Last night I stumbled upon someone on Facebook writing about the episode of Masters of Illusion that I was recently. Basically the guy crapped on everyone that was on that episode. I was going to reply, but that really doesn’t do anything positive. Not that this post is going to be super positive.
Something I started doing a few years ago when someone craps on someone online is to research them. Not anything crazy, just check out their website and maybe watch their promo video. That tells you a lot about the person, and what filter they see the world in.
In this particular case, the person who wrote the post about the show isn’t my demographic based on their promo video. They were doing 1970’s style magic in an 1970’s way. There’s nothing wrong with that, however it’s not what I prefer to watch. He’s stuck in an older style of magic, and I think anything new or edgy probably isn’t his flavor. I can see that he’s stuck performing in a style of the magic he probably saw in his 20’s and never decided to grow. He does a Jimmy Hoffa joke in his promo video, Hoffa disappeared in 45 years ago, I had to google that…that’s how fresh the joke is!
If that’s his “art” cool. It’s not my “art”.
If you ever put anything out there into the world and someone doesn’t like it, before you get upset, look at the lens that they are looking at you through. It gives you a lot of perspective.
Tag: art
My Cooking Show…
In yesterdays post I showed a gimmick that I was making for a video. This video was made because my brother said I should do a cooking show for our weekly “virtual dinners”. A night before our dinner, I had a ton of ideas and wrote out a rough script, and sent it to a buddy of mine who punched it up. I then built the gimmicks and recorded the show.
Here’s what I made:
At about the 9 min mark you can see the gimmick I posted about yesterday. There’s a couple of other interesting magic effects that happen in the video as well. This was what I found interesting about making the whole video was that the cooking was a frame for magic to happen. It was a built in presentation hook.
It took over 12 hours to make this video, and the sole goal of it was to make my brothers laugh. That’s art, money or longevity of it wasn’t a consideration, it was simply to get a reaction. What reaction are the videos your are posting designed to get?
S. H. Sharpe…
Recently while travelling I started rereading the book Neo Magic Artistry written by S.H. Sharpe. This book is primarily about magic theory, however it does have a few tricks in the back. This book, which is several books reprinted as one makes a great point: “The greatest magicians have always been those whose work appealed … Continue reading “S. H. Sharpe…”
Recently while travelling I started rereading the book Neo Magic Artistry written by S.H. Sharpe. This book is primarily about magic theory, however it does have a few tricks in the back.
This book, which is several books reprinted as one makes a great point:
“The greatest magicians have always been those whose work appealed to their colleagues as well as the general public”
This is something I totally agree with. If you are an artist, you work should have something noteworthy to other magicians or magic enthusiasts. With all of the magic on TV and the internet, even non-magician audience members have become pretty educated about standard magic tricks.
TLDR: Your magic should appeal to magicians as well as non-magicians.