How to Scale Up Your Magic for Television

I get a surprisingly high number of last-minute consultancy calls with magicians who have just been booked to perform on a TV show filming later that week. When they ask what I think they should perform, I ask which trick they feel most comfortable performing.

My working opinion is that instead of starting from scratch, we should take a deep look at something you have experience performing and make that TV-worthy. It comes from the fact that to be good at my role, I must be cost-effective, successful and the trick can never fail. To me, it makes perfect sense to focus on enhancing something you already perform than to start with a black slate with such little time to prepare.

No other art form would decide to create something from scratch. I can’t imagine Adele deciding to write entirely new material for an appearance on Saturday Night Live. She’d get together with her team and figure out a way to elevate a song she’s performed hundreds of times to a level worthy of television.

There are a few ways to bring ordinary magic tricks to television. My favorite way to do this is through storytelling. I’ll often call this gift wrapping because you’re basically rewrapping the effect with some sexy new wrapping paper and a bow. The way you gift wrap the trick depends on who you're performing it to, where, when, and the performer's character.

Gift wrapping can sometimes feel intimidating because it’s not exactly an instant fix. Don’t panic! There are other shortcuts TV writers and producers employ to make ordinary segments feel TV-worth. We’re going to take a look at one of those “shortcuts” today. It’s called scaling-up.

If we go back to referencing music as an example. Kanye performing his song with a massive choir on an airplane for his James Corden appearance is an obvious example of scaling up. Two good examples are Lady Gaga playing upon a very high piano or Coldplay singing from a barge with an ungodly amount of fireworks.

Scaling up basically means performing exactly what you usually perform but turning the volume up on everything around it. It leads to the performer feeling totally at home, while the routine feels undeniably TV-worthy. You can see how scaling up might be more appealing and instantly gratifying to performers and producers looking to bring an existing asset to television.

But we’re not here to talk about music. We want to talk about magic. In this week’s breakdown, let’s take a look at the three ways of scaling up magic tricks, the best examples of magicians scaling up tricks, and the best ways to combine all three. We’ll look at examples from Derren Brown, Dynamo, David Copperfield, and Pete Firman.

Let’s start with the three ways to scale up magic for television.

Increase The Size

The first way to scale up magic for television is quite literally to increase the size of the magic trick. Instead of performing cups and balls on a table, build custom 6ft jumbo cups and use massive concrete wrecking balls.

If you want to perform a prediction effect, why not rent out the massive screens in Picadilly Circus, or mow it onto a field at such a scale that it can be seen from space.

What you’re doing with this scaling-up method is essentially pinching and zooming on whatever the trick is you apply it to. But it doesn’t need to be the size of the objects that increase — it might be the location.

Increase The Quantity

This one is perhaps the most cost-effective and easiest way to make a trick feel like it was made for the telly and not something you perform at every wedding gig you get. It’s also the most difficult to get right. If you’re not careful with your presentation, this method of scaling up can feel somewhat redundant because, well, it is.

Increasing the quantity simply means increasing the number of props, people or even locations involved in a trick. Instead of performing a card trick with one deck, perform it with a hundred. Instead of reading one person’s mind, read an entire football field full of two hundred spectators. You get the idea. When done right, this method is fast, affordable and effective.

Increase The Threat

The final most common way to scale up magic tricks for television is to increase the level of danger involved. We are most used to seeing someone like Jonathan Goodwin do this when he performs his straightjacket escape on TV.

If you have visited London, you have likely seen a street performer escape from a straight jacket. It feels much more TV-worthy when the escapologist is also hanging upside down, with fire, spikes, and all sorts of additional dangers.

You can be more subtle about how you increase the threat of a magic trick. The fact the trick could go wrong on national television and the threat of embarrassment might be enough. You might wager a crazy amount of money on the outcome of the trick, and the threat becomes losing the money.

As with all of these scaling-up methods, the core factor is that you are essentially performing the same small trick, but it feels far more significant than usual.

Combining All Three Methods

Whenever you scale up magic for television, it’s never as simple as using just one shortcut. You’re always going to end up combining scaling-up methods with an element of storytelling and gift wrapping.

I think the best example of this is Derren Brown performing needle-through-arm for Robbie Williams. This is a shop-bought trick anyone can perform today. Brown’s creative team made it feel totally unique to him and 100000% TV-worthy.

First, they scaled up the size by performing it on a scaffolding block in a large-scale location. Then, they increased the threat by performing the trick on the spectator instead of the magician’s arm. Finally, they scaled up the quantity by doubling the number of needles used for the trick. Look at that: all three methods of scaling up to take a shop-bought trick to a television standard.

In terms of gift wrapping the trick, Derren made it feel bespoke to Robbie and added an eerie element of trance and hypnosis—asking Williams to close his eyes and sing three blind mice. We’ll unpack gift wrapping in another post.