First of all let me start by saying that Jay Jay is more subtle than his team mates. Gotta give him that. But nevertheless he is one of the many, many magicians who teach magic material that is not theirs to make money.
Freemagiclive is his website/blog. There he "teaches" free magic. Yeah it is free. Among the stuff he reveals: The principle of a crimp, rubber band magic, metal bending, the false transfer, applications of the key card, (palmed) card to pocket, the card rise and enough goodies to make you mad. Of course all without credit. But it all is just a scheme to make you buy stuff from him "store"
Here is one of HIS magic goodies for just seven Australian Dollars:
His store offers even more of other people's creation that he didn't improve on. Eddie Fechter, please roll over in your grave right now!
It is so sad. Jay Jay is actually a likable character. He is talented and generally not as dull as other performers. He has just chosen the dark side of the force.
I got into a rather long discussion with a magic friend of mine, who thinks that Penn and Teller's "Fool Us" harms the magic image, as it reduces magic down to the tricks. I feel otherwise. And thinking about it I remembered a book a read some year ago.
Florian Severin, respected author of the great book "13 Steps to Vandalism" makes a great point in the book. It starts of with a hypothetical scenario. Imagine this: Your audience knows the ins and out of your tricks. They know how you perform your whole act. They know about the method implied, they know about the gags, the framing and even everything about your whole persona. Would people still wanna see your act? The answer is yes, if you are good.
Basically it is like a stand up comedian. If you still laugh seeing him the second time then he is good. Think about it. Seeing an comedy act a second time means you got no surprises coming up. You know every single punchline and the whole act in general. Still people will come and want to see your act. Many times. Why? Because you are good.
Now transfer this to magic... If there are no surprises and no mystery left, then the only thing left is you. And if you're good, people will come.
This whole thought experiment derived from one experience. Florian Severin saw a show with some of his parent's friends (if i recall correctly) The magicians performing must have been horrible. At the end Florian was told that the magician was good. Florian was appalled upon hearing that. Then asking why the audience thought the bad magician was good Florian got the following answer: "Yes, I don't know how he did any of the tricks."
So Florian concluded that the masked magician probably did us magicians a favor. Personally I think that Penn and Teller do us a favor in the long run. First they don't really expose magicians. They expose methods, but only if there are several other methods to choose from. And they don't reduce magic to just the tricks.
Unlike Andrew, who thinks that this is painful to watch, I think this is the proper way to treat Uri Geller. This should have been done in the 70s. The only problem then, the people who would have called him out on his "bullshitery" were not in charge of the television program back then. Today is different. We understood that deconstructing people is also entertainment. Not good entertainment, but entertainment nevertheless.
And Uri Geller needs that. Badly.
It's a general thing for me that charlatanry needs not only to be overexposed, but also the charlatans themselves need the worst kind of punishment: Public ridicule! Don't be angry with them!... Call them out by yelling: "Do another trick Magic Boy!"
Justin Miller has a few point speaking in his favor.
His beard/whole appearance is much better than in the "Freedom Pack"-video.
If it would come to a Magic Challenge between Justin Miller and Craig Petty, Justin would win, he is clearly the better performer as he has at least a bit of experience.
Justin comes across as truly honest when calling Craig "retarded"
But here is what speaks against him.
He admits that a minority of his magic creations are not practical. This is not true. It's not a minority.
The whole challenge thing is just a big "jerk off" as it is clear that Justin would own Craig in many ways.
Justin refers to himself as JM....
Justin claims that his "good" name is made bad by Craig. Well that is simply not true. Justin's name was already messed up before that by himself.
Whatever. I cannot say that I am bored. I am actually mildly entertained. Go Justin.... turn Craig Petty into Graig Pity!
The HaLo Cut is a perfect example of a move that ANYBODY could have come up with. And some come up with it, not knowing about the HaLo Cut. Then someone points out to them that Harry Lorayne has come up with this 40 years before that. Does the cancel the creative ownership of that move automatically?
No of course it does not. If you came up with it, you can be damn proud. If you gonna publish a routine including this, you might add that Harry Lorayne did something similar but you came up with this yourself. But you don't have to do that. Simply because Harry Lorayne had nothing to do with it.
Another example is the principle of the false transfer. ANYBODY could have come up with it. It is not a mind blowing mystery that only reveals itself to the most elite of magic geniuses. I have not read any publication involving the principle crediting it's first publication in the "Discovery of Witchcraft".
Another example is the dual world principle in mentalism. I never saw anyone crediting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes".
Another example is the subtlety in a the classic color change of a card, where not one card is added from the palm to the face of the deck, but three or four, allowing to thumb off the changed card without the first card to show up. Anyone who played around with that move eventually comes up with this.
So if you publish something credits are nice... because they help research. Do dead people need crediting? Well, technically no, as they will not care. They are dead. Some might say, it's not to stroke their ego, but to honor them. Well if that is your main concern, go for it.
But if you came up with something, independently from someone else who happened to have had the same idea before you, you do not need to credit him. Unless you wanna stroke this person's ego, honor him or make research easier.
Why involve another person in YOUR creative ownership? Just because people tell you to? Do some thinking!
I am doing "Kieler Woche" right now. Basically it is like Oktoberfest only with ships, boats and lot's of water. It's a whole week of crazy opportunities to make money. And that what I am doing this whole week.
The weather is very unpredictable, there is sun for a moment and then boom... rain. So you gotta be ready to fill the "sun phases".
So here a a few rules I learned within three days:
- Never leave the pitch! Seriously, if the sky clears up you don't wanna spend five minutes walking through the masses of people just to reach your pitch. - Have a freaking sign that says "Magic Show"! Saves you a lot of explaining. - Doing more tricks is not equal to making more money! I tried. I got the same ammount of money doing less, saving me time to do another show. - Reset... after the show you better be ready to start all over again, as getting a crowd is the easiest then. - If your crowd gets big too quickly, you better stop your pathetic card trick and move to the bigger stuff. - If you have a good pitch, guard it with your life and do not, DO NOT suggest it to your magic buddies.
Here is an easy way to distinguish a self centered prick from modest magic guy.
Modesty is a trait that is essential if you don't wanna come across an ego driven dick. I've said this before. So if you figured out a nice count with cards and you call it a Ghost Count, that is modest. Even if everybody else calls it an Elmsley Count later on. This is a nod towards the creator, giving credit where credit is due. But if you created a control with cards and you call it "The Lorayne Control" you seem smug to the rest of the magic people.
I wonder what "The HaLo Cut" stands for!
So check your magic friends repertoire. If they name any effect/method/prop after themselves, you should be careful.
Look at that, this weeks failure Blake Alexander has already removed the video that showed the world that he is a copy cat. Well gotta give him credit for being fast. Most need about 3-4 days to take action.
I'm going out on a big guess here by claiming the following. Blake Alexander is an uncreative wannabe of a magician. Watch a clip of David Copperfield's version on Martin Lewis' Cardiograph:
And now Blake Alexanders version of the same effect:
In all my years as a magician, I never even though of copying an act that I like. To me that always felt like a concession to my own inability to create unique magic and thereby failing as an artist. Obviously some do not feel that way at all. Blake Alexander doesn't feel that way at all.
And he is not alone. I remember the one time I was at a magic convention. The stage illusion contest featured two such "copy cats".
I know why Blake Alexander did this. Because he sees the act, sees that it gets the reactions he dreams of, and the only way he can even think up creating such reactions himself is to copy the act, joke for joke. This is a failure in the making...
The “Any Card” part of ACAAN simply doesn’t matter in the long haul. Just like Kimlat’s “true” Triumph… in the end, it doesn’t matter if the cards have been genuinely shuffled, because the effect is exactly the same in the minds of the spectators.
Yes, yes, yes. The end result counts. I agree!
BTW: Sorry for the lack of updates, got stuff going on. To pass some time here are some Patent numbers. But I ain't helping you knowing how to read it.
"The Argentinean master of magicians Kartis, designed his own Okito box over 30 years ago. He performed his coins routines in hundreds of shows using this box. Now, after having keped the secret for most of his life, he has decided to shared his box with the magic community."
As it was pointed out to me via email:
"What exactly is "new" about this. Aside from His poor technique, this routine is old idea with the David Roth Rim steal added (and he does it badly anyway). Who would buy this based on this video?"
I agree. Mind you this cost 60 bucks. I highly doubt that this advertisement is good for sales. His palm a 1:10... now here is something that shouts "Look at my hand, it's totally empty."
And magicians are little more than contractors. They are asked to do their magic stuff at a certain time and a certain place. They are expected to dress a certain way and how to behave towards the client's audience. And within those limits magicians actually give in into illusion that they are artists.
Deciding to use red cards and to do that one trick that particular way is not art. It is as much a decision as a carpenter who uses a pair of pliers instead of the hammer to get a nail in the wooden board.
When it comes to character magicians seem to be full of the artist delusion.
Outside of a "pay frame" this is a different story. But within we are no more than contractors.
You know what pisses me off? When you ask someone to name a good trick for instance and they answer "thumb tip"! The thumb tip is not a trick, it's a tool. You would think that such a statement would come from a beginner in magic. And while this is true in most cases in this particular case it was not.
In fact this man is into magic for 40 years now and performs regularly. I had the pleasure to watch him. Here is what happened!
He was doing the 20th Century Silk, you know the effect where you got two blue pieces of silk that you tie together. Then you put the two pieces into a glass and introduce a red piece of silk, which you proceed to vanish. After that is done the performer grabs on of the blue pieces of silk and pulls it from the glass. It turns out that the red piece of silk is now tied between the two blue pieces. It is a terrific piece of magic. Especially if you have the guts to let a spectator hold the knot of the two blue pieces. But anyway, back to the story:
So he got out the two blue pieces AND the red piece. Well okay... He handed out the red piece for examination and gave the ungimmicked blue one to another spectator asking him to tie it to the opposite corner of the blue piece the magician was holding.
At that point my Spidey sense was tingling. How could the spectator do the knot, except on the false side of the piece of silk. And that's what he did. Meanwhile the magicians instructed the guy with the red piece to go to the magician's bag with the red piece and to dump it in there. If you ever wanted to see a face with the jaw wide open, you should have seen mine. As soon as the spectator was back with the others and the knot was in the two blue pieces of silk the magician asked the guy if he had put the red one in the bag. As soon as the guy agreed to this the magicians said: "Oh, really, so what is this doing here?" as he would shake the pieces in his hand and the red one would come out if his hand tied to the one blue piece of silk.
This was so wrong on so many levels. First, he didn't vanish the red one in a magical fashion. In needs a magic vanish, in order to magically appear elsewhere. Second, the red one produced came from his hand (seemingly) making having a gimmick entirely pointless. Third, the red one was not in between the two blue pieces, but on just one end. And that is missing the whole effect.
I asked him why he performed it that way and not with the red one in the middle. He told me: "Ah that is too difficult this way works the same, been doing it for 30 years."
Not only did this man think that the proper practice was no worth it, he also thought there is no difference between the actual effect and the way he was doing it. And he tortured his audience with this for 30 years.
You know what... saying that the thumb tip is a pretty good magic trick, maybe the smartest magic related thing he ever said.
Far from being good, yet this next video is way better than what I saw that day:
For a so called news site on magic iTricks does very little news. It's more like a big sponsor post. And when they have news iTricks does almost nothing with the news, except posting it. Seemingly no research goes into the actual news. Let me explain. Take a look at this "news".
iTricks wrote:
Check out this super imaginative magic routine using the iPad. This is the only video on his channel but we heartily recommend subscribing to his YouTube account in case there is a sequel.
Big shout out to the always awesome Trey Ratcliff for passing this along to us.
And that's all. They didn't even bother researching who the magician in the video was. His name Simon Pierro. And he is by no means a no name in our industry.
This little bit of research actually makes an article more rounded and more like news. Just saying...
This is a fail in it's own rights. Too bad he got hurt. Accidents happen. But this seems to be an accident that could have been avoided. These types of handcuffs require actual time to get out. Granted it could go down to a millisecond, but those simply wouldn't "fall off". And with such a stunt every millisecond counts.
I feel bad for the guy. He's done nothing wrong with audience management, marketing, exposure and all of the usual stuff. He just had a bad day. And to fail for just a millisecond led to pain and ridicule.
Mooney told the local 11alive reporter Chris Sweigart the following:
Mooney said his dangerous stunt days are over, and he wanted to make sure kids learned from his accident.
"Don't ever do anything dangerous like that, because it could get you hurt real bad," he said. "I'm a prime example."
So yeah. Let this be a positive failure this week. Actually learn from it. Don't put yourself in danger.
Underestimation seem to be a common thing in magic. We tend to underestimate our audience and fellow magicians.
Here is a pretty horrific example of a children's act. I might be wrong and it is okay in a cultural context, but if I were drag my kids to a children's show, this would not be alright with me:
Is silly dancing and a magic effect once in while enough? This was confusing as hell and honestly they way the two acted that vanish of the bottle didn't even need a gimmick. (Yeah right, there was a vanish of a bottle somewhere in there)
This is underestimating the audiences need for proper entertainment. You might argue and say: "Hey, did you hear the reaction? They were killing!" To which I feel the need to at a few points. Maybe the audience knows the two on stage (maybe its a teacher and the principal of the school), that alone would be hilarious and generate proper reactions. Let's assume this is not the case and that the audience have no relation towards the protagonists on stage. Have you ever heard the term: "I couldn't look away, it was like a train wreck." And this is probably what it is. You see those two destroying the credit they have with silly costumes, being all over the place, cheap effects and loud noise. How can you not look at it, if you don't have the option of skipping it. And that should not be the goal of magic, killing by killing your own prestige. It works, but the audience is smarter than that. Proper audience management and structure would have helped the act. A simple example. When one person does something, the other one must not move at all, as not to draw focus away from the one doing the trick.
But this underestimation goes on. Magicians who do crappy instructional DVD's insulting their target group. Case in point: Randy Wakeman's DVD on the pass.
Aside from the fact that the pass is one of those moves that in concept needs to be embedded in a context, it should not look that bad. My pass sucks, but I can make it look a lot better than those in the videos.
Seriously this is how NOT to do a pass.
And I know Randy Wakeman as a solid magician. So it is sad to post this. But someone needs to tell Randy Wakeman that his "skillz" are not good enough to teach them. He seems to be underestimating the magicians to think this is good enough for them.
I know that the cards are sold and the trick is self working, but is this two people routine also sold, or do we have another case of somebody stealing from another?
"Did you know that the magnetosphere of the earth is about to be turned upside down? The magnetic field of the earth has become weaker and weaker since we started recording it's power in the late 19th century. 10% less. Lot's of scientist believe this is a sign of a turning of the earth's magnetosphere. The north pole will be the south pole and vice versa. It has happened before, many times. But the last one was 780.000 years ago. The next one is statistically way overtime now. I don't know if this is true, but I took a look at magic and tried to figure out what I can do, with a weakening magnetic field. This it what I have come up with!"
With such introduction you can be sure that people will watch the next effect. So any sort of animated effect could work. Just saying!
Did you know that Calen Morelli has a Wikipedia entry. And only in German for some reason. So what's going on here. He obviously didn't write it himself like other pathetic magicians. So who did and why did this person think it was a good idea to make a Wikipedia entry about him?
Whenever you need to do a voice over for a promotional video, do it in the morning, when your voice is still all sticky and rough. <-- That sounds nasty!
Don't you just love the add for the Porper Clip that starts like "When magicians think of card clips, they think of one name—Joe Porper." So I'm not a magician then?
There is stage magic and there is close up. The in between stuff is usually called stand up or party magic. But I think there needs to be another category. Ultra Close Up! For all things super tiny.
Having a good pitch, a good day and few thousand people who appreciate and pay for a good magic show suck if you can't go, because you are sick. Damn it!
When practicing Seconds it is best to make yourself a guide card. Basically you take a marker and once you found the perfect position for all the fingers to be in, mark that position on the back of the card. That way you cannot forget the optimal position for all the fingers and it helps adjusting accordingly later on.
Don't do the salt pour with sugar... all sticky.
Having a hobby outside of magic is essential. All hail the Old Ones. All hail Yog-Sothoth.
And as before: Always bring napkins to your show. When it happens you will thank me!
Here is yet another one of those Expert Village (now eHow) magicians exposing magic for money. Is Paul Weatherbee any good? No! Want proof:
I could go on a long rant why this is harmful to magic not good in any way. But I think I have done that often enough now. Instead a rant about so called professionals and their horrible attempt at pacing.
Pacing as we all know refers to how we perceive time. This has little to do with the actual working speed, but they are connected. In magic you can, if you are good do a five minute routine that only has one effect. And those five minutes of maybe having a card picked, signed, lost in the deck are not boring, if the pacing is right.
Fast paced action is almost always the key to success in show business. So here we have Paul Weatherbee, a professional who seems not to have understood the principle of pacing.
I am not going into the horrible structure of the trick above, but if you are bored you will understand what I am rambling about.
Here are some things to make the pacing in magic faster.
Work faster! The speed you are working with is connected to the perception of time.
Talk faster! Use less words! Cutting down on the patter almost always increases the pacing
Get to the magic quickly!
Cut down dead time! Dead time is when no magic happens!
Cut down deader time! Deader time is when nothing happens that even leads to the magic. Like the performer telling an anecdote.
Add more minor effects. Those don't even have to be magical!
Add humor or any other associated art (yes, even juggling) to be more entertaining.
Rehearse your script and master your material... whenever you need to think about it you lose time
Adding content > Adding Fluff
It is not that hard to be entertaining if you are destined to be on stage or "at the table". For the rest it is hard work. And I wonder if an actor who cannot act should continue his career. Did I say actor? I meant magician.
Isn't Paul Weatherbee member of The Wizards of Winter Haven? I.B.M.? Doesn't the I.B.M. have this Code of Ethics? Doesn't the very first rule you agree on say:
To oppose the willful exposure to the public of any principles of the Art of Magic or the methods employed in any magic effect or illusion.
And wouldn't that lead to having him kicked out of the ring? I am probably just day dreaming here!
