Today I’d like to talk about choreographing your magical gestures.
Plenty of magicians have talked about how snapping the fingers is a lackluster way to incite a magical effect. It seems as if every time the topic comes up on The Magic Cafe, half or more of the replies will acknowledge that it isn’t great, and there are better ways to do a magical gesture. Considering this is The Green Latrine I’m talking about, that’s saying something.
Unless you’re snapping the neck of a voodoo doll, there’s really not much connection between the motion and the effect. Michael Ammar is a proponent of casting a shadow with your hand, which is a much more romantic and interesting thing to do, but this often doesn’t connect either.
Why not do something that imitates the magical thing that is happening? The Rising Card effect will have most magicians doing some sort of gesture that implies rising. Why not aim for that same compatibility in other effects?
It’s not that hard to come up with something with a little imagination. Let’s take a coin bend. Jay Sankey’s TV Bend, originally taught in Revolutionary Coin Magic but also taught here on YouTube, is a good example. At 20:38 in the linked video, Sankey demonstrates a nice motion, curling his hand with the imagined bending of the coin inside the box. But that isn’t the TV Bend, which comes later in the video.
Now, I don’t want to badmouth Mr. Sankey whatsoever. He’s a genius, and it’s very generous of him to share this tutorial for free. The TV Bend is a great coin bend. It’s visual, it happens in an instant, they get to apparently see the coin at all times. But as a result of how quickly it happens, it becomes very tempting to snap your fingers to make it happen. Sankey does this, at 25:40 first and again later.
But why would a coin bending logically follow from snapping your fingers? Vanishing out of existence maybe, but bending? Imagine if instead, you drew your other hand back, clenching it in one swift motion as the coin bends.
As you can see, the choreography fits the effect better than a snap.
I encourage you to experiment with tricks someone might perform with a snap, and see what hand movements come to mind that would match the motions of the cards, or the coin, or what have you.
For instance, with a sponge ball multiplication, you could clasp your hands together, then bring them apart into two fists, signifying the one ball becoming two. For the haunted deck, you could split your fingers over the deck into a Vulcan salute, then curl your fingers as if beckoning the card when it comes out.
Don’t like those ideas? Good! Experiment, and come up with your own gestures. I can all but guarantee they’ll be more effective than a snap.