I created a effect awhile ago that is a peek at a folded business card and in the action of placing the business card in another spectators hand you are able to peek that card but Spidey has a vary similar peek I found out the other day but its two different actions of peek his is in a closed fist and mine is in a spectators hand. The fingers that peek are different and they way the peek is open is different then is it my method then to sell and produce or is it his.
Definition of a new effect
- Thread starter CIassic
- Start date
Most of today's "newer" effects are actually just older effects with a new modern twist or take on it. Many artists are just "dressing" them up differently and calling it new. You may have a similar peek or it could be a variation that may be better in some people's minds or it may be inferior. It would be hard to tell until workers actually tried your method and tested the practicality of it. Also, you are free to market anything you want but if it is similar to other peeks, then you would need to make reference to the history of them and give credit where credit is due.
When it comes to "moves" such as a peek, be careful! I just busted someone on the Wire I think it was, for using one of the advanced elements of Acidus Novus and claiming it to be an "original" effect; Millard Longman didn't appreciate such in that this move is part of an existing product (a Teach-In on the Acidus Novus . . . there's a lot more to it than most know).
It's a crock, the "accepted" attitude that it's "OK" to use someone else's method, especially when they're still alive. I'm a bit touchy on this issue given the number of pieces people have put out that stem from my own contributions over the years. Like Mr. Longman, if you ask chances are I'll say go for it, just send me a copy (of the piece) but too many in today's magic world don't seem to have the sort of the backbone required for doing something this simple. It ticks me off given how far I've gone to get permission on things and others take short cuts when it proves to be a bit tough to find the right person.
Obviously this is something that gets my hackles up. I would suggest that you contact the person you think your piece is similar to FIRST, share your idea . . . usually you won't have any real challenge; I've had guys offer to help me make things better.
Pardon my grumpy old bear growls but hopefully you understand why
It's a crock, the "accepted" attitude that it's "OK" to use someone else's method, especially when they're still alive. I'm a bit touchy on this issue given the number of pieces people have put out that stem from my own contributions over the years. Like Mr. Longman, if you ask chances are I'll say go for it, just send me a copy (of the piece) but too many in today's magic world don't seem to have the sort of the backbone required for doing something this simple. It ticks me off given how far I've gone to get permission on things and others take short cuts when it proves to be a bit tough to find the right person.
Obviously this is something that gets my hackles up. I would suggest that you contact the person you think your piece is similar to FIRST, share your idea . . . usually you won't have any real challenge; I've had guys offer to help me make things better.
Pardon my grumpy old bear growls but hopefully you understand why
The one merit I see to releasing all these variations is, that we are getting to where there is literally a move for ANY situation.
There already are moves for pretty much any situation and most of what I see coming up is fluff designed to solve problems that don't actually exist in a practical world. I've been reading The Berglas Effects again and it strikes me that this is a man who was known for his card 'work' and he doesn't even use sleights most of the time!
My first thought whenever I see someone say, "I came up with this, is it OK to sell?" is, "Why the **** are you trying to sell it already?"
Magic is PERFORMANCE art. Why is it that everyone in this world seems to be so focused on selling their so-called art? I see it everywhere, but I do think Theory11 is one of the biggest communities that have this issue. This is probably mostly due to The Wire.
Magic specifically has become so incestuous it's ridiculous. We've gone from being a loosely organized group of people who perform miracles for the public and occasionally share/sell secrets, to being people who share/sell secrets and occasionally perform miracles for the public.
I will point out right now, I am not bashing Theory11. There are some really talented people in this community and they put out some top notch products. A not insignificant portion of my performance repertoire is based on products I bought here. But I really do think that the "create to sell" attitude has just run rampant. I just want to talk to other performers, I'm not interested in the next variation of a hundred year old sleight that solves absolutely no problems I have.
Stop worrying about selling something and just go out and perform.
My first thought whenever I see someone say, "I came up with this, is it OK to sell?" is, "Why the **** are you trying to sell it already?"
Magic is PERFORMANCE art. Why is it that everyone in this world seems to be so focused on selling their so-called art? I see it everywhere, but I do think Theory11 is one of the biggest communities that have this issue. This is probably mostly due to The Wire.
Magic specifically has become so incestuous it's ridiculous. We've gone from being a loosely organized group of people who perform miracles for the public and occasionally share/sell secrets, to being people who share/sell secrets and occasionally perform miracles for the public.
I will point out right now, I am not bashing Theory11. There are some really talented people in this community and they put out some top notch products. A not insignificant portion of my performance repertoire is based on products I bought here. But I really do think that the "create to sell" attitude has just run rampant. I just want to talk to other performers, I'm not interested in the next variation of a hundred year old sleight that solves absolutely no problems I have.
Stop worrying about selling something and just go out and perform.
AMEN!
This is an irritant brought about by the Internet but likewise (someone's going to hate me for saying this) forums like T-11, Penguin, Ellusionist and Paper Crane (in their early days, I should point out). Young magicians pushing a commercial agenda with their peers and from my own experience, they frequently pushed the older guys that weren't "famous" out of their way. . . that changed with time and experience however.
The majority of people that market an effect or effects have been PERFORMING for at least half a dozen or so years, traditionally much longer, rarely releasing anything until they are closer to retirement and then, just prior to doing a lecture circuit tour, they would release a book filled with their approach to this, that or the other. There are exceptions of course, but even with the Michael Ammar and Tommy Wonder types that were sharing early on, it wasn't until they had developed some genuine recognition as a showman. Sadly, this DISCIPLINE has been lost because of the Internet and how it murdered the Brick & Mortar magic shops of old (and the crusty old salts that ran them, passing on their wisdom).
If you have the reputation in place first, as a showman and the guy that does awesome stuff, you will be able to ask more on the price and see more in your pocket both, due to profit margins as well as the volume of sales. When you jump the gun you might see some sales up-front but then you have to play catch-up in order to establish a brand that represents quality (or the allusion there of). . .
It's easy to come up with a "new trick" but it's very much a different thing when it comes to developing an award winning effect be it large or small. I've found that the latter usually involves at least 3+ people, especially on larger effects but you'd be surprised how much correspondence goes own between friends when it comes to effect development. I have two young men I kind of mentor on this forum that I've invited to help refine some of my older effects, making them more viable for today's market . . . which is something to pay attention to here; what works for you as the performer may not be fit for the market. Most homemade props, the prototypes, are not as clean and refined as they should be when a product goes to market and too, there are always ways by which to improve upon a design, the materials used, etc. so getting feedback or drawing in a creative partner can be a good thing.
I really hope this makes sense to a lot of you out there that want to market things, it is something that Kenton Knepper and others have written a great deal on over the past dozen or so years (people jumping on the mentalism band wagon as it were).
Two things. Pretty sure Sean Fields already did this, and why are you attempting to do market research to sell this when you haven't even been using it that long? Oh, let's not beat around the bush here, there is no way you've been utilizing this in the crucible of live performance long enough for it to be considered commercially viable.
Ding, ding! We have a winner!
The more I learn about marketing and business (the hard way), the more I learn (again, the hard way) that artists are generally pretty terrible at it. Let me share with you a little anecdote. Back in June, my sister and I went down to an open market for students from the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The amount of talent on display was incredible. All these great paintings, fine art photography that I wish I had the money to buy, fantastic pottery... I saw a ceramic fish with actual detail and texture on the scales. I asked over a dozen people to be added to their mailing list. No one had one. I asked them for business cards. I got three. Guess what? I don't remember any of their names anymore. Even if I could afford to buy their stuff now, I couldn't get hold of them in order to buy it.
That's what you guys are right now! You're trying to sell crap, but you're not approaching it like the business that it is.
Yeah, pretty much. People treat the Wire as if it's there specifically for their vanity projects. I was skeptical about the Wire when it first debuted and it seems some of my misgivings are coming to pass.
I have a slightly broader perspective in that I believe the internet only exacerbated an existing problem: that art and business are falsely viewed as mutually exclusive. Like I said, artists in general are terrible entrepreneurs. They see business as easy, something that any schmuck can do. I do partly blame this perception on the proliferation of the MBA degree, but that's another story and this really isn't the time or the place to get into it.
Point is, we have a new generation of magicians who have absolutely no knowledge of business aside from the fact that they hate their bosses and whatever crap jobs they worked through high school/college. Now along comes the internet and the era of the self-published magician who can sell any half-assed product for $30 and (allegedly) turn a profit. It's the siren song of the easy way out. What did it get us? Remember the Bubblegum Magic DVDs? Shot in a mall with the cheapest equipment available and teaching you sleights exactly as you would have learned them from Tarbell et al, only with gum instead of the usual props. They charged you $60 for stuff you could have figured out on your own in 10 minutes. Remember iFloat? If you do, it's probably only for the trailer where the chump who made it flashed the method right there in the damn demo! And of course a few years back we had all these young, magical wunderkinds who were going to take up the mantle of the greats and trail blaze magic for a new generation. Most of them are in the "Whatever happened to them?" category.
And people wonder why magic gets pirated all the time.
I more than agree with you one the business end of things; hell, I'm living proof of it (as are the majority of us, in my situation . . . 40 years of work and little to nothing to show for it outside of memories). . . entertainers are notorious for this problem, it's why we end up contracting a management team and a CPA to over-watch them.
In my younger days I knew how to sell a project I simply didn't know how to manage the income. I've also been chewed out by some of the better known developers out there for not charging when people wanted to pick my brain; I enjoyed the brain storming far too much and so my methods and ideas would get used while I wasn't just written out of the projects, people would deny knowing me or worse, bad mouth me until the next time they needed an affordable consultant. . . not that I'd give away a ton of information to people or anything. . .
I admit this stuff because it is a reflection of how I mismanaged my "gifts" so to speak (and I still do).
When you're creative, take notes and fill notebooks. Come up with an idea and as Max Maven used to say, spend the rest of the week developing different methods for making that same basic effect. This allows you to actually have something that resembles a product and gives you alternatives that can be shared in an ebook or video; things that build value into what it is you want to sell. But running out and chasing the brass ring because of a creative brain fart isn't the way to do it. You need feedback, you need to find out if someone else has done it or something similar to it in the past decade or so, etc.
I'm sitting on a piece right now that is about to come out, my first release of an actual trick in a very long time. In researching it the past couple of months I've discovered that similar effects actually do exist and some of them even used a similar method and so I have to make a business decision; to take a $1,200.00 development cost loss and not release it, or release it and potentially face a failure. . . This is why guys like Franz Harrary talk about the 10% factor when it comes to success in the magic world; only 10% of what he comes up with is viable to the market . . . when you look at what Franz has produced over the past 30 years it really makes you realize just how difficult it is to develop solid magic regardless of how big or small it actually is and more so, how important it is that we get brutally honest with ourselves when it comes to the business side of things rather than being ego-blinded about pooping out a New Effect.
Yes, there are guys that have bought homes from the sell of a single effect and then there are guys that have helped develop award winning big illusions that less than two-dozen units sold world wide. . . winning kudos and industry acclaim doesn't mean you'll make money from your effect or even gain notoriety.
At the end of the day it is BUSINESS and being able to make WISE business decisions rather than having our ego drive us on things, blinding us to the pitfalls. I have pieces that I'll never market because they were developed for me and my work, I can't see them as viable product. On the other hand, I have about 6 pieces in development right now (being up-dated because of technological advances) that will be on the market sometime over the next 6 to 18 months, all going well; and these are highly commercial pieces even though they have a big sticker price attached to them (pros don't view a $500.00 or even $1,500.00 cost as being "expensive" most of the time).
Anywho. . . I'm rambling a bit, I think Steerpike made a sound retort to my post and I just wanted to echo things a bit.
In my younger days I knew how to sell a project I simply didn't know how to manage the income. I've also been chewed out by some of the better known developers out there for not charging when people wanted to pick my brain; I enjoyed the brain storming far too much and so my methods and ideas would get used while I wasn't just written out of the projects, people would deny knowing me or worse, bad mouth me until the next time they needed an affordable consultant. . . not that I'd give away a ton of information to people or anything. . .
I admit this stuff because it is a reflection of how I mismanaged my "gifts" so to speak (and I still do).
When you're creative, take notes and fill notebooks. Come up with an idea and as Max Maven used to say, spend the rest of the week developing different methods for making that same basic effect. This allows you to actually have something that resembles a product and gives you alternatives that can be shared in an ebook or video; things that build value into what it is you want to sell. But running out and chasing the brass ring because of a creative brain fart isn't the way to do it. You need feedback, you need to find out if someone else has done it or something similar to it in the past decade or so, etc.
I'm sitting on a piece right now that is about to come out, my first release of an actual trick in a very long time. In researching it the past couple of months I've discovered that similar effects actually do exist and some of them even used a similar method and so I have to make a business decision; to take a $1,200.00 development cost loss and not release it, or release it and potentially face a failure. . . This is why guys like Franz Harrary talk about the 10% factor when it comes to success in the magic world; only 10% of what he comes up with is viable to the market . . . when you look at what Franz has produced over the past 30 years it really makes you realize just how difficult it is to develop solid magic regardless of how big or small it actually is and more so, how important it is that we get brutally honest with ourselves when it comes to the business side of things rather than being ego-blinded about pooping out a New Effect.
Yes, there are guys that have bought homes from the sell of a single effect and then there are guys that have helped develop award winning big illusions that less than two-dozen units sold world wide. . . winning kudos and industry acclaim doesn't mean you'll make money from your effect or even gain notoriety.
At the end of the day it is BUSINESS and being able to make WISE business decisions rather than having our ego drive us on things, blinding us to the pitfalls. I have pieces that I'll never market because they were developed for me and my work, I can't see them as viable product. On the other hand, I have about 6 pieces in development right now (being up-dated because of technological advances) that will be on the market sometime over the next 6 to 18 months, all going well; and these are highly commercial pieces even though they have a big sticker price attached to them (pros don't view a $500.00 or even $1,500.00 cost as being "expensive" most of the time).
Anywho. . . I'm rambling a bit, I think Steerpike made a sound retort to my post and I just wanted to echo things a bit.