talkmagic.co.uk

Allen Tipton wrote:Many Many magicians are to blame for the 'I hate magicians' syndrome.

3. Card tricks. Oh God! I once took a young magician to task when he said he went to the local pub. EVERY week and did 2 hours of card tricks.

Allen Tipton

Well, I have been very successfully performing ONLY card tricks for over 30 years. And, I also do two hours. As a professional for 20 years (and thousands of gigs later), no one has ever complained; quite the opposite in fact. But, i do them in an entertaining fashion! I shouldn't say this myself, but those who have seen me perform will know that I'm pacy, energetic, fun, humourous and engaging. So, Allen, It's not what you do but the way you do them... (And my card tricks are visual and commercial.)

By the way, when you say "I took a young magician to task", that, to me, sounds like you are forcing your negative opinion of card magic on him; and also bullying him. Maybe you, Allen, can't entertain with card magic, but others can and do! Why didn't you encourage the lad? Why be mean to him?

“Paul held some fifty people enthralled as he demonstrated some items from his books. In situations like this, his command is phenomenal. With his showmanship and personality he makes card tricks entertaining and meaningful. He has them hanging onto his every word – not just for a few minutes but for an hour or so! He has the attack of a Ken Brooke or a Rovi”  - Walt Lees (Abra)

Paul Gordon

V.E. Day wrote:Nobody would ever advise a stand-up comedian to "just be themselves", as that approach is prone to failure. Also an actor must seek character to succeed in appearing natural. Adopting a well thought out character is the sensible approach in these performing art disciplines. To me it therefore follows that a magician must realize his or her character to succeed, otherwise they will just come across as a dull person doing tricks (as has been said a few times above).

I think a lot of people misunderstand what is meant when it comes to developing a character and they tend to go one of two ways. Either they'll 'just be themselves' and I totally agree that that can just turn into a man showing magic tricks in the pub type performance. But then on the other extream, some people try to over develop their character and try too hard to be the 'magician' and that's when you end up with the over the top, sparkly wastecoat magicians.

It is important to have a character, that character decides what effects you perform, how your perform them, how you dress and just about everything else about your performance. But that character also has to be someone that the performer is comfortable being. I think it's that that's meant when people are told to be themselves. Not that they should just be themselves but that they should be a slightly exaggerated version on themselves. There needs to be a character and a persona but that character has to, in order for it to be believable contain quite a lot of the performers own character.

Some stand up comedians do go on stage as themselves, but an exagerated version hence the ones that talk about themselves all the time rather than say anything funny. Surely something as banal and odious as Russell Howard is not a well thought out character?

But, for me personally, characters do hit the mark strongest. (Alan Partridge for example).

The points raised about magicians forcing magic upon people is a valid one. How many people's partners here still enjoy watching your magic after living around it?

There are two negative personas relating to magicians that the public have a dislike of:

1) The annoying, nervous geek with a deck of cards clasped in his hand.
2) The brash and arrogant show-off.

Often these cliches are (hopefully) dispelled once you show them something to blow their misconceptions away, but there are a LOT of bad magicians out there performing the same old material. I think when magicians hang around other magicians too much they forget what entertains the general public and get wrapped up in "clever" magician foolers and wonder why an audience falls asleep during their 26 phase poker routine when it went down so well at the local magic club.

Lord Freddie wrote:Some stand up comedians do go on stage as themselves,

With respect Freddie but no they don't. They go on stage as a character that they are pretending is themselves. That is the essential element of character based comedy that forms most modern stand-up comedy today.

Lord Freddie wrote: an exagerated version

Agreed, some may exaggerate a few of their own character traits to form part of the character they are pretending to be. But they cannot rely on just that, there has to be another conflicting trait otherwise where would the comedy be coming from?

V.E. Day wrote:

Lord Freddie wrote:Some stand up comedians do go on stage as themselves,

No they don't. They go on stage as a character that they are pretending is themselves. That is the essential element of character based comedy that forms most modern stand-up comedy today.

Reading Freddy's post, lovely VE Day, I see he's qualified his commend with the use of the word, "some" (as he's an understandably cautious chap!); let's play nice, now

I suspect that there is a bit of a misunderstanding creaping in here, regarding teh advice to "be yourself".
Usualy, if i offer that advice, its to a wanabee Derren, Dynamo, or Daniels.
OK, Instead of Be yourself, Maybe the advice should be "Find Yourself". But , regardless of what my signature says, I am not That much like Yoda to put that one out there.



Another thing. When one sees somebody on television, or on stage, and you think..." Not much of a charcter there" Pause for a second and consider this.
You can only judge their on stage persona, if you know them off stage. Ive been quite surprised at how different some people are on, and off stage.

V.E. Day wrote:

Lord Freddie wrote:Some stand up comedians do go on stage as themselves,

With respect Freddie but no they don't. They go on stage as a character that they are pretending is themselves. That is the essential element of character based comedy that forms most modern stand-up comedy today.

Lord Freddie wrote: an exagerated version

Agreed, some may exaggerate a few of their own character traits to form part of the character they are pretending to be. But they cannot rely on just that, there has to be another conflicting trait otherwise where would the comedy be coming from?

Are you talking about the well-known ones? I have worked on the comedy circuit and there are loads of people who stumble up on stage and just be 'themself', possibly because they are a bit of a card in the office or down the pub and their mates have said "you should be a comedian".
And you'd be suprised how many of them are EXACTLY the same offstage. Years ago I had the dubious pleasure of sharing a dressing room with Jimmy Carr (Micky Flanagan was there too, nice bloke) and his on screen persona is not really that different to how he was offstage.

daleshrimpton wrote:
OK, Instead of Be yourself, Maybe the advice should be "Find Yourself".

Yes agreed, this is much better advice. Find the character you will perform as.

as i have said before, the trouble with Jimmy Carr is, he's a slough boy, trying to be Home counties.

Allen was quite right and Paul should read his post more carefully. He was not talking about a professional magician who is booked to do two hours of magic. He is being paid to bore the hell out of people and that is perfectly acceptable. I know Paul claims that he doesn't bore them and will no doubt show us video after video to prove the matter. Let us hope he remembers the wisdom of Shakespeare and not follow the dictum of "he doth protest too much"

Allen was referring to somebody who forces his magic on people and does trick after trick after trick after trick after trick and never stops whether the people want to see it or not. And does it for no money and from a hobby point of view. That is an entirely different matter.

However, I will confess that I do not practice what I preach. When I was younger this is precisely what I would do. However, I would do it in a somewhat different manner than Allen implies. I would gauge matters and use my judgement on when the best time to stop is. I do that to this day. You watch the spectators very closely and decide when they have had enough. A professional magician can wander round to different groups over several hours and is in less danger of tiring them out. He probably only does about 10 minutes or so to each group. A kid in a pub is stuck with the same group all night.

I would do one trick and gauge the reaction. It was always strong so I would do more. They would never let me stop and I would be doing card tricks all night with the audience shouting for more and bringing other people over to see it. I would have the whole bloody place round me. I still remember an announcement made over the tannoy in a bowling alley asking "the gentleman from the magic circle to give it a rest to give people a chance to do some bowling". I would do magic everywhere and anywhere and that is how I got as good as I am and naturally far better than Paul Gordon whom I would be delighted to gives some tips to if he requires them. I have always known that I am the greatest and most entertaining card magician in the world although nobody except me has yet realised it. And I have been since I was 16 years old.

However, I am not a normal mortal as I am sure everyone realises. For the usual acne ridden and incompetent youngsters who purchase Ellusionist's DVDs and make my old friend Brad Christian rich it would be sound advice to avoid torturing innocent laymen in pubs.

As for the other point V.E. is absolutely correct. Having a distinctive and interesting character is the most important factor in becoming a great magician. Once you can manage that people will be more interested in seeing you do your tricks badly than they will ever be in seeing a dull personality doing his tricks superbly. Yes, you CAN be yourself but a magnified and entertaining version of yourself. But by all means you don't have to be yourself either. A lot of magicians are different types offstage than they are onstage. The main thing is to develop an interesting character whether it is an expanded version of yourself or a manufactured character. In most cases the former is easier than the latter.

Paul Gordon does some excellent card tricks and does them very well. However, he hasn't quite mastered the above paragraph yet. Once he does he will really have something to brag about and I wish him luck with it. I do hope he gets to work on it immediately.

More than once I have had people say to me that they don't normally like magic, but that they enjoyed what I did.

Which makes me wonder how blooming awful the other magic they've seen must have been.

I think it is a number of factors. A lot of magic can easily descend into smugness and showing off or be, as Lord Freddie and Allen have said two hour borefests with badly performed (although possible technically flawless) uninspiring tricks foisted upon hapless friends, colleagues, strangers, passing dogs...

I'm going to stick my neck out and say it's possibly also partly to do with how irrelevant a lot of magic is. A red hanky becomes blue. Whoopee. These tricks can still be appealing, but I think the less point there is, the harder the "sell" must be. This might explain why people who do bizarre magic, mentalism and readings seem to report better reactions overall than people who do card tricks. Or maybe people with a storng performing flair tend to gravitate towards more unusual forms of the art. Or both. Or neither.

There are many mentalists who are extremely boring, of course, and there are card magicians who can entertain a crowd for hours.

Jasper Blakeley contributed a really interesting chapter to Mentalism Reveals volume 2 on the subject of character. Jasper has a lot of different characters he performs as (many of which are comedy personas), but he points out that even when he performs as Jasper, it's still a character.

Here's a controversial question (or questions) for you all. What if a magician absolutely sucks at performing? (I appreciate that some might say he isn't a magician, but let's not quibble about that.) There is no charm, no speaking ability, no empathy, just tricks. Are some people really just hopeless cases? What if the very best someone can ever be in performance terms is average? We don't think everybody can be a great singer, dancer or actor, do we?

This seems to be boiling down towards:

Is it the trick which entertains, the performer, or the presentation...or a combination of all three?

If the latter, what percentage is 'best' (and why)?

See you all in a few years

Since mentalism and bizarre by definition uses very few props the presentation has to be first rate or the routine fails miserably. If you can't get 4 or 5 pendulums in specs' hands moving how and when you want them to move, you're probably not using the best presentation!

Rob wrote:This seems to be boiling down towards:

Is it the trick which entertains, the performer, or the presentation...or a combination of all three?

If the latter, what percentage is 'best' (and why)?

See you all in a few years

All three are important but the least significant is easily the trick and yet it is the part that fascinates the magician most. The truth is that virtually any trick will do. It is the MAN not the trick that counts. The trick is of utterly no consequence providing you have a way of selling your personality with it. You should not try to "sell" the trick. You should try to "sell" YOURSELF doing the trick. YOU are the most important part of the magic. If your personality is as dull as dishwater then you should either give up magic or deal with the difficult job of trying to make yourself interesting. And this job is far more difficult than learning the latest move.

You should be a CHARACTER of some sort. Every great magician is a character and people are more interested in that character than they ever are with the trick. YOU should be in their mind long after the trick is forgotten. Some of the most colourless people I have ever met have been magicians.

Mandrake wrote:Since mentalism and bizarre by definition uses very few props the presentation has to be first rate or the routine fails miserably. If you can't get 4 or 5 pendulums in specs' hands moving how and when you want them to move, you're probably not using the best presentation!

You're suposed to make them move in the spectators hands that's where I've been going wrong all these years then