talkmagic.co.uk

Lawrence wrote:Mr Merciless has a point.
A lot of us get the same feeling from learning a trick I imagine. we get that "oh, is that is?" feeling then don't want to do the trick, completely forgetting the first impression we ourselves had of said trick, hopefully the same impression a spectator will have when you show them. just because it isn't as magical for you anymore...

And such is the hard life of the magician...

*Sigh*

What I meant Tyler was that you bought the effect because the effect seemed good to you. Its the effect that counts.

Not street magic, I cant see it being that, but with the right presentation, and I assume you would need some rather suggestible subjects, it could play strong.

It doesnt interest me in the slightest, but once you know the method to an effect you can sometimes forget that the spectator does not know the method and can be quite blown away with the most obvious methods if played right.

Wilhelm Reich used to point his 'orgone machine' at clouds and 'bust' them! It (of course) took about 30 minutes for the 'orgone energy' to 'work' but a lot of pretty clever people were fooled (mind you, they also believed that pyschotherapy was a science!).

As Barnum (probably) said: 'There's a sucker born every minute'.

Thanks for the warning in the review.

Lee

im looking forward to this arriving, i ordered it last week or so from america, (along with a ghost gavel wooooooohahaha)...

ahem..anyway, i was seeing it more as an ideas-factory of a book, so you can take advantage of the sky above in an impromtu fashion to suit what you are about to perform...not the other way round...

tell me, and be completely honest now, did you, maybe just a little, buy this book and secretly wish that it would somehow, against all odds, give you the power to control clouds in a real sense...just a little? and then you became slightly angry when you couldnt...

its fair enough not liking something, but if you're also angry at yourself for not thinking things through...well...maybe you should take the time to re-read the book and see what you can get out it...

abraxus wrote:tell me, and be completely honest now, did you, maybe just a little, buy this book and secretly wish that it would somehow, against all odds, give you the power to control clouds in a real sense...just a little? and then you became slightly angry when you couldnt...

Well said Abraxus, that's the exact point I was trying to make!!

This seems to me to be a great idea for publicity stunts. Gather the press round and get them to hang around for 30 minutes. In the paper and on news coverage they would most likely show the footage cut and it would appear you changed the weather very quickly indeed.

We cannot change the weather. This book will not help us change the weather. What I would like to know is this: does this book help aid us in ways to make it APPEAR that we have changed the weather? I mean, I could do it today by guessing and checking the forecast and with a bit of luck. If I was to purchase this product, would it give me an extra edge over someone who doesn't own the product?

P.H.

abraxus wrote:tell me, and be completely honest now, did you, maybe just a little, buy this book and secretly wish that it would somehow, against all odds, give you the power to control clouds in a real sense...just a little? and then you became slightly angry when you couldnt...

Well said. No offence to Tyler, but the review felt a little like someone getting a CTW DVD and expecting to learn the secret of rendering glass truly penetrable to pasteboards.

What this thread really says is that perhaps the blurb should be more specific about it's intended audience - mentalists already experienced in perceptual manipulation.

One thing to note, which the review failed to mention: the Cloudbusting concept isn't the only asset taught in this book.

after I got the promo email about this book I looked on line about 'cloudbusting' never heard of it before apart from the kate bush song!

lucky for me I found I site teaching you how to do it - you just have to look at a cloud and 'click' your amygdala 'forward'

makes any chosen cloud vanish right before your eyes!!

now you probably have to spend some money to find out how to correctly 'click' your amygdala forward , but I thought sod it lets just give it a go!!

after choosing a suitable cloud I stared at it and told my amygdala to click forward,(well that's the best thing I could think of) with a bit of squinting the cloud really did seem to start to melt away, amazing!

when my eyes were almost closed the cloud was just a mere haze in the sky, well I couldn't believe my luck - expert amygdala clicker on my first go.

I thought yep this is for me and carried on staring.... my eyelids now flickering at warp speed, hopefully sending my amygdala into overdrive a la 'scanners'

the cool thing is after about 3-4 mins of this amygdala manipulation the cloud really had vanished - well practically
the veins in my head must have been popping out due to the concentration but it sure was worth it.
the remaining clouds around it hadn't disappeared at all -honest - well maybe changed a bit, well a lot BUT MY cloud had truly gone - I felt as smug as hiro nakamura when he stopped time.

ok I don't believe the amygdala thing but I really did make a cloud vanish - it just took 3-4 minutes so not exactly a quick street effect

if I had lots of spare cash at the moment I would buy this book to see how they use psychology to convince others but it is a bit steep at the price and if you spend an hour or so looking on the net you could probably come up with enough info to create your own routines based on the madness that is out there anyway!

seige wrote:One thing to note, which the review failed to mention: the Cloudbusting concept isn't the only asset taught in this book.

It was the other things that sounded interesting to me.

I guess the problem is really the old magician's spiel. It says you can bust clouds with your mind and that sounds incredibly impressive. However, when you find out how it's done and the time taken, it can seem a swindle.

In this case it's not really that the secret ends the mystery, more that the advertising copy is maybe a bit misleading. When you're more experienced in magic (and the hype), you begin to read between the lines a bit and mentally add the missing details.

As an example, I think I pretty much worked out the methods to the two effects in 'Telling Tales', just from the descriptions and could see that some people would be disappointed.

Part-Timer wrote:I guess the problem is really the old magician's spiel. It says you can bust clouds with your mind and that sounds incredibly impressive. However, when you find out how it's done and the time taken, it can seem a swindle.

This is so true.

I regularly have people purchase from my shop, only to write back and ask "Is that it? That's a rip off!".

Effects which have typically gotten that response are things like a forcing deck, TT, silk vanish, etc.

And guess what breed of person makes that comment? Not magicians, that's for sure. A magician buys the SIZZLE and not the SAUSAGE, because they are more mindful of how they can use even the simplest principle to fool the heck out of a layperson.

These days, we have the awful situation of magicians/marketing which is aimed at the laypeople. The hype for effects is aimed at Joe Public, rather than the magician. And it's becoming more and more apparent.

The chaps or chapettes in the marketing dept. for the Cloudbusters stuff were in 'cloud-cuckoo' land when they came out with the blurb. It may have been intended as a subtle play-on-words to mention 'Street magic', but unfortunately this effect will attract the wrong kind of person to purchase it.

God forbid, if—for instance—Banachek had ever hyped PK Touches as "Be just like Criss Angel and Dynamo and cause a ghost to appear and touch someone IN THE SAME ROOM YOU ARE IN—the ultimate effect" we'd see exactly the same reaction.

Good point, seige. You're absoultely right: this is not a 'street magic' effect at all.

I can understand people flogging packet tricks, cigarette through coin, and the like, as that most nebulous of magical genres, but cloud-busting?

seige wrote:I regularly have people purchase from my shop, only to write back and ask "Is that it? That's a rip off!".

Effects which have typically gotten that response are things like a forcing deck, TT, silk vanish, etc.

And guess what breed of person makes that comment? Not magicians, that's for sure. A magician buys the SIZZLE and not the SAUSAGE, because they are more mindful of how they can use even the simplest principle to fool the heck out of a layperson.

This reminds me of an article Kenton Knepper wrote for Online Visions a while back. In it, he mentioned people complaining when he sent them a TT or clear f bag, but no instructions. His view was that you shouldn't be buying these things if you don't even know what they are and what they are for.

catweasel wrote:lucky for me I found I site teaching you how to do it - you just have to look at a cloud and 'click' your amygdala 'forward'

Um, I'm not putting you down and it is a little off topic, but do you know what your amygdala actually do?

Isn't it nice to see a thread with some strong opinions being discussed in an adult way rather than falling into a slanging match? In that vein I'd be interested to see why you think levitation effects with thread aren't effective Part-Timer. Do you assume that people know what's going on?

I've found levitation and animation to be among the most powerful effects I do, I was at a barbeque recently where it was nice and hot and I was only wearing shorts and flip-flops. I performed a bill levitation using Jon LeClair's hook-up and it left the three people who saw it speechless. One of them spent a good 10 minutes with a crumpled bill on his palm, staring at it and willing it to float, rubbing it to 'build up static'. The other two wandered off and spread the wildly embellished word which did my reputation no harm.

Now, did the thought of special fine string cross their minds? Probably but as Ortiz points out in Designing Miracles, the aim when presenting an effect is to leave the spectator with no possible path back to the method by burning all the conceptual bridges that lead there. So in the case of the floating bill above they may have thought about the possibility of magic string but I was topless (calm down ladies) so there was nothing it could have been attached to so I can't have used it. Plus the beauty of the LeClair hookup is that the levitation is so isolated, straight off one hand with no movement from any other source.

I know this is a bit off topic but I'd be interested to hear your views.

|"Um, I'm not putting you down and it is a little off topic, but do you know what your amygdala actually do"?


erm it was meant as light hearted fun,you know taking the p***?. as i said found it on the net - sorry tomo