That was a phrase that was once spoken by Max Maven in a lecture I attended years ago. I don’t remember when exactly but it’s always stayed with me. I believe that the full comment was “the secret to mentalism is to make procedure interesting.” It’s not just mentalism but magic too. I reflect on that whenever I watch a new release trailer.
Recently I was watching reruns of the show, CSI. The original series ran for fifteen years with numerous spinoffs. It struck me that it was all procedure. Every episode has the investigators, the technicians, and the police doing procedural work. The showrunners did something magicians and mentalists struggle with – they made procedure interesting.
Some of the ways they did that were:
- Interesting and engaging characters
- Compelling stories
- Suspense
- Humor
- Music and sound effects
- Lightning
- A sense of urgency
- Costuming
I’m sure that there’s other factors involved. These are off the top of my head. Most, if not all, are available to us as magical performers. We just need to think, try, and assess what works best for us and what we’re trying to create for our audience.
