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Excerpts from Illusionworks II: Conjuring, Concepts & Creativity
I dare you to be yourself. For there are already more than enough Copperfields and Burtons out there. I should know, I was both of them at one time or another.
Only you . . . being yourself is original. Dare to perform what hasn’t been performed before, and in that you will find Originality and satisfaction. In your quest for originality you will also find heartache and blisters from building or drawing that same original effect over and over; and that is just the start. After the prop is constructed there is staging. lighting, rehearsals and the list goes on. Being an illusionist, or one who stages a production number around a prop, is no easy job. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts and most can’t afford the list of professionals that can turn your prop in to a presentation. Once you’ve made it through the construction process, the work has only just begun.
It is so easy to copy the presentation of an effect. To do that won’t make you an original act; it will not put you ahead of the pack, it will jump you in with the rest of them, it also doesn’t make you a failure; I too have been guilty of it in days now past, and most who get started in illusion work do the same. We emulate those who we admire and that is how we learn. They say it is the highest form of flattery. Unfortunately, it won’t get you anywhere. If you want to truly succeed, you must be different. The easiest way to do that is by being yourself.
The best example is the following: If enough people copy the same trick, it becomes lost (as original) in the eyes of those who wish to find original talent; the agents, the managers, the producers, the directors and the talent coordinators. If you had any idea how many times I’ve seen a SubTrunk, a Zig-Zag or a Broom Suspension on a promotional video, you would cry. Again, because someone is performing one or all of those effects, does not mean he or she is not original. Siegfried and Roy perform a Sub-Trunk. Andre’ Kole still performs the Zig- Zag. They have established their originality with their own style and original effects and they still perform those now standardized effects because they choose to.
If you haven’t already, you will experience this in the future. You make a presentation to a talent agent with your promotional video tape in hand and you unfortunately get stuck in the room during the viewing. After they see the second (or sometimes even the first) so-called ’standard illusion’, you will notice his or her attention span will start to fade. They have seen it. Maybe not the way you perform it, but as far as they are concerned, its old news.
Another example that comes to mind is that of the dreaded phone call. When a talent broker will ask you “What illusions do you perform?†I guarantee, if he recognizes the names of the effects, odds are you have lost the job. It doesn’t make any difference if you perform it better than anyone else in the world or your costumes are more colorful, or your sets cost eighty thousand dollars. All that broker sees is the same thing he saw John Doe did. And John Doe filmed his tape in his garage with a sub trunk he built from an old foot locker. Of course, the exception to this rule would be those who book magical gatherings.
I realize when you go to a magic convention, you go in hopes of seeing the same thing every year!!! I can hear the conversation now, “Hey Jake, do you want to go see that Magic Convention, it’s playin’ again this year!â€.
You see, a great deal of people who work in the industry have seen it all before or at least they feel they have. If you appear behind a wall of fire in the first fifteen seconds of your promotional video tape, you can bet if the agent has never seen that before they are going to keep watching.
They want to see what else you’re going to do that they haven’t seen before. If they haven’t seen it before, odds are that his client hasn’t either. If he watches the entire tape, your tape is a success. Why? Because this is what you wanted him to do in the first place.
Now imagine his verbal description to his buyer, “He did this, and then she did that”. This in turn will make the buyer more eager to see your abilities. Entertainment related companies look for something that has not been seen before. They want something for their audiences that they have never experienced before.
The actual audiences are easier. People, in general, have not been exposed to one fraction of the magic that you are used to absorbing. I would run into people all the time on the ship who would say, “That trick, with the trunk and you two switching, was fantastic! I’ve never seen anything like it!” They come from out of the woodwork and have never seen a magician live on stage. Beware, there are times this will work in reverse. You could be performing something that has never been experienced before and someone will come up to you and say, “Our friend, Clyde does show around home and he does that flesh pealing thing.” Don’t worry, odds are they are wrong and life is just too short.
You’ve got to get over the first hurdle, which rests in your hands. You have to get noticed. You’ve got to be original, the original material has to be good, and most importantly the original material has got to entertain your audiences.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the videos that are reviewed are lacking in those above areas. It’s not easy and there are no guarantees, but I sincerely believe if you want anything bad enough, you and only you can make it happen. ♦