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If you watch the Penn & Teller shows & routines, you'll see that they do expose some secrets but they are not really important secrets as such. OK, they did the cups and balls with clear cups but I doubt any spec would be able to go ahead and do the same routine as a result. Crikey, I can't even do it with solid aluminium cups!

Most of their ‘exposures’ are for effect and to give a following trick the roll of drums – a bit like the ‘do as I do’ card tricks where the spec thinks he’s being let in on some wonderful secret but, as always, doesn’t stand a chance. It’s all presentation. However, having said that, I wish they’d just concentrate on being the good magicians they are instead of revealing stuff!

(Sorry - forgot to log in first time round! )

bet you dint see him load the lemons into the clear plastic cups
i missed it twice even on slow mo, thier very slick.

Quite right!

And I think that was one of the reasons they 'exposed' the trick - you still didn't see the moves even though everything was clearly on view. They also did that one where Teller slides under the stagework and appears in different places - then did it again with a clear Perspex set so you could see him wriggling around to make the appearances - cr*p trick, brilliant presentation!

The rest of their magic is really good - the Russian Roulette routine with the bear traps, the concrete mixer full of bricks, the 'duel' with pistols. Hardly the Three Card Monte, is it?!

The whole thing is built on the audience making one set of assumptions (greatly assisted by P&T) and then realising they were on the wrong track altogether. Add to it the fact that Teller does a Harpo Marx with funny faces, silly smiles, never speaks on stage etc and you get a very individual presentation. Teller actually has a pleasing deep baritone voice and appears quite ‘normal’ off stage. Final proof of how effective this is – we’re still talking about it way after they did it all!

The 'old hat or magic' question is a simple one to answer:

With the arrival of street magicians, TV and the internet, a lot of previously underground material has become mainstream.
The effects used are becoming quite overdone, and they're getting 'old hat'. Old gems that we used to keep for our 'killer routines' have been overexposed on TV, and therefore become old hat.

But wait... surely there's a circle here???
Many of the 'new age' tricks - Blaine's Levitation, 'Dead' fly, card Montes, bitten coin, dragon thread, etc etc etc are OLD 'parlour' tricks, many of which were either forgotten or lost, and have been resurrected.

Many tricks simply get re-cycled with new and more lavish routines by modern magicians with TV company backing for their budgets:

Penn & Teller, Burton, Copperfield, and to some extent even the legendary Paul Daniels... they are all superb 'classically trained' magicians at base level. Very accomplished - but they express themselves in very different ways. The re-invent their magic to wow the audiences, using old routines in new guises. So, how do they make 'old hat' into new???

There's the slightly comedic, anecdotal magic of Daniels, who was my own personal inspiration. His small stature and cheeky attitude were his trademark, and yet (like Dobson) he's actually a class performer. With his integration of other magicians from around the world into his show, he bought a little bit of magic to many homes (although I agree that he can be a little irritating, but so's Joe Pasquale - and we love him to bits too!)

There's the grace, delicacy and aristocracy of Copperfield - a mysterious man, whose illusions and effects defy logic. His big-budget shows take small time tricks and amplify them to fill a stage! Why just float a hanky when you can FLOAT YOURSELF! Awesome.

Next comes the enigmatic Burton... what a guy. Some of his illusions are so simple, but his patter is what counts. Clever, big scale routines and a real family-level entertainer. Like Copperfield, Burton is able to cross the boundary of the stage and integrate with his audience. And on the huge scale these guys work, it's this audience participation which sets them apart.

And of course, Penn & Teller. Grossout comedy duo. Clever thing is, they say they're EXPOSING how something is done, then shock with a DIFFERENT handling to prove that they really are master magicians! Clever, fast, unexpected - and yet the principles used in their 'technomagic' are still the same as the principles used for 100's of years.

Conclusion???
The huge variety and different magic styles keep us interested. Whether you love the close-up magic of people like Daniels, Sankey, Lennart Green, or the huge stage effects by Siegfried & Roy, Copperfield and Burton, or even the street magic of Xenon or Blaine... there's something for everyone to draw inspiration from.

We're living in an age where magic is very widely available (if you know where to look). Recently, I saw dynamic coins, Svengali decks and the like being sold in ToysRus... and these are REAL magicians props. But interestingly, not everyone can just become a magician...

But at the end of the day, you have to ENJOY performing, creating and astounding. There is a certain breed (no matter how diverse) which seems to become magicians and stick with it.

Thank goodness... if it's so easy to buy magic you'd think we'd all be out of jobs, but it takes more than a hobbyist or impulse buyer to actually BECOME a magician. And as long as a few of us keep the flame burning, we'll see old hat tricks being re-dressed for generations to come.

It's in your soul.

some very good points have been raised by seige, how often have we sen the zig zag illusion or the saw table reinvented, rebaged, bigger ect.

magic is an art we are atheletes in all senses of the word our skills involve dexterity of a gymnast, mentality and presision of a marksman, inner disiplin of a martial artist and staminer of a long distance runner.

since i statred this thread we have gone through diverse topics, examined the very core of what it is to be a magician and i think we are all the better for it.
magic is so diverse and in so many guises that it is more akin to a religion or ulter is the performance our flock the audence, our concregation the general public.

we spread the word of magic at every oppertunity, our followers take our knowledge and guideing principles and fasion them to thier own needs to enrich thier lives.
they then inspire others and so the cycle rolls on as the river flows, (man im having a deep moment here).

magic like religion is all encompasing knows no boundries or even language limits.

like the old testiment and the new testiment, its the whole that is more than the some of its parts.

i origionaly wanted to know what magic tricks fellow performers found to be classics ie the sliding die box.
but i have learnt much more than i expected, i urge people to make new posts pose simple questions you never know where its going to lead you.


ask and you shall hear seek and you shall find

enjoy magic let it enrich your life, shape your life, support you when your down, carry you when your lame.
in short get the magic religion and you will be with a universal community that spans the globe.

i think id better go take my medication now other wise i might be finding the next mountain to preach from.

I think the general thread of these postings proves once and for all that Magic can be everything to everyone. In the above postings we’ve covered just about the whole range of possibilities and it’s certainly true that, although many thousands of tricks, illusions and secrets are available for a price, it doesn’t mean that the purchaser is a Magician. I’m more of a collector than performer and I know my limits but I’m extending those limits gradually.

Magic can cross all barriers, age, sex, backgrounds, language etc. Do any of you remember on a Paul Daniels show many moons ago there was a young Indian boy who performed Cups & Balls with a sing-song patter in his own language? I doubt many folks would have understood what he was saying but it didn’t matter – the magic was at his fingertips and the almost hypnotic patter was the background music. An old trick, a lot of folks know the basics of it and can probably do all the same moves but it was his act, his performance and very individual. It was pure magic. Penn & Teller did the same routine and then again with the transparent cups – same trick, different presentation, but still had a different ‘Wow’ factor at the end.

It’s true that a lot of ‘classic’ stuff has been exposed by ‘those’ shows but a lot more has become old hat by over use and over exposure. This is where the hard work comes in – re-inventing and re-vamping routines and tricks to give them a fresh appearance. Easy to say but takes a lot of thought and sweat to do it!

Mandrake...

Once again, I think we're singing from the same Hymn sheet...

The exposing of magic's secrets to Joe Public only strengthens the new generations of magic, as magicians and illusionists strive to create totally new material to show the public 'ahh, so you think you know it all now, eh???!!!'

Whilst performing some tricks to a small group of friends this weekend, I noticed two things:

FIRSTLY, even though they KNOW most of the tricks I do (that is, the performance, not the handling), they were so bemused and frustrated by even the simplest of things. This is a great thing. A lot of these 'revelation' TV shows keep safe most of magic's REAL secrets, and show only the handlings we could probably guess as laymen anyway.

But I happend to do my own twist of the bill-switch routine, which involves the use of my trusty old TT... and even at close range, nobody spotted it (and believe me, my friends would LOVE to know how I did these things, but no-one had a clue!).

I then moved straight into some card routines, doing some ad-lib tricks using passes, double lifts, controls, overhand shuffles and glides. These moves, as far as I know, have NEVER been exposed on TV, and yet they provide the building blocks of most of the card routines we do.

And to watch them BURN my hands whilst vanishing a silk and still not notice how I did it, only to magically produce it again!... pure magic in it's simplest form. But the well guarded secret eluded them.

SECONDLY: I'm no professional, but after I see something done on TV that is part of my set, I'll work hard to add my own twist to differentiate what I do from the magicians on TV. I don't like 'emulating', and being as my day job is as a graphic designer, I've got a certain creative nature.

Some of my own magical creations are totally off the wall (like having a signed selcted card vanish from the deck and appear apparently stapled to my boxer shorts! Routine revealed upon request to approved magi only!)

It is this need to move tricks on to new and different planes that keeps the magic alive.
I don't know how many of you are familiar with Sylvester the Jester, but using magic principles, this guy can entertain for hours. What he does is not necessarily magic in a conjouring sense, but a wholly different take on magic used as a backdrop to an artform.

I would consider most tricks to have 3 parts: the underlying trick or illusion, the 'diversion' (like my staple boxers routine) and the climax.

The underlying tricks are almost always based on simple revelations, products and vanishes. The climax accompanies the underlying trick.
In my opinion - it is the DIVERSION that makes the act. This is the creative vehicle for the devastatingly simply trick which it carries.

<<<SEIGE STEPS OFF HIS NOW WORN SOAPBOX AGAIN AND GOES TO MAKE A COFFEE>>>