Miss Direction

When a magician waves his hand and says, "This is where the magic is happening." The real trick is happening somewhere else. Misdirection.

The quote above is from the movie Now You See Me. While watching it the other day for the first time since it was in the theaters, I finally got to really take in the movie. One of it's main themes is misdirection. The key to magic. Without it, well there wouldn't be "magic".
Now we assistants are usually blamed for all misdirection. Most people say oh sure, put any girl in a skimpy outfit and the magician can sneak an elephant onstage. While this could be true, I guess, that's definitely not how we do it in our show. I don't need to rely on my body to change where someone is looking.
There are a million different ways to keep attention away from what's really going on. Everyone knows that something sneaky has to happen, they just don't know where or when. And it's my job to see that it stays that way. Now that's not to say that I do all of it, Brandon does it too of course. But it is easier to rely on each other to cover for one another than to do it all alone.
Misdirection is a skill. I don't care what anyone has to say opposing that. The beauty of misdirection is you should never see it. It should be invisible. If you noticed a magician or assistant trying to make you look somewhere else, then obviously they failed. As a performer if you accomplish this, it's one of the satisfying feelings in the world. But on the opposing end, if they fooled you, it's one of the most frustrating things in the world. I'll never forget how many times during seeing Penn & Teller's show out in Vegas that I was just like holy crap, when did I look the wrong way? Or in their case, the right way.

As humans, we can't help it. We like order. So we naturally do what we're told. Whether it is someone actually "speaking" to us or not. The way that we misdirect could be a number of different things. But of course, all are natural. Our body language, facial expressions, a wave of the hand. All of things can cause redirection and misdirection. Where I look, you look. It's only natural. I look so fascinated by what Brandon is doing, you automatically want to see what I see. You want to feel what I am feeling. It's all part of the experience.
I'm not gonna lie, it's one of the harder parts of doing magic. Trying to concentrate enough on what you're doing, while not looking like you're doing what you're doing is extremely difficult. I'm working on my first silent solo magic piece and I have to do what magicians call "stealing". So obviously I have to use misdirection. And it's not easy. I can't check it or watch my hands. It's all about using a bigger motion to cover a smaller motion. Or just being gutsy. That can work too.

"It's so overt it's covert" -Robert Downey Jr, Sherlock Holmes

I'm not trying to give away some big secret here, I'm pretty sure everyone knows something sneaky is happening. It is magic after all. You watch it to be fooled, something has to hide the action of the trick so it can be magic. My misdirection has definitely improved over the years, maybe one day we can work up to full elephant status.