A few weeks ago we went to see a silent movie with the music played by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. This show was sold out and it was a ton of fun.
When watching the movie one of the things that surprised me was the length of time that the title/dialog cards were shown for. It felt like they were either shown way too long or not long enough to read them.
When I was a kid in a high school journalism class we were told that you were supposed time yourself reading the words and add two seconds and that was how long you displayed them.
What does this mean for magic?
Well when you talk, especially telling jokes you need to make sure the whole (or most of) audience has caught up to the end of the set up before you do the punchline. For a magic effect, you need to display at the end long enough for the whole audience to realize what happened and process the magic effect.
– Louie