It's an absolute gold mine of tips on performance and full of detailed technical explanations of how he did some of his most famous illusions. (and the answer is not NLP or subliminal suggestion or anything he talks about in his patter, most of the time).
That is a fantastic book. It was very much written for magicians and gives away many of Derren Brown's famous routines so reader beware!
The aspects of showmanship and performance really stuck with me. I often remember snippets of the book even today.
One of my favourite stories is when Derren is having dinner with friends and their child says "Show me a magic trick!" So Derren asks the child to name a card. He then flips over, by pure coincidence, the card the child named. Of course, he was planning on doing a more elaborate routine but he was present enough to notice that he would not be able to top his accidental trick and put the cards away.
He talks a lot about taking risks in performance and being attentive to the energy in the room. Of course, you need some solid reliable tricks as well to back this up!
Also where he talks about how the performance of mind reading. I think a way to think about it is that it _is_ mind reading in a way, in the sense that you have to understand how your audience is perceiving _you_, that you need to act in a way that matches their _expectation_ of how someone who could genuinely read minds would behave.
His real genius is in identifying a kind of pseudo-scientific patter that would allow a skeptic to enjoy a mind reading performance. You can do the same crude trick that a mentalist or spiritualist would do, and wrap it in patter about neuro-linguistic programming and subliminal messages and psychology and with a few winks to let them think they're in on the secret and suddenly a hard bitten skeptic falls for the same sleight of hand trick that a gullible grandma fell for in the 19th century. Like, he accurately says that what he's doing isn't paranormal or "real", but his explanation on stage almost never matches what he's really doing.
I'd like to recommend two of Darwin Ortiz's books, Strong Magic and Designing Miracles. They're high-level theoretical texts on the perceptual and cognitive basis of illusion and I've found them to have a great deal of applicability to UI/UX design.
The card throwing is just a skill, there is no trickery involved. But what is shown in this video is magic facilitated by extreme skill (as opposed to, say, a gimmicked deck).
I've always found card manipulation magic like Ricky Jay did to be some of the most impressive. The flashier magic can be interesting in other ways but card manipulation feels so pure. There aren't any gimmicks, nothing super flashy, it doesn't require any equipment the average person couldn't acquire for a few dollars, it's just the end result of untold thousands of hours of practice.
I think it's maybe a trick card? Nothing else in the scene jumps during the 'edit' (he's moving his arms around at the same time), and you can actually hear the card make a little 'pop' noise as it jumps up a bit.
It's a gimmicked card used to create a break in the deck (for controlling where to cut). Earlier in the video, you can clearly see it (or another gimmicked card) creating a break (gap) in the deck. The pop at 2:15-2:20 is a slight vibration (due to the flipping card) causing the card so slide or pop to become more visible.
good god. that's got to be a dozen separate tricks, and I can't see through a single one of them. granted, the pixels don't help, but sheesh, Ricky was a force.
That's brilliant! I love how he 'sorts' one suit, flashes a smug look at someone off-frame and proceeds to just spread the rest of the deck face-up and sorted!
It's also an amazing book. In addition to being an incredible magician and entertainer, Ricky Jay was also a wealth of knowledge on the history of magic and all things related. The referenced "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" is just scratching the surface of the subject.
I don't understand what this passage is trying to say.
There's an obvious possible intent, but the wording seems to not match it.
Quote:
"
A Sad Footnote to a Sad Footnote
Famous Bullet-Catching Trick
Annemann was considered a strange figure in
magic and, by all but a few, he was thought a
genius in the methods of duplicating psychic
or mental phenomena; he was a creative thinker but always a reluctant and nervous
performer. It was big news when advertise-
ments for his full evening show appeared in
the New York press. Annemann was to ap-
pear at "The Little Theatre in the Sky" atop
the Chanin Building on New York's 42nd
Street on January 26th and 27th, 1942.
The feature of the show was to be the
famous Bullet-Catching Trick. A committee
purchased, examined and marked a bullet
which was then loaded into a rifle belonging
to a spectator, a marksman, who had never
met the performer, The marksman hoisted the
rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the mouth
of the performer who stood blindfolded on
the opposite side of the stage with his hands
behind his back. The commands, "Ready —
Aim — Fire!" were given. A shot rang out and
the performer dropped to his knees; there was
a trickle of blood from the comer of his mouth
and then miraculously the marked bullet was
seen to emerge from between his lips.
Over the years twelve magicians had lost
their lives presenting this spectacular effect,
and the magic fraternity spoke of the upcoming Annemann attempt with strained antici-
pation.
It is easy to speculate that Annemann, too,
felt the strain, not only of this trick and this
show but of the other confused pieces of his
life. He did not do the performance. On
January 12th, a few miles away from the
theatre, he locked himself in his room and
committed suicide.
"
It skips the part where there's an attempt to "magic" the bullet?
Same here, this was when I was a high schooler. I was a habitual card thrower for a while. I remember walking down the hall, flicked my hall pass. My enthusiasm was better than my aim and I nailed a girl in the back of the head. Whole lotta apologizing happened.
That very pleasant woman, both topless and fully naked later, also took me by surprise. No mention if her nakedness is part of the flick/attack position. I just browsed the book, but there's also a foot-card-flicking picture, and some ladies operating a man with a card.
I don't have time to read it right now, but surely will later, seems like a fun weekend book.
When I was a kid, my father and I used to hurl cards at each other in the unfinished basement, and as fast as we could throw 'em, I'm grateful that my vision was so historically poor that I wore glasses at an early age.
Fellow enthusiasts should also check out videos of card magician Jeff McBride who has a parlor trick would sling cards into the audience.
I don't know about you guys, but I often think magician are great computer scientists.. pre-planning order and configurations to obtain a known result..
I'm going to recommend another really excellent, long out of print book by a famous magician:
https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Derren%20Brown%20-%20Pure%2...
It's an absolute gold mine of tips on performance and full of detailed technical explanations of how he did some of his most famous illusions. (and the answer is not NLP or subliminal suggestion or anything he talks about in his patter, most of the time).