When you watch David Blaine on YouTube, have you ever wondered how he produces something from thin air? What does a magician do when he wants to create a new magic effect?
The most common solution of the problem is a laborious and tedious search. Catalogues are thoroughly shifted. Textbooks on magic are thumbed from cover to cover. The performances of other magicians are eagerly scouted. And the magic shops are visited again and again.
For average magicians, they usually have limited experience on such routine creation, because all they do is to perform whatever they see is interesting to themselves. They might see an advert describing a newly released instructional DVD, check out the preview on YouTube, buy it and pick routines for their own use. However, a better approach is to consider your own performance style, create a routine yourself and add magical effects that add impact to the performance.
First method magicians would use when attempting to add an effect to his routine, is to search for the tricks or gimmicks that achieve the general effect. Taking production as an example, there are thousands of tricks that provide such effect. But the trick being chosen usually determines what kind of object is used. Like the raven, it is only suitable for vanishing small magnetic objects. After deciding what object to be used, the magician then modify it to suit his use.
A more accurate magician would do the process in a different manner. First, he determines to add production effect of some kind to his routine. Then he decides the object being produced that is matching to the routine’s theme, flow or story. After that, he searches for books, videos, magic shops for production effects using the chosen object. This makes his search narrower. If unfortunately he is not able to find a good production with the specific object, he will have to choose another object to be used in the act. He might have to change the story a little bit and use something else and do the search again until he finds what he needs.
A successful magician always has his own style of performance. Try the above process and create your signature act!
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