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Fake It Before You Make It

The first step in bringing a magic trick to life is often overlooked and rarely discussed—faking it. That’s right, faking it.
Magicians are quite lucky because they can quite easily make believe most tricks. It’s tricky for other art forms to do the same. As a comedian or musician, you might build your set in one of two ways:
Piece by Piece
Layer by Layer
Piece by piece involves building the first section of the set. Then going back to make changes and try it again with a new piece at the end. Then you repeat.
Layer by layer involved going out with a flimsy full set and then ironing out the kinks over and over again. You can think of this as painting a beautiful picture layer by layer.
Many magicians come up against a mental block when trying to bring their trick ideas to life. It’s a fear of failure and an unwillingness to be incomplete. A trick failing is very different to a joke not landing or a singer not hitting a note in a song. Failure feels bigger for magicians. The idea of building a trick seems intimidating because it needs to work, you cannot fail, and it must be complete.
Magicians can feel forced to go from 0 to 100, and that’s a hard task for anyone. Taking an idea to a finished trick is a long and difficult process, and you need to find a way to enjoy that in between without feeling like failing.
Magicians are lucky, though; they can fake everything. Before you go out and spend money on a prop, or a method, or an audience, you can fake it. Magicians can fake things in a way that other art forms cannot. A fake magic trick can look near identical to a real one.
Three Ways We Fake Things For TV Magic Shows:
1. Pre-Vis

Avengers Pre-Vis 2016 vs Final Film 2019
Billion-dollar movie franchises rely on pre-vis, so why shouldn’t you? I worked on a show that would repeatedly ask us to work with visual effects artists to create pre-vis for all the big tricks. They requested this for several wise reasons. They wanted to know if the prop was worth the money. But they also wanted to share the vision with their creative directors and potential sponsors.
It helped for the magic too. Even seeing storyboards of big illusions would spark your imagination and help you pull things together.
One of the most difficult things to do as a consultant is to explain what’s in your mind. Getting everyone in the room on the same page and working towards the same end goal is incredibly powerful.
With apps like TikTok making camera tricks more available than ever, it’s become easier for anyone with any budget to create pre-vis versions of the tricks they’re working on. If faking it is faster, easier and cheaper than building the thing, why not try faking it before making it?
2. Stooge It

Maybe not these stooges
Many a time in a writers room has a writing assistant or staff from another production in the office become a stooge. It’s a form of instant feedback. Imagine this (said with magic trailer voice), you’ve just come up with an impossible idea for a mind-reading routine, and before you dive into how the heck you’ll pull the thing off, you want to test it out.
Stooge someone nearby, and then perform the trick with an audience of people nearby. Keep an eye on the crowd, gauge their interest in the story, rhythm, and overall concept.
I’ve seen magicians try this in real life—on me, actually. I’ve had tricks performed directly to me, and afterwards, the magic friends have come clean about the fact it was totally stooged because they’re testing the concept.
It doesn’t need to be a live audience. I’m working on a prediction trick at the moment, and it’s taken me weeks to design and print the custom deck with all 52 outs. What I really should have done is followed my own advice and faked it. I could have faked a performance on zoom to a friend with a predetermined outcome. Then sent that videos to a few friends for their feedback before pursuing the idea.
Grab your brother and get him in on a trick before faking a performance for your parents. Guage their reaction, watch it back, ask genuine questions for feedback. I wish magicians asked their audience for feedback.
Now, there’s a part of me that feels a similar way to how you might right now. I like building things. That’s the fun part. Faking it feels like cheating. What I have found is that faking it preps your mind for wider possibilities. It frees you up by detaching you from the method and lets you prioritise the important things. When the dust settles, circle back to the method.
3. Make-Believe

“yes, and…”
It amazes me how many magicians do not like to play pretend and make-believe. The ability to leap up and start improvising a routine with a friend or creative partner is just so incredibly worthwhile.
Grab a water bottle and pretend it’s the prop you need.
Put on silly voices, stand on chairs, play more than one character.
There are two key moments behind bringing the stage version of phone-in-bottle to life. One of them was when Dynamo and his team were sat in a tiny dance studio in north London watching Paul Kieve and me make-believe the routine before them.
Dancing around an imaginary table, holding plastic water bottles, switching positions. Walking on from different sides of a stage that wasn’t there. Handshakes, no handshakes. Holding the phone up to the audience. Holding the phone up to the camera. Making a joke about walking on water, not making a joke about walking on water.
After a long while, a decision was made to try two audience members on stage instead of just one. Harry De Cruz leapt up to take the place of the second spectator, and suddenly things fell into place.
Moments later, Dynamo was on stage playing himself, and I was benched—gleefully watching a routine, one we’d spent months in an office paining over, come to life through make-believe.
Things You Can Do Right Now
Pre-Vis
Use an app like TikTok or simple editing software like Final Cut Pro to employ camera tricks the next time you have a big idea for a trick. Jump cuts, masking and green screen are handy tools.
Stooge It
You do not need to stooge an entire trick, maybe just one element of it. Get a friend you trust to help create the illusion of a working trick for a wider audience. Ask important questions, and pay attention to the reaction at each moment.
Make-Believe
The next time you have an idea for a trick, FaceTime a friend and make-believe it. Place the phone down and stand up. Hold your hands as they would be for the trick. Grab flowers, or use your phone or any random object in place of the object you need.
Questions You Should Ask
How would you describe what you just saw to a friend?
Super important to find out how a trick is remembered and how an audience will retell it. Wayne Houchin found that by positioning two different thread tricks at certain points in his show, some audience members recalled him pulling a thread full of needles from his eyeballs.
How would you describe it in ten words?
Break it down even further, find out if they remember things you wish they didn’t. If the spectator mustn’t remember the table being wheeled out onto the stage before the magician revealed the prediction, determine if they mention the table in their ten words. Maybe there’s something they need to remember, like the fact an envelope was always on display, that they didn’t—so now you need to put the envelope under a spotlight for the whole act.
At the start of the trick, what did you expect to happen?
Magic is all about surprise and disguise. Find out what the spectator expected at the top of the trick to help influence the rhythm of the final performance. If they know what’s coming, they might be able to spot a method, or maybe the finale's surprise won’t hit quite so well.
If you had to guess, how would you say the trick was done?
Don’t use the word method. That’s magic terminology. Intro with the term, if you had to guess. It puts less pressure on the spectator. They’ll feel less likely to upset you and more free to suggest the ridiculous. I’ve asked this before, and the spectator has given a ridiculous answer to their mind, that actually was the real method. Make changes, perform it again, then ask the same question.
If you see the show again tomorrow, what might happen?
Here’s a question I love to ask. Does the spectator realise parts of the show are the same every night? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Do you need to adjust the show to make things feel more impromptu. Do you need to adjust the show every night so if someone sees the show twice, they’re not disappointed.
Which celebrity can you imagine performing that trick?
This question sucks. You can think you’re the coolest magician ever until an audience member answers this with a lame celebrity. It’s worth asking; it’s a straightforward way to gauge the vibe the trick has in the viewer's eyes. Maybe they’ll say David Tennant, Andy Samberg, or James Corden.
Fake it before you make it, and remember to ask great questions.
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