When does an effect become yours?

[TeeDee]

I've been doing sleight-of-hand stuff for a couple of years now, but I've only recently realised the importance of developing an individual style. On this basis, rather than taking other people's routines and performing them move-for-move in the same way, I've been adapting the handling to suit my own performance characteristics.

For example, I've taken Tivo 2.0 and I perform the same effect (a visual transposition of two cards, one from the top of the deck and one outjogged in the middle) but using none of the same moves. However, from the spectator's point of view it would look very similar to the original trick.

So my question really is, how much do you think a magician has to change a trick to be justified in claiming it as his own, and teaching it to others?

 

[JustJoseph]

well i have made tricks that are quite the same and say there my own now for me to produse a trick i make sure one of a kind

 

[Denhitari]

Do you mean copy rights and stuff, or just not make it a variation of the trick/flourish? Well i'm guessing you can still have the basic concept.but maybe mix things up here and there.

 

[phrozunsun]

I come with a background in another art, and generally, the main principle was to take what works for you and adapt it.

1) part of you "bends" towards the routine, and you make small adjustments to become congruent with it

2) and you "bend" part of the routine to make it congruent with your style.

the point when the bends meet and you and the routine become congruent with eachother and unique from any other performer is when it "becomes yours"

 

[Bizzaro]

Altering the handling on a previously known effect does not make it yours. Taking concepts and utility moves from an effect and making a new bit with them does.

EX: Making a card go to the bottom of the deck instead of the top is still ambitious and not yours. Using the plot or concept of inverting a card in a deck using your own sleights and moves does.

It's vauge as hell I know. If it has a name, it's not yours. If it's just an idea and a unique way to arrive at that idea, it can be called yours.

Watch Gregory Wilson's routines and explanations. He covers where most of the ideas and moves come from to create his amalgam of magic.

 

[arcangeld]

I think when you use the ready existing techniques but producing something completely new in which no one has done or seen before, then it becomes yours.

That is just one way of looking at it. Another way is that you achieve the same effect or maybe improve it, but you develop a completely different technique.
(such as all these levitations you see 'lying' around)