there are so many aspects that go in to making a miracle out of a mere magic trick. i m talking about sleight of hand magic in particular. many spend innumerable hours practicing sleight of hand but rarely train in ways to hide non-verbal communication(nvc). humans are amazingly good at picking up body language and other nvc.
how should the hand drop when it hides an object ? good magic books call attention to that hands should be held naturally but its become more of a lip service than anything else. in fact most magicians are not doing as much good magic as they lip service the so called greats.
thanks to the you tube and tv i see many so called experts performing and each and every time i find how at one hand they are successful in sone aspects but fail in other aspects and these other aspects are important for those who truly love magic. its not mighty important for laymen, 'coz they may be appeased by something that is not essential to magic for example they may be happy at the presentational skills of the performer or his comic lines or jokes etc.
one common observation is how the hand goes completely dead after palming ... it just becomes a heavy log and stays there ... its a sore sight really.
may be these nvc are easy to pick up when watching magic on telly or internet ... who knows ?
it's a question of beating muscle memory really ... our muscles and bodies are trained in a way that makes it difficult to make different situations look the same. for example our brains have learnt to move hands that hide nothing in a particular fashion ... when we try to replicate the same actions with somethings hidden in our hands our brains and bodies betray that fact and the movement is not the same. only training can rewire the brain to make both the movements same.
perhaps there should be a video archive of normal ppl doing ordinary motions. magicians should study those movements as artists study motion in humans and animals. also i think its vitally important to first do the actual action and then do the false one. better yet record yourself doing the actual action 100 times even before you begin to learn a sleight. we magicians learn it the wrong way ... we first learn the false movement since our teachers or books tell us to do so and then one fine day when we really and i mean really understand the phrase ``be natural" do we compare our movements with the actual movements. but by then our minds are corrupt and its not easy to replicate an untainted movement that normal ppl do.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Monday, May 04, 2009
magic and sleight of hand are disjoint
yeah yeah yeah ... another lecture from a virtual unknown mad man
no no no ... these may be the same words but i intend to say something different today. many magicians say that doing sleight of hand alone is not magic . you see magic provides the opportunity to integrate other skills into sleight of hand; though some may view it as the other way round. but i do believe that magic is really about sleight of hand and the story telling part, the patter the presentation are simply addons that do not form the core of magic. but yes chances are if you know the customer likes ice cream and you are serving cold coffee, there has bound to be a great urge to put in a dollop of ice cream to make it more attractive to the audience. the analogy being that magic is coffee which is made more pleasing by incorporating other forms of entertainment.
when david copperfield presents his illusion the entire experience is made up of magic, music, dance, glitz, glamour, humour, presentation. its the sum total of all these that make up the experience for the audience. the reason we still call it a magic show is because at the very core of it is sleight of hand. can we really claim that it is magic alone that enamours the audience ? can we quantify what percentage of credit goes to magic alone in wowing the audience.
'"
now imagine a david blaine on street with this "look, watch... watch ...look" patter .... no funny quips, no glamour ... just pure magic in your face. in this case atleast one will not feel too uncomfortable in attributing a large percentage of the credit to magic. there is a fine point here though which i reserve for a later post... and just to remind myself of this i will write a line or two about it.
david blaine is david blaine today not because he did street magic. he is what he is today because he did street magic on tv. tv is a wonderful medium that nonlinearly transforms what ever gets viewed thru it. anyways more of that later.. back to the topic.
since there are so many departments that together form magic as a form of entertainment as we know it today it is quite possible to complement deficiencies in one department with surpluses garnered in from another department.
many a times the lay audience really does not care for other departments. say the magi has poor chops but is a good story teller ... there is a great possibility that the audience will come away dazzled with the performance if the story telling was good. or say he is as funny as bill malone but does not have his chops then too the audience has a great time. the problem is that the audience will claim that they saw a "good" "magician". which is feel would not be a correct assessment of the situation.
we can't expect audience to lap in pure sleight of hand ... it would not be palatable to them so the need arises to throw in humour, patter and presentation. this i feel dilutes pure magic and renders it as just another form of entertainment which is no different than a juggling act with the same quality of humour and presentation. what then is the distinction ? apart from the core of it which is sleight of hand.
Unfortunately sleight of hand is being ignored by many as they believe ( rightly so) that as long as the entire package is good then it does not matter if there are some below average ingredients in it.
i find myself gravitating more and more towards pure sleight of hand ... more so after i watched mr. steve forte and other giants like him. magicians are more yap than work and that saddens me.
no no no ... these may be the same words but i intend to say something different today. many magicians say that doing sleight of hand alone is not magic . you see magic provides the opportunity to integrate other skills into sleight of hand; though some may view it as the other way round. but i do believe that magic is really about sleight of hand and the story telling part, the patter the presentation are simply addons that do not form the core of magic. but yes chances are if you know the customer likes ice cream and you are serving cold coffee, there has bound to be a great urge to put in a dollop of ice cream to make it more attractive to the audience. the analogy being that magic is coffee which is made more pleasing by incorporating other forms of entertainment.
when david copperfield presents his illusion the entire experience is made up of magic, music, dance, glitz, glamour, humour, presentation. its the sum total of all these that make up the experience for the audience. the reason we still call it a magic show is because at the very core of it is sleight of hand. can we really claim that it is magic alone that enamours the audience ? can we quantify what percentage of credit goes to magic alone in wowing the audience.
'"
now imagine a david blaine on street with this "look, watch... watch ...look" patter .... no funny quips, no glamour ... just pure magic in your face. in this case atleast one will not feel too uncomfortable in attributing a large percentage of the credit to magic. there is a fine point here though which i reserve for a later post... and just to remind myself of this i will write a line or two about it.
david blaine is david blaine today not because he did street magic. he is what he is today because he did street magic on tv. tv is a wonderful medium that nonlinearly transforms what ever gets viewed thru it. anyways more of that later.. back to the topic.
since there are so many departments that together form magic as a form of entertainment as we know it today it is quite possible to complement deficiencies in one department with surpluses garnered in from another department.
many a times the lay audience really does not care for other departments. say the magi has poor chops but is a good story teller ... there is a great possibility that the audience will come away dazzled with the performance if the story telling was good. or say he is as funny as bill malone but does not have his chops then too the audience has a great time. the problem is that the audience will claim that they saw a "good" "magician". which is feel would not be a correct assessment of the situation.
we can't expect audience to lap in pure sleight of hand ... it would not be palatable to them so the need arises to throw in humour, patter and presentation. this i feel dilutes pure magic and renders it as just another form of entertainment which is no different than a juggling act with the same quality of humour and presentation. what then is the distinction ? apart from the core of it which is sleight of hand.
Unfortunately sleight of hand is being ignored by many as they believe ( rightly so) that as long as the entire package is good then it does not matter if there are some below average ingredients in it.
i find myself gravitating more and more towards pure sleight of hand ... more so after i watched mr. steve forte and other giants like him. magicians are more yap than work and that saddens me.
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