Practice, Art, and Elephants

[wZEnigma]

In The Prestige, the famous "Chinese" magician Chung Ling Soo is portrayed as an old man who can perform great magic. The two lead characters who are magicians are sent to figure out a trick where Soo makes a fishbowl magically appear. The fishbowl is decidedly too heavy for the old man to carry, but one magician points out that he is acting. Pretending to be an old, weary, crippled magician.

"Total devotion to the art."

That's what we have to have. We also have to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the art. Allow me to explain.

If you have a few scrutinizing friends who always say, "I saw that", or something of the like, or if you can tell your magic won't impress a certain person, don't do it.

Yes, I'm telling you not to get performance experience or help dealing with hecklers. Don't. Why? Because magic is about creating a moment for the spectator, and if they don't want to have that moment, grant them their wish and scram. Hecklers just bring negativity all the way around anyway. Just don't do it. Of course, for strangers it's decidedly more difficult, but you can tell from someone's body language, clothes, and overall image if they're going to be impressed by magic.

Example: 27-year-old woman in jeans who's wearing sunglasses and chatting on the phone, smiling and laughing. Good spectator.
40-year-old man with a briefcase who's on his Bluetooth and is frantically moving around. Bad spectator.

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, I'm just saying generally.

Now the part about the fact that magic is an art. If you search "define: art" on Google, it says this:

-The products of human creativity; works of art collectively
-The creation of beautiful or significant things
-A superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation

1. Humans create magic, and they work to achieve them. Yes.
2. Magic is significant and can be very beautiful. Okay so far.
3. Perfect fit. Win.

So, by all counts, magic is an art. Now that we know that, take your time to respect it. You wouldn't pick up a guitar, learn three painful chords, and play a horrid rendition of a Santana piece. You wouldn't go out on a stage for the first time and play Romeo with exact precision.

Practice makes results. Not perfect, as nothing here is perfect, we all know that, now. So you get results. It's fun to practice magic as well. No math involved, gentleman and the occasional lady.

I would recommend reading Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. It presents the history of magic, which is fascinating, but also presents magic as the art it truly is, and makes several valid points about showmanship, crowd control, and tricks themselves.

Do yourself a favor: Don't be one of those 13-year-old kids who buys the Trilogy and performs the next day. Take it slow like the masters. That being said, every famous magician started out as nothing more than what most of us are. If they can do it, we can.

Of course, not all of us can be Marlo.

I hope this was a good thread for you guys.

Ian

 

[industrialchild]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! While I don't agree with everything that was said, you made a lot of good valid points and said a few things that i've been wanting to say for years that I just could not put into words. Very well done!

I loved the Prestige by the way!

 

[wZEnigma]

Thank you!

Do you mind telling me what you disagreed with? Maybe I need to make a point clearer, as I can be vague at times.

Ian

 

[industrialchild]

Actually, the only thing that I disagreed with was the fact that you said you could tell, generally, who would be a good spectator simply by body language, the clothes they wear, and overall appearance, etc.
I mean, I love magic! I'm obsessed with it. However, when i'm not performing and out with friends; sometimes, by my mannerisms, the way I carry myself, sometimes even by the way I talk or dress; one could view me in the same light as that 40 year old guy that's talking on the bluetooth and walking around frantically.
I just simply believe that you could never judge a person solely on appearance.

This is what is beautiful about argumentative writing, there is no right or wrong, just simply different opinions. Please don't take this as me lecturing you. I am just simply giving you my opinion.

 

[wZEnigma]

I tried to make myself clear that through body language and studying a person, you can tell a lot about them, but you really have to perform for them to find out. However, you can take a pretty good guess.

These are just my experiences, but I agree with you. Might have to change that a little. Thanks for the comments!

Ian

 

[Austin Fields]

I'm having a hard time flying with the idea of not getting performance experience. You need that performance experience to be able to interact in such a way as to create that moment of mystery and magic for your spectators. I use my scrutinizing friends to my advantage, getting angles down and asking if anything looks funny, they say yes and where, I go back and work on it some more.

Using friends like that can really help your magic, how do you expect to come out of practicing for family and in front of a mirror to performing for random spectators, and being able to handle your sleights and patter well enough to where you're some guy with cards, doing some great magic, as opposed to a guy that was really good with cards and did some cool tricks.

How much performance experience do you have with strangers? I don't mean to get nosy but I cannot understand how you could dismiss performance feedback so easily.

Also I see magic as a performance art, guitar itself as in your example isn't an art, in and of itself, but how it's presented that makes it so. Music artists are named such because of the way they compose their music, they may play it with a guitar, but that's not what makes them artists.

~Beans

 

[Mr.MadMan]

Loved the examples, the old man thing caught my eye. The actual work that someone puts into getting your character real and more effective. The guy might be a professional tennis player in real life but while doing magic he is this old man but there is a fine line there of who he really is and his character. Remember that is you performing not someone else.

Still our art is so much hard work but rewarding at the same time.

Elephants FTW!!!!

Mikk.

 

[Sherlock]

I think there is a fine line here from what Beans and Enigma are discussing.

Performance experience is needed to be able to understand how to handle audiences, hecklers, angles, how to react to audiences, so on so forth. Now everybody needs performance experience if they plan to make it big.

However, and yes I am making a generalization here, to mostly all the youngins who are around the age of 13 need to chill out with some of their stuff. I understand some may take this harsh, however I remember watching this 13 year old kid actually go up and perform for people, problem is it wasn't even mediocre.

I apologize to whoever this is about, the approach to spectators was this "Hey wanna see a magic trick" and that ruined it from the beginning. Now this takes balls no doubt, and he apparently had some but doesn't matter much if you can't use them properly.

Now the effects were not well done at all, everything looked like sleight of hand and the effects had little to no astonishment and were looked at as tricks. He also did an effect for some younger kids, the most difficult thing to follow for the youngest people for w/e reason. It was a clipshift four king sandwich routine, I could barely follow along.

The above is what you don't want to do, it's what many try to avoid. There are so many posts on how to make money, handling hecklers, going up to people, performance and presentation tips. Then I see some come on here and ask about their favorite deck thread not even trying to find some knowledge.

I see some kids with their videos of some simple effects and changes, and it wasn't very good at all, I know mine weren't. I knew this though, I compared mine to other people and realized how bad mine were. Yet I see incredibly bad moves done and are rushed because they think it can fool their friends.

This is turning to be longer than I thought sorry.

When finding spectators one huge thing to remember if it's your first time is to jump in. I went to the mall when I was younger four or five times wanting to perform and never did. Well I got a bit older and went one time by myself, scared out of my mind and I asked two lovely ladies and they rejected me, but it felt so good because later on I performed for roughly 20 people that day.

I watched my moves, but had no presentation just pattered on about what I was doing and that's where I evolved again understanding that some of the coolest effects were done in 30 seconds. Yet I saw some bigger names do an even better job and have a 4 or 6 minute performance.

Strive for what the big names do, react with your audiences, talk to whoever you want. Certainly avoid the businessman on his bluetooth or anybody else on their cellphone as that's just plain rude. It's not a big deal to be rejected, you won't see them again and all it does is them missing out on something some people pay for.

 

[RikAllen]

I read up til Sherlock's post. I don't have much time (lunch half-hour) and just wanted to add some quick points.
-The Prestige was an awesome movie
-I caught that Harry Potter reference at the end of the post...and am not sure how I feel about knowing that.

I do, however, disagree with some of the points. I agree that practice generates results, but not always the results we need. The reason professionals are so good is because they practice both on their own and in front of spectators. You can't know how well a trick is going to go if you don't try it out on some strangers.

I have a notebook with ideas, full tricks, essays, and (my favorite) gags that I write down. A quick laugh can release enough tension in the middle of an effect to hold attention until you get to the end. Build it up, make a quick joke, build it up again and then reveal wonderful ending.
Not how all of my magic works, but I do enjoy a good magic gag/joke every now and then.

I would say about half of the lines/presentations I've written in the book are now crossed through/re-written because they didn't work like I expected.

I agree, don't learn a trick and then go do it an hour later. But you have to get out there sometime between learning it and mastering it. Performing is part of mastering the timing, angles, and misdirection of any good effect.

 

[Mr.MadMan]

I watched my moves, but had no presentation just pattered on about what I was doing and that's where I evolved again understanding that some of the coolest effects were done in 30 seconds. Yet I saw some bigger names do an even better job and have a 4 or 6 minute performance.

I want to adress this for a minute!
People are not good at all when it comes to paying attention. I mean give 5 year olds sugar and they are most probably going to run for about 2 hours straight(im not kidding you!) but it takes just a friend or two from a distance of 50 meters to totally screw your performance up. This comes down to you, how well have you built rapport and how interesting your thing is.

Think of this, have you ever been on a computer and suddenly watched at the clock and it has been 2 hours?
You want that in your performance, but people tend to overlook this. Keeping people interested in something for over 1 or 2 minutes is hard work, over that and you are amazing. Take youtube for instance why do you think that 30 sec. clips have more views than 10 minute clips? People just don't have the patience to look at that, but if it is interesting heck they will watch it two times.

Always try to see stuff as a spectator too. Don't over think to the tip where you are only thinking about the spectator, be selfish too a bit but be a little thoughtful to the fact that they have to look at what you show them, if its no good they will probably tell you, and its not the parent way of: "Son, umm....practice it some more, loved it but practice a bit more", it will be more like "You suck"*drops large soda on head*.

Mikk.

 

[wZEnigma]

Foolzsight: I didn't even know that was from Harry Potter. I just remembered it from somewhere, maybe a signature here on the forums.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Sherlock summed up my feelings in his first post in the thread.

Ian

 

[RikAllen]

That being said, every famous magician started out as nothing more than what most of us are. If they can do it, we can.

I think Harry said "Every great wizard or witch started out as nothing more than we are, students. If they can do it, why can't we?"

My girlfriend is a HP Nerd, so I've seen the movies a few times.


As far as sherlock's expansive post goes:

A lot of stage magicians perfect their material with certain mental time-spots to hit. It's more choreography and practice...and then skill to make it look natural and off-beat.
Close-up magicians have an entirely different perspective, the audience is right in front of you-often not paying clients-and they feel no investment initially. They can say or do whatever they want and it's okay, that's where audience management is key.

The only way to get it, like you said, perform for people.

I agree, practice until you almost hate the tricks you're practicing. Then take them to the streets, I find myself enjoying effects more when someone else is enjoying them. I can do the same force/reveal 100 times, but if 100 different people see it then it becomes new 100 times. I have 100 different chances to change or modify the ending or the script and see what works and what doesn't.

I'm also a fan of mistakes. I find learning from mistakes almost better than perfect performances in the long run. Paying gigs...another matter...but as far as general performing goes I've learned more from bad experience than good.