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wow never thought thread would be this popular can i thank you all for posting! i have always loved entertaining and now i am realising that this is why we do what we do. if i am being honest i got into magic to fool people but lately have realised that i no longer want to do this. i want to inspire and amaze by not making people think they are less skillled but by entertaining and them thinking i would love to be able to do that. in this short space of time i have been doing magic (3 months) i have got 2 people into it. i have realeased no secrets as they havent asked they know the rules of magic, i respect every one like this. and long may our ART continue.

also i DO get things wrong and DO get busted but i know in the end it is all helping me.

rumburak wrote:Although I am sure you have far more technical skills and experience then I have I do disagree with you. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

I do agree, however, that your handling and presentation should be good enough that mechanics alone are unlikely to stop your show.

But should something go wrong, you still should be able to achieve your primary goal: to entertain!

I would also agree that this discussion (ie implying that there is a possibility of ever being caught out) is more dangerous exposure than revealing the workings of a trick, and I am sorely tempted to move it to MO except that there are members contributing who don't have access.

I also disagree with this one. There is so much discussion going on about which latest trick is best or how to practice a certain move or how to achieve X and Y. Yet there is so little discussion about how to make a show entertaining. But isn't that the primary purpose of doing magic?

Sure, it is exposure. But does it harm the art if people learn why we do what we are doing? Would you not want this to be the most important thing for a newbie to learn?

With respect to your first statement, I don't see not preparing an out as failing to prepare. It would be impractical to prepare an out for every routine I have (carrying an ID can only take you so far) so I ensure thhat the chances of anything going wrong are minimised by learning the mechanics, angles and presentation of every effect like the back of my hand. If anything ever does go wrong I admit to it and make it into a joke (at my first ever paid gig I screwed up royally and lost the chosen card, came clean and tried again. The spectator managed to pick the same card from a genuinely shuffled deck at a probability of 1 in 2074ish). I don't think that this method reduces the entertainment factor.

As for the second statement, I am not sure that this really is about entertainment. Sure, if you go wrong unprepared and allow this to stall your routine then yes, it does make it less entertaining, but I think ultimately the entertainment gained from the magic is all bound up with personal interactions, so as long as you have an entertaining personality then you will entertain. There will be exceptions to this.

I agree that it won't hurt the art much more than kowing the mechanics of an effect as far as an outsider is conserned, though there is the risk that people might get the idea that we always rely on multiple outs. I think it will harm the art, however, if newcomers are allowed to think that going wrong is normal. This can only lead to a generation of sloppy magicians. Admittedly, most will not get believe this, but every one does damage to magic with each poor performance.

With respect to your first statement, I don't see not preparing an out as failing to prepare. It would be impractical to prepare an out for every routine I have

[...]

If anything ever does go wrong I admit to it and make it into a joke.

This makes sense to me and I agree. It is not totally contradicting my original assertion, though - in your case the "out" would be a joke which is entertaining in itself.

So I modify my recommendation to have "something" prepared - either an "out" as an alternative path in the presentation or simply a joke which can be applied to several situations.

That is actually what I have been doing as well - learning funny "lines" in case I cannot recover from a problem.

To the original poster I would recommend doing a search on this forum - there are several of such threads which contain adequate remarks for all sorts of situations.

I think it will harm the art, however, if newcomers are allowed to think that going wrong is normal. This can only lead to a generation of sloppy magicians. Admittedly, most will not get believe this, but every one does damage to magic with each poor performance.

Yes, this is a very good point.

It touches a problem of magic in general. The worst thing is a magician who handles his props badly and thereby exposes the mechanism. If he focuses solely on his handling he will end up becoming a perfect manipulator, but remain a bad entertainer. So he needs to go beyond the pure mechanics and also start becoming an entertainer. This can turn a "self-working, ready-in-5-minutes" trick into a learning period of several months. Which beginning magician who bought a "perform-instantly" trick wants to have a learning period of several months before he is ready to perform it?

In his "Essays" Richard Osterlind made a very good point about the comparison between magic to music. If you started to play an instrument, would you play for somebody in public after a few weeks of practice? Hopefully not. It will take months to years before you can even think of presenting some simple pieces. And even then you will practice a single piece several times a day over and over again. You would not start a new piece every week and let it loose on the same audience over and over again.

Magic is more demanding in the sense that it is interactive and involves you and the spectator. So how can we believe to do it successfully if we don't even spend a fraction of the time necessary for developing the art?

The bottom line is: What do we tell beginners about the best way to start? If we ask them to perfect the classic pass and the DL first and bring them in a shape where they can be performed well we may discourage them.

Probably it is best to ask them to stick to simple, self-working effects first and focus on the presentation, instead.

What do we tell beginners about the best way to start? If we ask them to perfect the classic pass and the DL first and bring them in a shape where they can be performed well we may discourage them.

Probably it is best to ask them to stick to simple, self-working effects first and focus on the presentation, instead.

That just about sums up my feelings on the matter. There's an almost automatic assumption that magic and newcomers = card tricks therefore they need to study sleights, moves, passes etc and it simply doesn't have to be that way at all. There's no reason why a newcomer can't start off with self workers, routines with gaffed cards etc until they gain confidence in performing and then they can study the subtleties if they wish to progress to doing things with normal or borrowed decks. There's also no reason why they couldn’t start with non card stuff such as those in the Tenyo range, the Marvin's range etc. There's a wide variety to choose from which will encourage newcomers to try things out until they find their particular favourites.

There's no reason why a newcomer can't start off with self workers, routines with gaffed cards etc until they gain confidence in performing and then they can study the subtleties if they wish to progress to doing things with normal or borrowed decks. There's also no reason why they couldn’t start with non card stuff such as those in the Tenyo range, the Marvin's range etc. There's a wide variety to choose from which will encourage newcomers to try things out until they find their particular favourites.

That is exactly my position and why I often take issue with the blind recommendation to every newcomer to get RRTCM.

Happy Toad wrote:That is exactly my position and why I often take issue with the blind recommendation to every newcomer to get RRTCM.

However... I would always recommend new 'cardies' go for the RRTCM in the same way I recommend anyone who buys a 10 year old car go straight out and buy a Haynes manual.

The oft debated recommendation comes only to serve as an insight into what is actually possible with cards, and also what many consider to be the default training manual for card handling.

As always, this is merely an opinion offered—by no means should it be adhered to. The RRTCM is, and will always remain a timeless piece of magic prose.