More of my thoughts!

I'm sitting here bored, tired of COD MW2 incredibly glitched up the wazoo so I figured I'd post some more thoughts real quick.

I unfortunately have not read The Five Points in Magic, but I do plan on it soon. So if anybody wants to get Sherlock a present I can send you a virtual cookie :D

Anyways, I was thinking about the book and one thing that popped up in my head is when do spectators actually feel something? Not feel the magic or anything corny like that, but I only see magic nowadays that is just visual stuff.

I understand the greatest of effects are like this, but I have yet to really come across anything that actually adds the specs sense of feel to anything. There are effects that burn cards, and the specs can feel the warmth but I'm talking about so much more than that.

Here then There effect, some scripts involve "did you feel that" and unfortunately not many people do since nothing happened, yet some people just lie because they force it upon themselves. What can we do to actually make them feel that happen? Perhaps some psychology, Banachek, Jermay, and D. Brown certainly have some stuff on this, or perhaps a gimmick of some sorts that does nothing more than move the object a few centimeters in their hands or under their foot or something.

What can we do to add more to the magic, to literally feel it instead of making them think they feel it? There is only one effect that I am aware of that really accomplishes this, Altered by our own Dee C. They feel the coin wiggle in their hands and BAM, it's bent. That's what I'm trying to add more of in magic, any ideas?

If I gave you some pudding what would you do with it, eat it or give it as a sacrifice to demon5. What if I gave you a choice between DGP even the new stuff for free, or the same exact product for 50 bucks, which would you choose?

Be honest with yourself, as I would choose the free one. No offense to DG as this was purely an example. Now how many of you watch television shows, movies with no consent, get free music, pirate free apps or w/e else?

I was asked this question and I said I would buy the magic and everything else I would simply torrent or use limwire etc. Well I came to a conclusion not to long ago that this was just silly and a huge flaw in my morales, and I also compromised with myself. If something came to me, with no real searching then I would go for it.

I know some respected guys torrent some material here, not because of any bad reason but because they want to learn more and simply don't have the money for several reasons. I myself have had torrented materials, nothing I ever searched for but they came to me from friends and such. I don't feel good but I don't lose any sleep.

How many of you can sit here and tell me there is a difference between pirating magic and pirating music or movies? Besides one holds some real significance to you which most likely clouds your judgment.

Now to close this off, I do not condone or promote the illegal piracy of any product. I hope that all this nonsense can be stopped one day in the future, and artists of all types of genres of entertainment can be payed in fulled.
 
Sep 24, 2007
417
1
The spectators won't actually feel anything, but if you use suggestion you can make them think they felt something. Piracy? Skip it. As far as magic products go, you don't need ANYTHING so bad that you'd need to steal it. Most people already have enough magic, and are just looking for something new to play with. On the other end of the line, it's this creator who "makes his living" off the selling of the product.
 
Oct 29, 2009
971
0
Just around
Sorry meant on the first part of the post about the feeling.

Oh, sorry:rolleyes:...
I like the idea, and it would make the magic waaay more of an experience to the audience, something they would remember. The magic is happening to the spec, not to you. Sometimes, just talking the spec though the coin melting in their hand (in this case) and using the right words with the right conviction can make them play mind games with themselves.
 

Mike.Hankins

creator / <a href="http://www.theory11.com/tricks/
Nov 21, 2009
435
0
Sacramento, Cali
Here is a new twist on things...a friend of mine brought this up while playing...go figure MW2 XBOXLIVE BTW...lol

So imagine going into your local magic shop. Once there, you see a magician performing something that just blew your mind. So you ask him about it, and he deicded to "jam" with you and shows you how to do the effect. It has happend to me many times over.

So let us say now that the effect he showed you came off of a 1 trick DVD. So the question is, what is the difference between learning an effect for free at a magic shop vs. learning an effect(s) from a torrent file?

Just an interesting perspective that I hope keeps this topic going.

Piracy sucks. So does my friend at MW2...

Mike
 
The sensation of magic is our ****ing goal!
Its not a corny piece that you can just throw off, if you use it to the proper extend people feel a part of something. This comes down to some old, new and secret premises of psychology and suggestion. And im not talking about Derren Brown style stuff but really real premises of suggestion and psychology. I have kept this resource to myself for some time now but Luke Jermay on his DVD Skullduggery hit me with a premise that i could not give away lightly.

He talked about peoples minds being let loose when presented with the sentence "In a minute SOMETHING is going to happen, its going to feel funny and maybe even a little rejective but it also might be a good feeling, if it is i want you to take it in!"
This little jolt of mind, this little sentence can make a difference in you performance, if you say it in a way appropriate and act upon the needs of it you could just make them feel something sensational and this is not to be taken lightly. Although this need some good ground of Rapport it can be a deadly weapon in your arsenal.

Mikk.
 
Mar 6, 2008
1,483
3
A Land Down Under
For the first part, if you want to learn how to make the spectators 'feel' the magic there are many source to learn that. The first is conviction never once have I heard Derren or Jermay 'Did you that?' or anything of that nature. I have though heard many times 'You can feel that' whilst on the surface they appear to be the same however, with the second you are commanding them to agree. I could go on for days on this subject how to do it a lot better and more efficiently however, there are many people who have written books on the matter. Jermay's Building Blocks is great and so is Osterlind's Making Magic Real, both should be fairly easy to torrent.

Which brings up my second point, regardless of what I say you it will not change your opinion of torrents and torrenting magic. The biggest issue I have with torrenting, and more specifically magic material it seems like I do not appreciate it as much. I will give you a simple example, if I wanted to buy an album I have a few options torrents, online download (itunes etc), online store (ebay amazon etc.) or a regular store. I never saw the advantage of itunes over a torrent as they are giving me the exact same product a digital copy of the album. Even though I buy the album place it on the ipod and not touch it again however to me I atleast have something physical to show for it.

I primary difference between magic and say movies and albums is that how many hands are in the pockets of the release. Most magic releases now days are available directly from the artist or at most through one or two companies. Whereas it is fairly common knowledge that in albums only a few cents go to the artists involved (I know they get indirect money like advertising budgets album budgets and most importantly distribution). Most people who release effects have a fairly high percentage of as their income from the release.

As to what Mr. Hankins said;

(Thank for being a fairly active member in the community something I would like to see more artists doing, I understand that the artists are busy so more props to you Mike.)

A simple quote can explain my opinions on that:
"Just because you know the method, does not mean you know how to do the effect."

To elaborate slightly, Luke Jermay's EI (as a commercial effect) in method is fairly simple (Three methods that could be explained in about 50 words each). However the explanation last over an hour not to mention the over an hour of performance footage. Why such a long winded explanation? because Luke wanted everyone to understand every little bit of why this effect worked. But most people I have ever seen perform EI do it terribly (and that's being nice).
 

Orb

Jul 19, 2009
84
0
Sweden
Interesting thoughts on the sense of feeling. I would agree that using suggestions are great, yet the ultimate would always be to actually do it (e.x make the coin very slightly vibrate in the spectators hand, using a gimmicked coin, and then pull it our of their hand, Tommy Wonder style), right?
Some might now argue that you wouldn't end clean, and some might argue that a true magician can always make himself look like he ends cleanly. These are both valid arguments in their own sense, bottom line I guess it comes down to personal preferences.

Now I must add that I am not full supporter of piracy, but I think it's the most ridiculous thing when you rent a movie, and they have this intro ad "you wouldn't steal a car, piracy is stealing!".
Well no, piracy is Not stealing. What you're doing is not going into a car shop, stealing a car. You're going in there, and copying a car. Which causes the owner no loss, and no profit. Obviously some will argue that I would have bought it otherwise, and therefor it is a lost and since I got the product it's stealing.
First off, nothing suggest that I'm going to buy the car, just because I'm interested in it. Just like a lot of other people, I suffer from economical limitations, however, when I have the chance to receive my own *copy* of it, that takes less than a second to do, I will get it.
I was not going to buy it, I did not take something away from there (which is what stealing is, taking something that doesn't belong to you), yet I'm out there with their car as a possible free ad driving around.

I have been a fan of the band Scar Symmetry long before they reached their fame, I knew already that they did music that I enjoyed, so when they released a new album I went out and bought it, not only to support them, but to have the physical material (which I value very highly, like I think a lot of other people do too). Now the supporting part is quite informal, since if we're going to use the term Stealing this lightly, I wouldn't mind for a second, saying that the companies are stealing from the bands.

Anyways to get to the point, when they lost their singer Christian Älvestam after the album Holographic Universe, I was totally turned off by the thought of them releasing any form of new material. They actually brought in 2 singers to the band, and I got to hear a sample of one of their new songs on myspace.
I was completely stunned, what garbage is this? The new clean vocals singer could not sing even if his life depended on it, and the death metal vocals singer was amazing for his own style, yet he was horrid in this band (much better in Facebreakers on Edge of Sanity).

So what were the results? Instead of ignoring them totally, I decided to download the album and listen through it. I did not love it, but I also did not hate it, I thought it was a decent album.
My point in this is that if I couldn't have downloaded the album, there would be no way that I would have bought it. So in this situation, all that happened was that they earned an extra fan, who most likely will continue to buy their material in the future.

The biggest hypocrisy there is with piracy is that people fail to see the good parts of it. Do you understand how many bands there is that has gotten so much recognition because someone downloaded the album, spoke good of it, told their friends, who got it, and told their friends etc. This circle does not make big money for the companies, but it puts the artists name out there, and I can assure you that they get a great deal of more gigs because of it, and thus from gigs comes more recognition, which means more fans which also will most likely result in new albums. There are still people who buy albums (like me in most of the cases), and these would probably be even smaller if downloading online was not possible.

As of magic torrenting might be a slightly different story, however the hypocritical hate that's surrounding torrenting needs to stop.

There's good and bad things in everything. How many possible future amazing magicians might we not have because some young kid decided to download a magic dvd, and got inspired from that?

How many ridiculous, revealing and sloppy performing YouTube-Magicians might we not have because of magic torrenting? (Probably plenty, however some actually buys the dvd and then goes in front of the cam to perform/reveal it.)

How many of you haven't ever tried to cheat the taxes? Everyone wants to and many tries, yet there seem to be a far lower moral and ethical limit there.

And finally, is it really any better to buy a magic dvd, and then sell it on e.x ebay for lets say the same price? What just happened is that you learned the method and effect (arguably) and then got your money back. A free effect, just like a torrent. You can even copy the dvd on your own CD and use it. Since it's legal for private usage.

And trading one trick for another, is that any better? (This might be a YouTube syndrome, I apologize if that is the case, I don't really know any other magician so I wouldn't know how that part works).
 
Here is a new twist on things...a friend of mine brought this up while playing...go figure MW2 XBOXLIVE BTW...lol

So imagine going into your local magic shop. Once there, you see a magician performing something that just blew your mind. So you ask him about it, and he deicded to "jam" with you and shows you how to do the effect. It has happend to me many times over.

So let us say now that the effect he showed you came off of a 1 trick DVD. So the question is, what is the difference between learning an effect for free at a magic shop vs. learning an effect(s) from a torrent file?

Just an interesting perspective that I hope keeps this topic going.

Piracy sucks. So does my friend at MW2...

Mike
damn mike, thats really deep and interesting...great question..i'm not gonna bury myself with a comment thats gonna get me roasted on here but wow....i'm kinda speechless on that....good one man....

i'm more of a madden mad though.....i've won a couple of tourney's of that game.....lets just say...madden once payed the mortgage for two months...yeah i'm that good....
 
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