It may interest you all to know a few facts about Val and the SUCCESS of the Masked Mage, including the fact that he's in serious negotiations right now to return to the Vegas strip as the famed Masked Magician, exposure and all.
I've known Val for over 30 years and he's a super nice guy. The Masked Mage project opened an amazing number of doors for him, allowing him to tour with a live stage show for most of the past decade or so. While I don't care too much for the act of literal exposure on his shows I understand part of it -- Magic (especially big stage) hadn't made any major advancements in decades and needed to "step outside the box" quite literally.
A very large percentage of the methods exposed ARE NOT legit or else they are so out of date it simply doesn't matter in that they aren't used any longer. But too, we magic buffs tend to short sell the general public when it comes to how well so many actually figure out what it is we do. . . again, this is especially true when it comes to big illusions. The public knows that we use traps, mirrors, look alikes, special tables and more, so tipping bits involving older effects in which such things are used, ain't a big deal. Even smaller effects like PK time. . . Oops! They don't use the actual method for that one (and Banachek is still looking for one of those nifty James Bond gadgets for doing it).
When it comes to the smaller odds & ends that have been exposed, such as the Swami Gimmick and Center Tear, the ***** comes as the result of people who don't know how to properly use said technique. I'll lay money on it that you can show an audience exactly how such things are used and then turn around and do a dozen tricks using that very gimmick or technique and they won't catch it.
Some years ago Penn & Teller along with some help from Jamie Swiss, proved this very point. Penn exposed a particular card control technique as part of a gag. During intermission Jamie went around doing card tricks for the audience USING THE VERY TECHNIQUE JUST EXPOSED. When the show resumed Penn asked folks how they liked all the card tricks and then pointed out how Jamie used said method in every trick he did and yet, no one figured him out.
This is the difference between being a Magicians and being some clown that does tricks; a true magician learns to find the flexibility in his methods and too, how to have the brass to do things right under the nose of others who think they know what you're doing.
To NlightN. . . you may not like grand illusions but I don't think your comment was necessary in that you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Big illusions are monstrous investments for those that choose to do them; the average effect costing as much as a car and in some cases, a house. It's not little thing when such pieces are tipped even though there is a logic factor such as I've mentioned -- everyone more or less knows that the girl curls up in the upper box of a sawing cabinet but the many redesigns of that effect have slowly removed that possibility and in return, given us a greater type of impossibility. This is what Val was shooting for when he made his challenge and so today, we have at least a half-dozen variants to this famous illusion that have done away with the box or made it transparent, etc.
Val was NOT the "original" Masked Magician btw. Long before the FOX shows that Val worked there was a video made for the home video market. The kid that wore the mask was named Hal Marquate and though he was dramatically drummed out of the Magic Castle and other club memberships and shamed, he has had a relatively successful career working cruise ships with a conventional magic show. He was exposed by way of joint effort and investigation by Peter Pit, Kirk Kirkham and yours truly though the Castle had others they were looking at as likely suspects. . . unfortunately, my name was on that list because most of the props seen in the video "were mine". . . that is to say, they were once part of my collection and readily identifiable to me. Add to this the physical body type I happened to share with Hal and reason for suspicion was quite logical.
The bottom line is, stop worrying about Val and what his character did, it only hurts you if you let it. It only hurts magic if we keep whining about it and keeping the issue alive. Shut up and it will go away and those producing such bits will no longer have the "demand" for what they supply.