[Lerc]

That's the difference between technology magic and illusionist magic, When you see how the trick is done with illusions it's always a bit of a letdown because the answer is usually prosaic, the 'magic' vanishes and it becomes a trick.

When you understand how a piece of technology works you get that beautiful moment.

[tialaramex]

I've never got that. I feel the same way in either case, if your trick was easy everybody would do it. Sleight of hand tricks for example, if you're good they're completely seamless, I could never hope to reproduce and yet I know exactly how it's done.

Take that Penn & Teller trick where the live audience is just lying - that's a bit lazy, we're not supposed to have some great admiration for this trick they're just showing you it's an option to just have the live audience lie to the recorded audience and that "works". Whereas their transparent version of cups and balls is the opposite, you must be a sleight of hand master or this won't look like anything.

[gspencley]

My wife and I are part time magicians. In my experience, people who share your mindset become magicians.

At the risk of just repeating exactly what the person you're replying to wrote: The reason that non-magicians often feel let down when they find out how a trick is executed, is that it often feels like an insult to their intelligence. Magic toys with and exploits your assumptions. As soon as you find out that those assumptions were incorrect, and that you were just lied to by a prop (for example), your experience and perception of that illusion goes from "OMG" to "oh, that's all?"

What we want the methods to be is some grandiose Ocean's 11 like "heist" with tons of sneaky maneuvers and difficult sleight of hand ... but MOST magic tricks, including the ones that Penn & Teller fool you with (not the ones where they tip the method) are not that.

Penn & Teller have said themselves that (paraphrasing): "if the method is more interesting than the trick, the trick is not very good ... and that's when we show you the method. But the tricks we actually want to fool you with are just a bit of gaffer tape and a lie."

The fact that you say that you appreciate magic tricks that involve a lot of sleight of hand, or require technical mastery, kind of supports what we're saying. Most magic tricks aren't that.

To understand why, look at it from the point of view of a professional magician trying to pay the bills.

I can do card manipulation. I have a card manipulation act that I perform. It is by far the most technically challenging routine that I do and it has literally taken me years to get to the point where I can execute it and perform it. It's closer to juggling than it is to what most magic is (though it's still magic because I'm producing playing cards and fans of playing cards at my fingertips in short sleeves).

Now imagine that the majority of my act was that type of trick. I have bills to pay. I have crowds to entertain TODAY... and if I make just one mistake in a performance, the trick falls flat.

Penn & Teller tip cups & balls because the methods employed in that trick are genuinely entertaining to watch.

And the "let's have the audience lie"... I'm pretty sure you're referencing a segment in their 1990 TV special "Don't Try This at Home" where they had a large semi trailer truck run over Teller while surrounded by an audience who could see how it was done, which they tipped at the end. I wouldn't call that "lazy", I would call that using a medium to convey a message.

Magic doesn't work on television. You need to see it in person to really appreciate that it wasn't done with stooges/actors and camera tricks. That's a thesis that they have carried with them over the years. No one would do that "trick" in any other venue than in a television special. You can't get a big truck up on stage... and if you're doing "instant stooge" type of work, where people on stage from the audience are in on it ... at the risk of getting philosophical, they didn't even experience a magic trick. So it's not so much that the method was "lazy" ... it's that it was completely ineffective, and thus not even a magic trick for a certain group of people. Which was the entire point of the segment.

[tialaramex]

You're correct about the TV special with the truck. I don't agree that magic doesn't work on TV. Regardless of whether it's a TV show or performed in front of me the nature of magic† (as a performance) is that the performer gets to decide what to show and obviously they aren't going to leave only a single possibility open to explain what I saw, that's something Penn has talked about - there's only one way to do that trick in The Prestige so you would never do that trick.

I've never seen Penn & Teller live, but I have seen Derren Brown both on TV and in person. Now, on TV one of the things which most impresses me is Derren's use of forces. There are a handful that even an amateur who knows what they're looking for can see in some of the TV shows and there are more places where it's obviously a force but I can't figure out how it's done. In person though, that experience is actually less fun, because of course the force doesn't work on me. So he's forced a theatre full of other people to do what he wanted, and they don't know how. It didn't work on me in the TV audience but that's fine, I'm not the target - when it doesn't work in a theatre full of people it's a bit disappointing. When I listened to a recording of "Thou shalt always kill" I knew from the outset what the last two lines would be but that still kinda works, again in person it wouldn't land the same.

† If you claim not to be a magician, that this is real, then it's not up to you what is shown or not shown, if Millikan's drop experiment only worked with this custom made box and a specified oil recipe then it's just a trick. We do the experiment in whatever circumstances are available and it works because it's measuring a fact about our universe, it's not a trick.

[gspencley]

I think what you mean by "force" is what magicians call a "psychological force." This is when, through suggestion, the spectator will name or do something that the magician was trying to get them to name/do, while having it look like the spectator had a free choice, through no other means than applied suggestion. These do "work", but as you pointed out they are not sure fire. You get the best results when you can do it on a large group of people and you're upfront about the fact that it won't work for everyone.

Although in Derren Brown's case, one of the things that makes him a genius in the world of magic is that he reversed that dynamic. One of the brilliant things about Derren Brown's "brand" of magic is that by blending stage hypnotism and parlour tricks, he does a lot of things where when you think you're watching a demonstration of stage hypnotism, it's actually a parlour trick that is dressed up to look like stage hypnotism.

In other words, he might use a classic sleight of hand trick to do a "force" while finding a way to frame and present it as if he were using suggestion.

But stage hypnotism and suggestion .. .that's not magic tricks. So if Derren Brown is employing a psychological force, or doing a demonstration of suggestion that will work for the majority of the audience but not all ... that's not a magic trick. By definition, it is not a trick.

What magicians mean when they talk about "forces" are ways to make it look like the spectator, ANY spectator, had a free choice but it was engineered. A card force, for example, where you think you have a free choice of any playing card but the magician "forced" a specific card on you. Those are 100% guaranteed. They don't use suggestion, they use sleight of hand, and there is no person in the world that those don't work 100% of the time on unless the magician makes a mistake.

Back to Derren Brown, although him and Teller are close personal friends and they don't hate each other by any means... P&T have been very outspoken about the fact that they consider some of what Derren does to be unethical, because he presents magic tricks as if they are displays of stage hypnotism or suggestion. Like most "mentalists" he has flirted with a line that many magicians will not cross. Where he claims that by reading body language, or using applied suggestion etc. that he can do or know certain things ... when the reality is those things are executed via traditional parlour trick methods are often just classic magic tricks that most magicians know and can do but are presented with a new/different layer of lies.

So why doesn't magic work on TV ... well, you gave the answer by invoking Derren Brown. If he is doing these "forces" (which to clarify I think you mean psychological "forces") and they work 10 out of 10 times on television but they don't work on 100% of live audience members .. well then you know why magic is weak (at best) on TV ... because all we need to do is go ask 52 people to think of a playing card, and guess that they're thinking of the 7 of Hearts (for example), and then just only air the one take where the guess was right.

There is a YouTube creator named James Hoffman who is a coffee barista. And he was on an episode of Derren Brown's Trick or Treat (if I remember those details correctly). His story of being on that show is very illuminating. He talks about how he was shown 2 different tricks, the first one fried his brain, the second one was "meh." For whatever reason they aired the 2nd one that was "meh", but cut in the reaction to the first one where he was like "OMG OMG that was so amazing."

Why would you trust what magicians tell you, when they say they don't do shit like that on television? This is why, as a huge fan of magic, I kind of hate televised / pre-recorded magic. I have no idea what they did during the editing process. Whereas live, there are so many more restrictions and the audience has a much clearer understanding and impression of what those restrictions are. But on tv... anything is possible through editing and vfx.

[tialaramex]

Derren used to have a TV show (I don't remember the name) where they actually show some times a live trick that was recorded for the show doesn't work. Because of course it can't always work. It's like those out-takes at the end of a Jackie Chan movie, two hours of this guy being flawless isn't real, here is the time he was a second too slow and ended up taking a kick to the head and his "enemies" all rush over to check he's OK.

I understand the distinction you're making but I think it's so narrow that these overlap in practice, there will always be a psychological element to controlling the volunteer. They could do anything and you don't want that because that's definitely not part of the show.

Derren has also done that "Only show the one where it worked" in a TV show but lampshaded it by also later showing the annoying hours of trying it and failing over and over. Again that's pretty interesting and it's a case where you could just fix it, but where's the fun in that? I think that was on a show about an actual scam pulled on gamblers, where you give somebody the false impression that you're picking winners reliably. That's not a trick, it's just a failure to consider the broader picture - every other participant knows you sometimes pick losers, but one "lucky" person does not and they're the victim.

[gspencley]

> I understand the distinction you're making but I think it's so narrow that these overlap in practice

Entire books have been written about this, literally. So obviously we're taking short-cuts in a HN thread. Teller has said "all magic is a psychology experiment" so you're correct in that regard.

The point that I'm trying to make is that magicians rarely take risks in live performances. It is a job and there is a lot at stake. Obviously anything can, and does, happen, but there is a very important reason that magicians (not me, but magicians as a whole) distinguish between "psychological forces" and "forces."

It is that "forces" are considered to be sure fire... so near to 100% guaranteed that we consider them 100% guaranteed. Whereas "psychological forces" are well understood to be much less than 100% guaranteed.

Do magicians ever use psychological forces in practice? Sure. If, when it fails, there is an "out." Where if you saw the same trick performed several times, it would play out slightly differently each time. For example, let's say that I ask you to think of a card, and then I take a 1 in 52 odds guess at what you're thinking just in case I hit. And maybe I will slightly improve my odds by guessing at commonly thought of playing cards. Most of the time it's not going to hit, and that's fine because there's a fall back. But it's done so that in the event that it hits we have what looks like a bonefide miracle. Magicians do that occasionally.

But most of the time it's not that. Most of the time the magician is executing something that is considered to be close enough to 100% that no fallback ("outs" as we call them) is necessary.

Now obviously you could have some jerk physically grab the deck out of your hands or say to you verbally "I want the 8 of spades" when you extend the cards to have them remove one. That can happen, sure, and an experienced performer will be able to navigate the situation and turn it around "you see the thing is, I could guess what card you were thinking of ... 68% of men between the age of 24 and 35 name the 8 of spades ... we need a RANDOM card for this trick" etc. (And that example is valid, but traditional performer wisdom is once you've recovered get that jerk off the stage and move on as fast as possible because they've just proven themselves to be disruptive).

[jsmith45]

See, I won't say magic can't work on television. It can work, but it does rely on a setting where the home audience can be reasonably sure the film crew is not in cahoots with the performer. This is uncommon, but in some limited scenarios like magic tricks on America's Got Talent, or say P&T's Fool Us there is little reason to cheat with video tricks, as those won't help with the judges/P&T at all, plus you risk having members of the studio audience call out the producers over such trickery.

Things like TV specials on the other hand, yeah not so much.

[gspencley]

That's a good point, and P&T have said as much when it comes to Fool Us. That having a live audience was integral to making the show work.

However, as much as I'm a fan of Fool Us, there are things that bother me about the show to the point where I will walk back how I phrased things. It's not that magic "can't work" on TV ... it's that it is always, without exception weaker on TV.

Fool Us is a show made by magicians for magicians (and I'm not even talking about Penn & Teller specifically... I'm talking about Johnny Thompson, Michael Close and others who have worked as producers to make that show what it is) and even they can't always adhere to not cutting during key moments because the nature of television forces them to have to fit varied material during a rigid time block that can change even up to moments before airing.

Then, if you pay attention when watching the show, they use other editing techniques like "risers" for example (a type of subtle sound fx added in post) during the recording which changes it in ways that makes it different than what you would experience if you saw it live.

And then there are still examples of doing stuff for TV with a live audience, that could only be done in that setting.

I'll give you an example of such a trick that has been done on these types of shows numerous times. The first time I saw it performed by Derren Brown on one of his shows I was completely brain-fried.

The trick is that the magician apparently "steals" a spectator's ability to read.

How it looks is that there is a word printed in large bold letters on a piece of paper (in Derren Brown's case it was printed on a page in a magazine). This word is shown to the wider audience and to the camera so that viewers can see it at home. What's great about this trick on TV is that while it is being shown to the selected audience member on stage, the camera can frame it so that viewers at home can verify that they are seeing the same printed word.

And yet while you can read it fine, the spectator on stage sees jibberish.

This trick has been performed on AGT at least once. It's also been performed on Fool Us by a different magician.

It's a marketed trick that you could go buy from a magic shop and perform yourself. But you won't. Why?

Because it works on optical principle that requires lighting to be very controlled.

The creator of that trick even recommends discussing the mechanics of the trick with the film production crew when doing it on television so that the camera operators and the director of photography know how to make it look as good as possible.

In other words... it's a great trick to perform on a sound stage when producing for television. But it doesn't really work that well in other environments. To be fair, you could do it with a live audience in a theatre and there are a lot of stage illusions that need controlled lighting. So it's not like this is something that needs TV specifically, though it kind of still needs cameras to "sell" the illusion so the audience can see what is being shown to the spectator on stage. And magicians love to have philosophical arguments about what constitutes "cheating." You've got magicians like me who think that the audience can't trust TV, and so we're advocates for live entertainment. And then you have magicians who take the position that TV is just another venue, and that the venue is always a tool that is available to be exploited and manipulated because that's what magicians do. But that leaves room for using everything from manipulative editing to cgi.

This is why, in my opinion, while I will walk back what I said a little and rephrase it as "magic is weaker on TV" rather than "can't work", I still think that magic is way more impressive in person... as a result of knowing what's possible on television, even when there is a live in-studio audience.