Close up secrets
Close up magic has been around forever but that doesn't mean that people cant still be in awe at the tricks being preformed right before their eyes. Can you remember when you were a kid and you had that uncle that always pulled a coin from behind your ear and then made it vanish into thin air again? I know that I can and ever since then I have been fascinated by magic and in particular close up magic. Like other forms of magic out there close up magic has been seen by almost everyone. It could be from a street magician or even a younger brother who is trying to learn and wants to practice on someone. With close up magic there are two things that are generally required to make the trick a success.
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Misdirection
This is a key role in close up magic it is a means for getting the audience to look in the wrong place at the right time. For any trick that you do in magic there is always and I mean always a certain degree of misdirection. Even if you think that you caught the misdirection of the magician there is a good chance that to was a misdirection. In short misdirection takes advantage of the limits of the audience. The audience will be looking to catch you out and as a result they are only able to focus on one thing. You can use this to your advantage because at the end of the day even though they want to know how a trick is done they are still there to be tricked. This means that they can only focus on one thing at a time.
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Not all misdirection however needs the audience to be looking in the completely wrong direction some misdirections can be done right in front of the audience. For example putting a coin in someones hand this makes them focus on there own hand for a short period of time while the magician is doing something completely unrelated. Don't believe me? Have a look at this video from a TED talks video that actually shows how much an audience really sees even on a daily basis.
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand is a method of manipulating something to get a desired effect and is used by all magicians. It doesn't matter if its a stage magician or street magician or close up magician sleight of hand plays a key role in any trick. Sleight of hand is designed in such a way that it looks like normal gestures are been done when in actual fact the magician is for example palming a card. When preforming sleight of hand for an audience it is mostly done close to the audience. The magician will normally either have the crowed about 3 or 4 feet back or if closer will use some physical contact when preforming a trick.
This closeness and physical contact will stop the audience from considering that there is a fake spectator or that the magician is using gimmicks in the trick. With sleight of hand you are not limited to gimmicks bought from a magic shop like fake coins or a tricked out deck of cards (although these need to be used for certain tricks) you can use anything that is available to you like a rubber band or coins. Sleight of hand makes use of natural gestures and this means that you definitely have to practice as much as possible. It is a good idea to do this in front of a mirror so that you can see from the audiences point of view. It is also a very good idea to actually do the gesture a few times in front of the mirror.
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What I mean by this is if you are pretending to place a coin in your hand actually place the coin in your hand so that you can see how it should look when palming the coin. Like I said sleight of hand is in all tricks why not take a look at this video of Penn and Teller on sleight of hand where they explain a few common terms and show you a trick using both sleight of hand and misdirection.