What Was That Effect Again?

It has been a while since I have had any time to blog. I have been busy working on some projects which has kept my brain busy so I have not had a chance to blog or AudioBoo. However this week I should be back at it at a regular pace! Anyways What I wanted to talk about today is making you magic understandable to the audience.

Over the past few weeks I have had the chance to see a few magic performers perform live and watch some magic on the Internet. I saw some great magic and great technique. But one bad thing I saw a few times was some magic that was a bit confusing. What I mean the effect was not clear. Even I did not understand what the trick was supposed to be, so I figure a non-magician would also not understand what the effect was. One video I was asked to watch, I watched it over five times but I failed to see what the effect was. The flourishes were great but I did not see any magic and I was supposed to be a routine. Some of the live ones I saw again, I saw great technique but the effects were so long and complicated that sometimes after the magician had o explain what had just happened. It was not clear to the audience, which I think makes them feel very uncomfortable on a few levels. I think that when an audience member sees and effect and they don’t understand what happened they feel that maybe it is their fault, and that other people do understand when in fact they don’t. This makes it hard for the audience to react to the magic and the applause and feedback from them comes back all staticy. The last thing you want to do is make your audience feel awkward. So when you work on routines check them and make sure the effect, and the motivation for the effect is crystal clear. This will improve your show and improve the experience for your audience as well.
Aaron

Not Doing Magic With Magic Friends

Mame Jiro, Me, and Shinnotsuke in Nagahama

Mame Jiro, Me, and Shinnotsuke in Nagahama

One of the great things about doing magic is that it is easy to make friends from all age ranges and from all over the world. This was true for me in Canada and here in Japan. I have mentioned this before in other my blogs and my magic boo postings and that is you must be able to make magic friends and do things outside of magic.

Why should we extent out magic relationships outside of magic? well for me I have several reasons. One that friendships should be based on more than just one thing and here magic. I found for myself that if the friendship is just based on magic it will be hard to become close freinds because they only thing you will will do and talk about magic. Now I love magic but if I always talk about magic and do it I will get bored. So making friends and extending the friendship out of magic fixes this problem. Then what this does is creates  good trust and a real friendship with the person. Now this can be helpful in magic as now you have a real friendship and have a trust with the person and when you do magic with your magic friends you can trust their opinions and you can be honest with your opinions on your friends magic. Another thing I like that this does, is it kills the ugly side of magic, ego fighting between magicians. I HATE this and if you can make friends and have a real friendships with those in your magic circle this will eliminate this.  I have also found that the best friends I have ever made came from my magic life. They are the longest and strongest friends I have.

The picture in this blog is from after I moved to from Kagawa Prefecture to Shiga Prefecture in 2006. In the picture are two of my best magic friends from Kagawa, Mame Jiro and Shinnotsuke. I moved to Shiga Prefecture from Kagawa in July of 2006 and in October of 2006 they came to visit me. We didn’t do any magic they came just to visit me. And later in the spring of 2007 (I think thats when it was) They came again with my other good friend Maji Nishida and we took a small 2 day road trip to Fukui Prefecture to eat crab and just enjoy relaxing. Both times we didn’t do any magic, we just enjoyed out friendship. Now I moved to Ehime Prefecture right next to Kagawa and in the same city as Shinnotsuke it was easy to adjust to living here. So what I recommend is try to build real relationships with your magic friends that go beyond magic, because making good friends is one of the great benefits of magic.

Aaron