head.
I'd love to see the trick where he a signed and noted the seriel number that goes into an orange that has never left the audiences sight and is opened by the spectator!
Maybe the guy was a stooge and didn't notice!
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
This is an interesting one because very often, and I am guilty of this myself sometimes, we tend to perform the tricks that we personally like, rather than the tricks that have the best audience reaction.
I think one of the reasons why this happens is because we know the methods! If a method is considered 'too simple' by ourselves, pscycologically we often disregard it. But sometimes the effects with the simplest effects have the best reaction.
It is difficult, but often necessary to distance ourselves from the tricks we like to try and focus on what appeals to our audiences.
To answer the second question, I have used the flaming wallet for some years now, and it gets a great reaction.
I think one of the reasons why this happens is because we know the methods! If a method is considered 'too simple' by ourselves, pscycologically we often disregard it. But sometimes the effects with the simplest effects have the best reaction.
It is difficult, but often necessary to distance ourselves from the tricks we like to try and focus on what appeals to our audiences.
To answer the second question, I have used the flaming wallet for some years now, and it gets a great reaction.
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
It can be a very difficult thing to get out of the magicians mind set which is one of the reasons that I tend to use an ouside layperson as a director for my shows. (A qualified director by the way, not just a lay person I ask to do it). I then perform it in front of lay people only to fine tune it all, chop anything that does not need to be there and then finally start to rehearse it until it is polished.
Being objective about your own work is not an easy thing but a true artist generally gets a feel for what works and what doesn't, and after a while, with somne experience, you should be able to tell too.
PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.mindguy.com
Being objective about your own work is not an easy thing but a true artist generally gets a feel for what works and what doesn't, and after a while, with somne experience, you should be able to tell too.
PSIncerely Yours,
Paul Alberstat
http://www.mindguy.com
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
Very true paul. Magicians tend to appreciate skill whereas laypeople appreciate the effect.
A couple of nights ago I performed a trick for a guy who was in brewing his own beer. I stuck a card in one of his beer bottles and placed it on the table next to him. I forced a duplicate, did a few tricks and then finished with pointing to the bottle.
On my way out the door I saw him placing the bottle on his mantlepiece....
A couple of nights ago I performed a trick for a guy who was in brewing his own beer. I stuck a card in one of his beer bottles and placed it on the table next to him. I forced a duplicate, did a few tricks and then finished with pointing to the bottle.
On my way out the door I saw him placing the bottle on his mantlepiece....
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
I would say that the best marketing tricks are the one that you leave something to the spectator as a souvenir.
I was at restaurant out of the city and I was performing my routine with the fire wallet to a friend (which I thought would blow is mind away). At the end of my show I gave him my business card on which I have a prediction on the back (similar to the 3 of clubs) I forced the card and revealed my prediction to be correct.
After a week I call him back to have some news of him and he told me that he couldnt believe the trick with my business card yet he never mention any of my other effect.
There you have it
Made in Pete
I was at restaurant out of the city and I was performing my routine with the fire wallet to a friend (which I thought would blow is mind away). At the end of my show I gave him my business card on which I have a prediction on the back (similar to the 3 of clubs) I forced the card and revealed my prediction to be correct.
After a week I call him back to have some news of him and he told me that he couldnt believe the trick with my business card yet he never mention any of my other effect.
There you have it
Made in Pete
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
I am getting Chuck at Kardwell to do up some screenprinted business cards on blank faced stock. If you can have them sign a card and it appears to change into the business card WITH a signature they will hang on to that for a while.
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Guest
Re: Best Selling Trick
Actually I do believe that is possible...Originally posted by Nicholas J. Johnson:
I am getting Chuck at Kardwell to do up some screenprinted business cards on blank faced stock. If you can have them sign a card and it appears to change into the business card WITH a signature they will hang on to that for a while.
I forget the gents name (or the name of the effect) but a visit to Joaquine Ayala's web site and checking the product section... he had a very cool device that allows you to literally steal a person's signature. You can thus, tear up a signed card or whatever and restore it... (use your imagination, there's literally nothing you can't place the autograph onto if you simply apply some imagination to things.)
I've used this system in Seance shows a few times and it gets a great reaction (especially when I steal the signature prior to the show and "they" have no clue how the spirits were able to mimic their handwriting...)
I generally agree with what Paul stated above... that it is personality, etc. that gets you the work 90% of the time. There are some "tricks" that help... for me it's been PK Touches and some of Rick Maue's thinking (Book of Haunted Magick)... but then, I'm known for being a bit strange :D