Hey, just wondering... what are some of the lines you use on a spectator as a que to make eye contact? Such as, "are you left handed or right handed." Things such as that.

Thanks.

"If you watch the deck, the magic won't happen."
that is all I can tink of right off the top of my head.

Reverse psychology kills it though.

Why would you want them to make eye contact? Misdirection?

For misdirection do like jay says in paperclipped!...ask them a question to cause them to look up. Like "What are the chances that the card I find will be yours?"

Or to do eye contact (i got this from osterlind) say "Now look at me as i do this...I know it's hard (get's a laugh) but do it anyway."

haha, ya man that one is pretty bad

I just say something very direct. They glance up and I have all the time in the world to do whatever I need to.

I had a magician at a magic shop say something that I later realised was a question created only for misdirection: "What is your favorite card?"

Also see:

"Favorite color?"
"Favorite movie?"
"Favorite food?"

If you work it into your patter, almost any "favorite" question is quite effective.

I just hold a dagger in one hand and say: "Look at my eyes please."

For some weird reason, this seems to work a lot for me.

That could work also.

never tried that one.... but if this is how you get good enough to get paid gigs, im all for it!

If it is a girl you could tell them that you think that they have beautiful eyes, that shine like the cold moonlight of a winter night. Then you can look deeply into their eyes while you perform a shoddy pass or something. I did this once, it appeared to work rather well.

Well one of the first things I learned is they will look where you look. So when I want to get them to look elsewhere I look at them and say something to them and look in the opposite direction from where there are looking. Right hand doing the magic. I say to the audience as I look them in the eye " As you can see my left hand is completly empty!" Then I look at my left outstretched hand.

Vonbodan

I like that...

Well thank you!

Vonbodan

dude, its called sarcasm.

tell a story, ask a question, those get eye contact for me all the time.