I do agree with you to a certain extent, but there are many ways where you can implement flourishes into magic. Ricky Jay does that very well, especially the waterfall card revelation. I recommending doing flourishy reveals when performing to people of high authorities, as Lee Asher points out in Flo Cascade reveal.
Does flourishing kill card magic?
- Thread starter avihoffmanmagic
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I do agree with you to a certain extent, but there are many ways where you can implement flourishes into magic. Ricky Jay does that very well, especially the waterfall card revelation. I recommending doing flourishy reveals when performing to people of high authorities, as Lee Asher points out in Flo Cascade reveal.
I totally agree with that. So to keep things short, Lennart Green has it all!
But yes, it totally depends on the situation. But for some reason lots of magicians seem to overdo flourishes whenever they do them. The better the card handling looks, the sooner you get to hear "I don't know how you got that card to the top but it must have been with a very fast motion, even though you just did it in slowmotion." Period.
You'll have to find the perfect balance. Of course you don't want to look like "a bad magician who doesn't have any control over his cards, even when he still manages to get the card invisibly to the top" either.
When you don't have this 'perfect balance' (well, nothing is perfect, but at least it could be the best possible for you) you get what people say about D&D and d+M overdoing it. Of course there are still people who think they don't overdo it, but in these cases it's the minority. It's the magicians' choice to go with the audience's opinions, or not. Look at the JM-changing-his-wardrobe case.
I guess i'm more of an old school style card guy. to me, the strongest card magic is sticking the card into the middle (for example) and doing NOTHING. no shuffle, no flourish, nothing! but of course, you are already steps ahead of the audience and have controlled the card.
Sometimes, I use a DPS-like move that allows me to stick the card into the middle, then hand the deck out for shuffling by the spec. when i take it back, i just put the card back on the deck. To me, that is a great way to "control" the card as it defies any explanation of you doing anything.
for my style, flourishing would just take the mystery away and give people an "out" for their reasoning to just assume i did something too fast.
well everyone keeps using the point that there is a fine line between what is acceptable and what isnt. so I will reinforce that point.
jetEyeNight says that D+M does flourishing in his magic. And yes he does make it work. But, Daniel has something no one, or atleast very few people on these forums have. He has a deep understanding of magic and performance. he knows how to make the audience tick. Watch his performance of role play. See how he builds up the audience? his trick has a perfect flow, similar to freytag's pyramid. He has a beginning, climax and a resolution. I would be willing to bet that if someone went out and tried to perform this trick, it would probably take them about 30 seconds, because their performance skills are un-developed.
So what I am saying is that to be able to mix flourishes and magic, one needs a deep, well-developed understanding of what magic is in the eyes of a spectator. To reach this level one must think like a layman and view the efect through their eyes. Needless to say this is a very difficult thing to do, and very few do it well.
It's alot easier to just keep the 2 seperate.
jetEyeNight says that D+M does flourishing in his magic. And yes he does make it work. But, Daniel has something no one, or atleast very few people on these forums have. He has a deep understanding of magic and performance. he knows how to make the audience tick. Watch his performance of role play. See how he builds up the audience? his trick has a perfect flow, similar to freytag's pyramid. He has a beginning, climax and a resolution. I would be willing to bet that if someone went out and tried to perform this trick, it would probably take them about 30 seconds, because their performance skills are un-developed.
So what I am saying is that to be able to mix flourishes and magic, one needs a deep, well-developed understanding of what magic is in the eyes of a spectator. To reach this level one must think like a layman and view the efect through their eyes. Needless to say this is a very difficult thing to do, and very few do it well.
It's alot easier to just keep the 2 seperate.
Okay, well said. I think I didn't really put it correctly in my post. What I meant by the 'perfect balance' of course is different for every single magician out there. It was more meant towards those who do flourishes when doing magic tricks (beforehand/during/afterwards). They should realize that it's very easy to overdo it (most of them do) and that their image will turn into a card sharp instead of a magician almost right away.
On the other hand, the ones who don't do flourishes shouldn't think that they should make it all messy and sloppy to make it look impossible for them to 'get the card back to the top' because that would kill the magic too (except if you merge it well in the presentation like for instance Lennart Green). Therefore the magician must show that he has a certain control over the cards. Of course that could be achieved by holding the cards steady in your hands, but a simple riffle shuffle with bridge ending would certainly help with that as well, without hurting any of the magic. (Obviously I try to take flourishing as wide as possible as it seemed like there were some problems with that on previous pages.)
I have to agree d+M does a fine job, but I am sure he could've done better/get even better reactions with less flourishing. I think the opinions over here are 50/50 in that case.
I've witnessed shows of magicians only flourishing. From a magician's perspective it's all cool and great, but there is no way a random audience is going to find it all that magical, and even if there are some magical tricks in there, that doesn't work well. That, combined with the card sharp image would mean that flourishing indeed kills card magic in a certain way, just like that shuffling and cuts kill an ACR.
So whatever suits you the best, but it's certainly something one must think about.
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The topic of this discussion is "Does flourishing kill card magic?", not does XCM kill card magic? or does cardistry kill card magic?
What you guys are saying is that doing flourishing like daniel madison during a trick will ruin the illusion and make them think you just have fast hands. In D+M Dangerous, they were still amazed by the trick, in spite of you saying that it will cause people to think he just has fast hands.. The cardistry flare to the effects obviously didn't cause the screams, but they didn't kill the screams either. They enhanced it. And I counted more than 2 times....
"If all you do is card magic then yes"..... This topic is about card magic!
"seance magic/making a card float/freezing ice around a card,etc a flourish(or sybils like so many people do now instead of subtle flourishes) in the middle of that would kill the mood and character." These aren't examples of card magic. These are other forms of magic using playing cards in the effect, when almost any other object could be used. Floating a card is levitation, not card magic, freezing ice around a card is elemental magic, not card magic. Summoning spirits is not card magic. This topic is about card magic and flourishing.
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^Yes, I did read your post. But I don't think what you said is true and I don't agree with it. I think anyone with the right amount of practice can do anything that D+M does.
No you kept saying,and I quote "if you dont flourish in magic,youll be at a disadvantage" and "these types of flourishes enhance magic"
Which is why I said it wouldnt enhance anything in 'magic' because it would kill that mood or tone of the piece.
Quote me all you want, but we're talking about FLOURISHING IN THE CONTEXT OF CARD MAGIC> THIS TOPIC IS ABOUT FLOURISHING AND CARD MAGIC, not FLOURISHING AND OTHER TYPES OF MAGIC> What's so hard for you to understand about that? What you've done is a classic case of taking something out of context. We're in a card magic topic in a card magic forum, if you want to talk about other types of magic, do it in another forum.
First off I do not think you fully understand what you just said about elemental magic and seance blah blah blah. That is just presentation, if you are doing a card to ice cube its still a card trick just dressed up using "element manipulation" If I was doing that the most flourishy thing I would do is a simple fan/spread. Same thing with seance effects using card tricks, its all about presentation. Strip it away and you are left with a card trick, so yes it belongs here.
Also to contribute, flourishing does not kill card magic. It only acts like the bones of a homunculus, when you bring it close to your magic it weakens it but not kill it.
ANIMEEEE!!!!!