Mastery vs. Astonishment
- Thread starter THEGUY26
- Start date
Well, most anything out of the AoA series, or anything Harris has touched 
Now that the obvious is out of the way, I generally like to take any effect that really catches my eye and try to make it look as magical as possible.
Basic Vernon thinking. Eliminate all superfluous moves. Make anything you do have a purpose. If a move is supposed to not be seen, then either do it with no visible movement, or with a completely natural nd purposeful movement.
Look at the way most "cover" the pass, they do some jerky tilting back and forth of the pack. Sure, you wont see the "pass" but you see a really out of place sudden movement of the hands. In other words you see "something." When spectators see "something" and they don't know what it was, just it accomplished something, they think wither they "saw how it was done," or they saw you do something but you did it well. Hence, skill.
There should be no indication that something just happened with a pass. If it needs to look like something to cover it, it should look like SOMETHING specific, not just some cover action.
Also, it should not look like something that is there to draw attention, ie, it should not be covered with a "magical" gesture.
It should be something that does nothing to call attention to itself.
Squaring the deck, for example, would look "natural" and would call no attention to itself.
Any who, enough of that tangent, that was more about moves in general being used to create magic, rather than looking like skillful technique.
But the same thinking should be applied to your magic. It should look "magical," not like you just did "something."
Of course, there is a fine line where you can do something fancy that also look magical. This usually happens when a "secret" move is done to immediately create something magical.
Like using Instant Replay as a colour change, vs using a double lift to cause a change. With one, the actual move is directly linked to the magical moment, where as with the second, the magical move is separate form the magical moment.
Often this happens with "visual" magic, but not always, and not exclusively.
Anywho, while I a rambling on, I think I should mention a similar, but slightly different event, found in, for example, piece by piece T&R's.
With these, there is often a secret move that makes the magic happen, AND it is happening at the same moment as the magic, but it is meant to NOT be seen.
(in the previous example, with Instant Replay, bare in mind that the "move" is not meant to be seen as the secret thing that made it happen, but rather either a fancy SHOWCASING of what happened, or a flourishy way of making it happen. As if the flipping was what made MAGIC happen, not what made something TRICKY happen.)
With a T&R, often the secret has to be completely hidden, and look like nothing was done, and yet is still done at the same moment as the "magic."
Most of this is, and is not really important to the discussion at hand though.
Now that the obvious is out of the way, I generally like to take any effect that really catches my eye and try to make it look as magical as possible.
Basic Vernon thinking. Eliminate all superfluous moves. Make anything you do have a purpose. If a move is supposed to not be seen, then either do it with no visible movement, or with a completely natural nd purposeful movement.
Look at the way most "cover" the pass, they do some jerky tilting back and forth of the pack. Sure, you wont see the "pass" but you see a really out of place sudden movement of the hands. In other words you see "something." When spectators see "something" and they don't know what it was, just it accomplished something, they think wither they "saw how it was done," or they saw you do something but you did it well. Hence, skill.
There should be no indication that something just happened with a pass. If it needs to look like something to cover it, it should look like SOMETHING specific, not just some cover action.
Also, it should not look like something that is there to draw attention, ie, it should not be covered with a "magical" gesture.
It should be something that does nothing to call attention to itself.
Squaring the deck, for example, would look "natural" and would call no attention to itself.
Any who, enough of that tangent, that was more about moves in general being used to create magic, rather than looking like skillful technique.
But the same thinking should be applied to your magic. It should look "magical," not like you just did "something."
Of course, there is a fine line where you can do something fancy that also look magical. This usually happens when a "secret" move is done to immediately create something magical.
Like using Instant Replay as a colour change, vs using a double lift to cause a change. With one, the actual move is directly linked to the magical moment, where as with the second, the magical move is separate form the magical moment.
Often this happens with "visual" magic, but not always, and not exclusively.
Anywho, while I a rambling on, I think I should mention a similar, but slightly different event, found in, for example, piece by piece T&R's.
With these, there is often a secret move that makes the magic happen, AND it is happening at the same moment as the magic, but it is meant to NOT be seen.
(in the previous example, with Instant Replay, bare in mind that the "move" is not meant to be seen as the secret thing that made it happen, but rather either a fancy SHOWCASING of what happened, or a flourishy way of making it happen. As if the flipping was what made MAGIC happen, not what made something TRICKY happen.)
With a T&R, often the secret has to be completely hidden, and look like nothing was done, and yet is still done at the same moment as the "magic."
Most of this is, and is not really important to the discussion at hand though.