talkmagic.co.uk

for this.
Paul Murtons wierd and wonderfull world of early cinema on bbc4.

http://movie-tv-episode-database.com/Do ... ma-739240/

I saw a trailer for it last night, and It's clearly something that will be of great interest to the magic community.
They show, and recreate Melies magical movies, and other magical special effects from teh very early days of the moving image.
It's going to be An absolute must see in my book!

Merton's other shows about early cinema really opened my eyes to the sheer amount of skill, athleticism and sheer strength exhibited by people like Buster Keaton. It's amazing to see a simple pratfall slowed almost to a freeze frame to reveal the amount of work that went into it.

quick heads up.. this has just started.Its repeated later tonight.

This was such a cool show.And chock fulll of magical refferences and Tidbits.

my absolute favorite clip was the magician and the Hen.

Imagine this...

from his bare hands, a magician produces a live hen.

he then hypnotises it, and proceeds to produce from it's rear end, 6 eggs.
these he then proceeds to crack open, into a dish.
instead of egg, live chicks fall out.

he then makes time go backwards, putting the chicks back into the shells, and inserting the eggs into a very startled hen!!



Also, it's briliance was introducing sme names that i had never come across, and who's work was clearly up there with Chaplin, Keaton, Harry Langdon ( My personal favorite) and Lloyd.

incidently, Its now on Iplayer...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00723wv

I really enjoyed this piece of televisual entertainment! A real eye-opener!

I used a part of Max Linder's life story in a mentalism performance last year, even though all I knew about him was what I needed to make my effect work, so it was nice to see the man actually perform and find out how influential he really was!

Do you know if this was a one off or are there more to come?

Jez

Alas, it was a one off. However, Take it as read that Merton will produce more shows on other areas of cinema.

His early Hitchcock documentary, and the shows on specific stars of silent films were as good.

I would love him to do a magic specific show, as the cross over between magic and cinema was , and still is thanks to special effects, enormous.

On last nights show for instance, one of the programes for early cinema said " presented by Mons. Trewey "


Reffering to Félicien Trewey , master of the quick change, hand shadows, and sleight of hand.

http://www.victorian-cinema.net/trewey.htm

Now, the interesting thing is, Trewey more or less introduced Cinema to the u.k.

and he probably took this up, because he realised that few would want to see hand shadows, when they could now watch moving pictures.

So this envolvement with cinema, was a shrewed move on his part.

It was incredible to find out that magicians were the forefront of cinema! But saying that it all makes sense; making black and white colour, double exposure, backwards filming, who else would have any use for these techniques. There was a quote saying that cameras held no commercial value, but the magician could see past that and imagine several uses! Funny though, because today if a magician used camera tricks he would be considered a phoney!

Let's hope Mr Merton does do a magic specific show.

true. I thought that when i was watching..
Maybe Chris Angel has the right idea after all.

Maskelyne has an interesting connection.. as he inspired Georges Méliès .


http://www.victorian-cinema.net/maskelyne.htm

Richard Osterlind was making some points about using camera trickery and magic and at what point does it stop being 'magic' and become like harry potter. It's a good question though, as magicians aren't we supposed to use anything at our disposal to create miracles and can we really 'cheat'; after all, that is what we do.

Its down to one question.

do we fool the eye, or the brain?

daleshrimpton wrote:Its down to one question.

do we fool the eye, or the brain?

This is deep... Now take a look at the opening cards thread for another philosophical debate.
Oh, what have they done to when I was gone? *sigh*

Well, all our visual processing occurs in our brians and we actually see with our barins, the eyes are only the vehicle for sending visual information for the brain to interpret it, analyse it. The brain is where our experience of 'reality' happens and it is the mind that we should aim to decieve because after all, we are suposedly manipulating and challenging what is 'reality'.
On the subject of camera trickery, I personally don't like it- but I have no objections to those who do use it (within reason). It is like stooges- from an approach to the 'effect' you cannot argue against them, you have to argue against them on the basis of practicality. I rarely use stooges, but it depends on weather or not I feel it is appropriate. I think it kind of discredits the whole point of my studies if an amateuir could just come and do anything I can with a stooge. Same with camera trickery. But I believe that, with discretion they are part of our craft and it all depends on the effect.
I am not even sure If I am following myself, so I will stop now

the show is being repeated half 7 tonight..

Merci.