Dan & Dave filming Time Warp for Discovery Channel

Earlier this week I was reading an interesting and potentially controversial article at Online Visions, the general gist of which was to tell people not to film their close-up magic performances because it allows anybody anywhere to watch and rewatch the performance as many times as they want in order to work them out, and nuances that would have passed someone by the first time – were it live – would eventually be seen. The author considered filming magic in this way as exposure.

He made an interesting point. I’m not entirely sure it is a valid one though. While, yes, there are some absolutely hopeless videos out there on YouTube, filmed on ten dollar web cams which never move and are basically a shot of the performer’s hands – just like those annoying spectators who will not relax and enjoy the performance but instead watch you like a hawk and even refuse to blink. But I don’t think that not filming magic at all is the way forward.

We are living in the information revolution. This is a very exciting time in history and the only time to date when you could send the complete works of Shakespeare from here to Australia in the blink of an eye. Information, and the ability to share it, is what is making the human species cleverer by the day. And it isn’t going to go away.

So I don’t say, don’t film. I just say film better.

Having had a bit of film school training myself, I’m about to share with you some of the secrets of Lo-To-No Budget Film Making that you can use in your own magic videos to fake a big budget and just make it look more professional and less pathetic.

1. Use Multiple Angles

Yes, I appreciate that we are not all made of money and that the majority of you cannot afford expensive camera equipment or maybe you don’t have a friend kind enough (or skilled enough) to hold the camera while you perform, but we can do better than a continuous shot of your hands while you do a card routine.

The truth is, video camera technology is just too easily available now for single shot videos to be acceptable. I’ll bet most of you have video recording technology built into your mobile phones.

2. Perform to a Person!

Magic is meant to be seen by people. In your video, perform to somebody. It gives the viewing audience somebody in the video to associate with. It allows you to interact with your spectator. In all, it allows you to actual entertain rather than to simply present a puzzle – as you are effectively doing with the one shot hands videos.

When the person reacts, you have a form of social proof of your magic.

People are easily available. All you need is the guts to ask them, and the streets fill with people every weekend.

3. Edit Wisely

Use an inexpensive editing suite like CyberLink Power Director to put your video together. You can add simple after effects which will make your video look professional (if you’re careful, and cheesy if you’re not).

Also, you can switch angles every time a “dirty move” comes along – and not ONLY when a dirty move comes along, tell the story too – and your magic will be harder for persistent audiences to figure out.

—

I think if you stick to those 3 simple rules then, for little more effort, you can have much better videos which are both more entertaining, more interesting to watch and simple don’t wreak amateurville!

Enjoy!

We’ve all seen magicians and illusionists do magic tricks. And there is enough magic about that we have all seen bad magic as well as good magic. But here’s an important question: What is the difference? What makes good magic good and bad magic bad?

After ten years of performing close-up and street magic, I have come to realize that there are five elements that create a powerful performance of magic.

#5 A strong effect. And in this context, by effect, I mean what is supposed to happen that is considered magical. It could be a vanish, or a transformation or an act of mind reading. But it has to be a decent idea. Decent effects in magic are usually things that are obviously magical – easily communicable. The more direct, the better.

#4 The moves. Obviously, no trick requiring sleight-of-hand is going to work if the performer cannot adequately execute the moves required. That much is obvious. Mastering sleight-of-hand moves essentially comes down to careful practise and muscle learning.

#3 Elements of impossibility. These are the little things that stick in the audience’s mind when they recall the trick. The deck that the magician never touched, or the *** that could not have happened. Some would claim that this is part of the effect, but I disagree because a lot of the time you can perform the same effect without these elements and it won’t be as strong. Equally, some elements of impossibility are presentational and as such are not part of the effect itself.

#2 Audience involvement. And what I mean by this is slightly different to, but could include, audience participation. But what I mean by audience involvement could be a physical involvement – participation – or it could mean emotional involvement. Now, whether or not you have audience participation, an emotional involvement from audience members is essential if you are going to get reactions to your magic. And since David Blaine’s shows, all magic and all magicians are judged by the audience reactions they get.

#1 Good presentation. Any veteran magician will tell you this. And there’s a good reason for that: because it’s true. Even when you have all your moves down and you have chosen a reasonably strong effect idea, and you have elements of impossibility in place, the thing – the skill of the magician – that puts the whole lot together and makes it into a powerful magic performance is the presentation. It is this that communicates what is supposed to happen. It is this that communicates the whole scenario to the audience. It is this that essentially affects what the audience experiences.

As one such sufferer wrote “More often that not, amazement is followed by some annoying question or statement.”

1. “Do it again!” or “Do it for my friend!” – The request for repeat performance
2. “Do another!” - The requestion for more
3. “How did you do it? Tell me! Pleeeaaaase!” – The request for explanation
4. “That’s obvious. You did it by….[insert explanation here]” - The declaration of explanation.

The solutions:

What To Say To “Do It Again!”

In this case, you can just do another trick that is similar but not the same. Then again, there are some tricks that you can repeat several times to the same audience.

What To Say To “Do another!”

“I can’t. My spidey powers are worn out!” But if you perform tricks in sequence with a opener, a middle sequence and a finisher, very few will ask. There are ways to let people know the performance is over without saying so as such.

What To Say To “How do you do it?”

This question, in my experience is usually asked with a surprised tone. The asker gets higher pitched towards the end of the question. It is not asked in a matter of fact way, so why does it require a matter of fact answer?

The smart alec answer is “Very well.” But if you don’t want to be flippant there are other ways to handle this question.

I usually just laugh off questions like “How do you do that?” or take it as rhetorical and come out with, “Yea, it’s amazing isn’t it?”

What To Say To “That’s obvious. You did it by…”

Do you really have to say anything to this? Or just do the Spok thing and mysteriously say, “Did I?”

—

The bottom line is to take all of these questions with a light heart. Don’t take them as personal attacks. They’ll only annoy you if you let them. And the only reason they annoy most people is because they don’t know what to say.

The Alternative Solution: So You Don’t Have To Memorize All These Answers To Questions

Better than learning the answers to all these questions, wouldn’t it be better if you could just prevent the people asking in the first place. Remember that in any performance situation, you are in charge. It’s your performance and if you can project that leadership, even if there are spectators who ask you questions like the ones above, they’ll accept whatever answers you give them. But more often than not, they won’t ask.

I have come to believe that any response you get to your performance, be it hysterical reactions or annoying questions, are a result OF your performance and as such they are all your fault. This may sound like I’m harshly planting blame with you and you may be defensively thinking, “But I didn’t do anything?!” But if you look at it from another point of view, it’s a good thing that it is your fault because it means that you have the full power to do something about it.

Darwin Ortiz points out in his book “Strong Magic” the difference between demonstrating magic and presenting a puzzle. Which means it all comes down to presentation. If you show people a puzzle, they want to solve it and if they can’t, they think it is their right to be given the solution.

In professional situations and even unprofessional situations with strangers, this sort of behaviour is uncommon. It only happens a lot when you perform to people who already know you and know what you’re like underneath the magician persona.