Recently, I have been trying to decide on a particular area of magic to specialise in. I hope to keep a good range of all types of tricks but I am intruiged by mentalism. Mentalism or mental effects (some would argue the difference) are, to me, by far the strongest way of presenting magic. Being a magician is almost admitting that you are a cheap trickster but being a mentalist... well just look at what you can make people believe. I am nearly 15 and am a hardcore magic fan but I have my doubts that spectators will actually believe that a 14 year old has 'supernatural' powers which would take away the presentation and thererfore the element of the trick. By no means do I mean to lie and say that I am pyscic or anything else but I don't intend to admitting that what I do is done with complete trickery either. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make people take a junior mentalist/mind magician seriously???

P.S. Since I am a beginner in mentalism, any suggestions for tricks or, preferably, books and DVDs would be gratefully accepted.

Welcome to Penguin Town.
Get a couple paid gigs. People will take you more seriously if you have a job doing mentalism.
-Tyler

im only 13 and i also enjoy mentalism very much..and i understand what you're saying about people not believing that someone so young can possess such powers...but to be honest, most people dont look at it that way..if you do something where you (seemingly) guess their card or a number or something of that sort, they will be amazed..so my advice to you is to keep practicing, and learning as much as you can about mentalism, or any other kind of magic for that matter, and when the time comes..you'll be able to surprise, shock, amaze, and maybe even freak some people out with what you can do..

I enjoy performing 'resistance is futile' and 'out of this world' those are pretty good.

Just to say that Out of this World is one of my all time favourite tricks, the patter that can be created for it it endless.
I have already had about 10 paid gigs with several different people, at each occasion (without meaning to sound too cocky here) I have impressed many people. Unfortunatley these gigs have not consisted entirely of mentalism, mainly because my repetoir of mentalism tricks isw kinda limited. I have PK touches, out of this world, a couple of simple magicians choice and 50/50 technique decks that have both been put into a sort of mentalism routine but running from sponge ball magic (one of my faves) into a deep mind magic routine doesnt really fit. I have also been making excellent use of the riffle force for my mentalism tricks, this combined with the burst bubble suggestion, which was taken from a book on slightly too advanced mentalism for me (suggestion etc.) that unfortunatelty I cannot mention (non-penguin advertising or whatever you wanna call it), has bowled over many. It is the completely fair non-gimmiky mentalism tricks that interest me, does anyone know of any good ones?

The "where do I get started with mentalism" question has been answered before, by me and others. This thread should help:
http://www.penguinmagic.com/discuss/vie ... hp?t=43647

Best of luck,
Neil

i dont particularly think its a good idea to do your ambitious card routine and then move on to mentalism. you just wont have the credebility. if anything, i can only urge you to not perform much more mentalism until you invest yourself in some beginning material. (i cant mention specifics here). then, once you have the core foundations and really grasp what mentalism is about, then go ahead and buy more. then you can form those effects into your own style

i'm 17 and i love mentalism... adults love it, but kids simply get bored from it, coz it takes a long time to get to the effect, and it's not a visual effect or something they can really see when it happens. since ur'e still very young, u should first do kids shows, to gain experience. i'm also doing kids shows at the moment, but i already had 1 gig for a mentalism act, which worked out great! but, it worked great only because of the fact that the show was for adults only.
i mean, kids still love some mentalism effect, invisible deck for example can be done for older kids, from 10+...
i get a lot more kids to do for kids, coz i'm still young, and not taken very seriously. but trust me, after u do a few kids shows, and the parents of the kids see u from the crowd when they come to pick up their kid, they ask from YOU ur buisness card. that's almost the only way i get gigs for closeup and mentalism shows.
once u start performing, now matter how, u get a lot more gigs in the way because of all the people that know u all of a sudden.

so in my opinion the best thing u should do is start small, with 2-3 kids shows. it doesn't have to be long... 20-30 min would be enough for starters, and for kids u don't want to make the show too long, coz they'll get bored.

hope this helped a bit,

Tomer

im 11 and love all magic, but the problem i encounter is that when i do a trick, people just go, oh, that was great honey.

Dont always think people are brushing you off because you are little. You may, sorry to say, suck. I bought a Raven a long time ago when I was new to magic. I did it to a few people at the mall, excited to try my new trick. They just blew me off with, oh thats nice. I thought it was because I was littler, but looking back on it now I know it is because I wasn't a good performer then.

If you really are a good performer, people will believe you. If you act the part well, present your tricks well, do good tricks, age shouldn't matter. And then of course, performing for people your own age is always an option. They are much more apt to believe you have powers than adults.

-- B.M.

Neil Tobin??? Didn't you create the X-pert???

I also am a dignified Mentalist and all you have to do is speak slowly and deeply as you can. I like to call it Max Maven style. Just go as smoothly as you can and make yourself seem mysterious.Trust me my friend it's all in the presentation.

since you are a youngster, sticking to mental magic effects are probably the best. doing pk touches is probably impossible. also, i'm 15, and i perform mentalism, but i also perform some really strong magic as well. if you open up as a mindreader, its harder for your spectators to think of you as a slight of hand expert