Spoon feeding
Spoon feeding is something I heard from Tommy Wonder, the basic premise is that you wouldn't give a child too much food at once. They need to swallow one mouthful before receiving the next. Tommy suggests treating your effects and audience in the same way, this is nothing really new but often isn't considered emough.
The idea is to increase the clarity of the effect, increase the suspense, increase the number of magic moments and otherall highten the magical experience.
In its simplest form it is like the reveal of a card via mind-reading. I don't think anyone just blurts out the exact card, instead it is spoonfed, first the colour, then the suit and finally the value. More suspense, and magic! It is the same with a card sandwich effect, the card should appear face down. This way the audience sees a card has appeared (magic moment) and then it turned to reveal it is indeed the selection (twice the bang for the buck). With coins, when a coin travels the magician has it arrive audibly first, and then opens his hand to reveal a coin has indeed arrived.
It really is worth running through every effect you do, to see if you are feeding too much at anytime. It is an easy way to make effects that little bit better.
The spoonfeeding anology can also be applied to instructions. If a volunteer ever asks you for clarity on a direction, make sure you address it in your script for the future. Often magicians have a tendency to give more than one direction at once, this can be too big a mouthful. For example, please put your card on top the right hand packet place the left packet on top and give it a good shuffle. The actions are simple but they should still be broken down. Put you card on top of the right hand packet...thankyou, now place the other packet on top....losing your card...and now give all the cards a shuffle.
This not only adds clarity to the instructions for which your volunteer will be grateful but also makes the effect easier to follow.
0 Comments To "Spoon feeding"
Write a comment
Enter the code in the box below:
Note: HTML is not translated!