Types of Magic Effects and Creation from Emotions

Choosing a trick based on its method or the flashiness of its props doesn't always clarify what the audience will experience. Borja Montón suggests starting with the nature of the effect and the emotion you want to convey. The class combines a classification of magical phenomena with ideation exercises to give a personal meaning to the presentation.

Recognizing what effect you are producing

The overview presents seventeen categories, some very close to each other. Their differences are studied based on what appears to happen before the spectator:

• Production and vanishing: something that wasn't there becomes present, or an object is no longer where it was.
• Transformation: the identity, appearance, or a property of the object changes.
• Transposition: an object travels to another location, or two objects exchange positions.
• Restoration: something broken or damaged regains its state.
• Levitation and suspension: the impression of floating is compared with that of maintaining an impossible position with a point of support.
• Penetration and multiplication: a solid appears to pass through another, or more copies of an object appear.
• Prediction and telepathy: anticipating an event is distinguished from knowing a thought.
• Sympathy: what happens to one object is mirrored in another.
• Animation or telekinesis: an object appears to come to life or move without a visible cause.
• Invulnerability, clairvoyance, and escapology: complete the overview used by the instructor to compare stage experiences and related disciplines.

The classification works as a working tool, not as an obligation to include all categories in a show. Some overlap and allow for a discussion of what the audience actually interprets.

Refining clarity and adding variety to the repertoire

The exact same procedure can produce different impressions depending on how it is presented. Using the example of a card appearing inside an orange, Borja analyzes what makes the audience recognize a travel of the same object, rather than perceiving merely a production.

Restoration raises another question: how much time is devoted to breaking and how much to showing that something is reassembled. The analysis suggests focusing attention on the impossible moment, rather than leaving it as a rushed climax after a lengthy setup.

The practical demands of levitations and suspensions, the clarity of predictions, and the risk of repeating the same experience too many times are also discussed. These are the instructor's criteria for reviewing the repertoire according to the audience, the context, and the presentation; universal rules regarding duration or the number of effects are not offered.

The Linking Rings, multiplying bottles, sympathetic cards, the dancing handkerchief, and other routines serve as examples of categories. The effect they produce is described without teaching their methods or complete sequences here. References to escapes or apparent tests of invulnerability are likewise not instructions for performing them.

Creating from an emotion

After recognizing the available effects, Borja explains how he starts from what he wants to make people feel. As exploration guides, he uses joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, and proposes expanding that vocabulary with nuances such as euphoria, frustration, vulnerability, or melancholy.

The wheel of emotions is mentioned as an external resource to find associations. A single emotion is not presented as a requirement for the entire routine: a scene can go through several states, and the magic effect can mark the transition between them.

A presentation idea is developed in which a photograph causes anger, its tearing leads to sadness, and its restoration allows reaching joy. This is an example of dramatic construction, not a technical explanation of how to restore a photograph. Nostalgia and personal bonds are also linked to a torn and restored thread, and ball manipulation is discussed where an aversion to an object drives the action.

Work for your own repertoire

The proposal is to write down an emotion or nuance that interests you, find what personal situation awakens it, and explore what effect can express it. You can start with an everyday experience, a relationship, or a memory, and then think about what changes when something appears, vanishes, travels, transforms, or is restored.

The value of the exercise lies in passing the idea through your own experience and your way of presenting yourself to the audience. It is not about reproducing the instructor's anecdotes or copying the plot of the examples.

You need pen and paper to jot down associations. No special material or mastery of a specific sleight is required to follow the reflection; if you decide to turn an idea into a routine, you will have to choose and work on its method separately. The class helps generate and select presentation ideas, without developing a complete running order or including closed scripts or downloadable materials.