The Magician's Studio

Where Magicians Improve Their Craft

Month: November 2021

A Spectrum…

November 17, 2021 /

I have a lot of thoughts about magic. Because I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

I often compare magic with other art forms to try and identify key differences that set magicians apart and to look for areas where we as mystery performers/magic-doers/whatever we call ourselves can improve the quality of our work as a community.

Here’s a problem I see with magic that goes to how exclusive it can feel sometimes. When you look at a field like visual arts, there are so many ways to “appreciate” it. A person can walk into a museum, go up to a painting and immediately say “I like it” or “I hate it” and walk away. And that’s a completely valid way to approach art (personal preferences).

But there are so many other groups with different ways of looking at it. Some people can walk up and examine the technique – looking at the composition and the brushstrokes and appreciate it from that perspective.

Other people might look at the historical context or physical location of the piece to look at it as a lens for cultural understanding.

And every spot on that spectrum from personal preference to codified learning is a valid way to look at it. Most importantly, this wide swath of ways to interact with visual arts means that there are loads of in-roads to experiencing it.

With magic, we feverishly guard our secret techniques. Our methods are only for magicians, and all the work that goes in behind the scenes is jealously protected. I completely understand that there’s a breaking point (where sharing the method of the trick as you’re doing it negates the experience of magic), but there have to be ways to make our art more inclusive for people searching for different perspectives and experiences.

We limit our audiences to one tiny end of the spectrum where they can – basically – only say “I liked that trick” or “I didn’t like it” and some justification that may or may not be informed by fact.

We make room for magicians to look at all the surrounding elements that make up our art, but I don’t think we’ll progress as far or as quickly as we could until we find thoughtful ways to open our community to non-magicians.

The more (varied) perspectives, the richer and more textured our art becomes!

ShowCraft In Action: Part 2

November 16, 2021 /

GOAL ANALYSIS

Welcome to the next piece of the record of my process. Let’s make a show!

We left off by setting a few goals (a lot of them, actually). After thinking about them overnight (and having them mulling around over the last several days), the ones that stick out are:

  1. Creative: Design a magic show that feels theatrical and immersive by focusing not only on the material but on the experience.
  2. Financial: Ensure that the show becomes sustainable by developing a model to bring in $500 (net) per week.
  3. Business: Be thoughtful and intentional about the full process – not just making the show but the promotion, documentation, and leveraging of assets into each other.

What will immediately become apparent about this whole process is that it relies on making decisions thoughtfully in a way that intentionally moves towards a single vision. For the Goals portion of the plan, that doesn’t stop simply by setting a few independent goals. It’s worth a bit of time working through the implications of those goals. Let’s infer what their impact will be on the show:

  1. Creating a theatrical and immersive-feeling show immediately has resource demands. It can often mean more expenses for props, set pieces, lighting, music or soundscapes and designers to carry those elements out. Carrying out It’s not the case 100% of the time, but fleshing out the experience (from ticket sales to pre-show to follow up) for an audience means more elements to think about and often higher costs. This ties directly into Goal number 2:
  2. A sustainable career in the arts requires finding those (rare) recurring income streams from sources that can remain relatively stable. While $500 per week is by no means a salary, my experience has shown me that – in my area – it’s definitely an achievable number and it will help me understand how many hours per week I can commit to the project over time to make it viable. The big challenge is that quickly reaching a profit in a theatrical endeavor is a challenge. I could easily slap together 10 tricks that I already do and call it “Evan’s Wicked Awesome Magic Show” to save on design costs, but that doesn’t serve my artistic goals. Knowing that I want to create a world and a setting and an exciting viewing experience for my audience means that I need to commit resources to the overall design. That means I need to be incredible careful with the type of theme and show I create to make sure it doesn’t require a heavy lift in terms of reworking a space. Crafting a show to fit into a cohesive preexisting space will cut down on overhead and make the show profitable faster without sacrificing the artistic integrity.
  3. Capturing the process means simultaneously creating social media content for promotion. It means thinking multiple steps ahead to get ahead of unexpected expenses. It means ending up with videos, a press kit, and a clear process to recreate the show so it becomes a resource I can continue to use into the future.

I haven’t forsaken my other goals, but I prioritized these ones because they’re currently the most important for me to explore. Plus, several of the others (focusing on primarily original material, developing my team, etc.) feel like they’ll happen somewhat naturally under the umbrella of these other goals.

Additional goals can pop up as the process arises! Everything is flexible, but having clear starting points gives me a matrix against which to judge if my actions are in line with where I want to get. So spending $2,000 on a lighting system might seem super fun for me personally, but if it doesn’t contribute to making the show sustainable, it’s probably not a good goal. Creating a show focused on props or themes that are consumable will mean that week-to-week overhead is going to be higher and will make the financial plan harder to carry out.

I’ll say again: Everything is flexible. We just need to start this whole process with places to begin. Those could be primarily creative if this isn’t your full time job. Maybe your goal is to design a competition act for a local magic contest. Your goals could be entirely focused on developing your material and your style, and creating a unique competition experience for a magician audience. And with a separate job funding it, the financials may be of minimal concern!

RANDOM IDEAS

  • This might be the same as the last post, but with the “HEIST” theme in mind, a warehouse, sketchy area, and non-theatrical feeling performance space might be a great fit for these goals.
  • In terms of “Frames” (more on that later), A heist movie could work. Also, a Salon came to mind and has that interactive feel I foresee this show moving towards.

ShowCraft In Action – part 1

November 15, 2021 /

An artist’s process is a personal exploration into how they best create the things they want to bring into the world. I have lots of thoughts on magic theory and why we do the things we do, but it’s important to me that most of those ideas have come out of practical performance and show creation.

As we get into the winter of 2021 and in-person shows remain infrequent, it’s a good time to look forward to the show(s) for next year I’d like to produce.

For me, that creative process almost always begins with goals. As I plan out the show, having clearly defined goals that are (mostly) within my control is my way of making sure I’m moving in the right direction.

Goals can be personal, professional, creative, artistic, financial, or anything else that’s important to you at this point in your life. Usually I try to limit myself to 3 or 4, but it always starts with brainstorming a whole bunch. Then I can weight them against each other and against the type of show I’m making to see what fits. For now, here’s what comes to mind:

GOALS

  • Design a show with minimal physical overhead that still feels like the space is curated, immersive, and unique
  • Create a recurring show that brings in (net) $500 per week
  • Feature a majority of my original material throughout the show
  • Plan a more thoughtful promotion and documentation approach in tandem with the performance itself
  • Develop my regular collaborative team
  • Make a show that communicates who I am and what I believe WITHOUT being an autobiographical show “about me.”

I’m going to let those goals marinate for a little bit to see what continues to be important or if others arise. Generally, the sense I’m getting from a lot of these goals touch on “sustainability” of a performing arts career (regular financial income, establishing systems that can translate across projects, etc.)

DISCLAIMER: As we move through the different steps in my process, the fact that it’s written might make it seem more linear or organized than it is. I’m organizing a bit more than I would normally to make it readable while still maintaining the integrity of the process.

To not dismiss the important fluid nature of the process, I’m going to include some sort of “random ideas” section at the end of each post that mentions some of the thoughts that popped up outside of the main topic. Like this:

RANDOM IDEAS:

  • Working through my process in real time reminded me of shows I developed before this process was more established. I’m curious about how I might approach those shows with my current views, so maybe I’ll revisit the Themes of: Storytelling, Puzzles, Heist, or Games.
    • As I was quickly revisiting past themes, the Heist concept show I did seemed like it had the audience appeal and a lot of the inherent assets that would logistically check off a few of my goals. Perhaps that will be the one to start with!
  • On the financial viability front, I should perhaps include a section (read: Rabbit Hole) on my budgeting template for shows over time to work through the financials of staging a theatrical endeavor.

Tactics and Strategy

November 10, 2021 /

When I think about why I approach magic the way I do, I know it’s with the end goal of putting on a textured, multi-faceted performance that fosters curiosity. And that might not (in fact, it probably shouldn’t) be why you do it. I’m sure you have your own set of goals.

Whatever we hope to do with our magic, I believe – as with cooking, puzzles, or a million other creative endeavors – doing our research and planning ahead of time helps us focus on where we want to go.

While I’m no chess expert, I find some chess terminology a clear way to understand what I want to get across. So pardon me as I talk about something I’m probably unqualified to touch on:

Within a chess match, a player can implement “Tactics” to improve their current position. In the crudest terms you can think about this as thinking a couple moves ahead from your current position and making some sound – albeit reactive – choices.

Tactics are helpful tools. In performance terms, these might be equated to smaller scale performance tweaks: like how to turn over a card at the moment of revelation for different impacts. Do you carefully pivot it at fingertips to avoid suspicion? Do you raise it to your chest height to frame your face for a final tableau? Perhaps you have an audience member turn the card over to help it feel like the magic happened in their hands?

None of these is “right” or “wrong.” They are all situational and all require an understanding of your context to understand the greater result.

Strategy, on the other hand, can be thought of as the bigger picture view. It’s taking stock of the full board state, the tendencies of your opponent, and your personal strengths and weaknesses to design a game plan inside which you’ll happen upon tactical moments. Knowing your overall strategy gives you a way to choose among your tactics in a thoughtful way.

In our card example, if the trick was happening for a camera and the goal was to focus on the performer for the final beat, ending by framing the face might be the best call. For a close up show where the vibe is a deeply interactive experience, making it about the participant might be better. Even bigger picture, is this card trick the right vehicle for this moment of the show? Why or why not?

By taking a moment to recognize that our tactical decisions are fun to explore, we can understand that they can be so much more than personal preferences. They can serve a larger purpose of helping us to create experiences that set out audiences up to experience our magic in the most effective way possible.

But it starts with you and your high-level strategic thinking. Think on!

Criticism (Boo!) and Critique (Yay!)

November 3, 2021 /

Plenty of art forms have their own definitions of Criticism and Critique. In any journey of artistic self-improvement, these are important ideas to recognize because they can be used to help us edit our work. Here’s how I understand them:

CRITICISM is unhelpful. It focuses on the person and what they’re doing incorrectly. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t take those personally and would channel the thought behind the point given into useful change. But we’re humans so we don’t do that.

Criticism comes across feeling like a personal attach because it suggests that the decisions the artist made were wrong in some way.

CRITIQUE – on the other hand – is about the work. It looks at the work as objectively as possible and examines how well it achieved its goals. It takes the intention of the creator into account but focuses on the piece rather than the person.

Critique is what we all need to hear (yes, all of us) without taking personally because it’s generally coming from someone who wants to see us improve. And often, those outside perspectives are much more objective than our own since we’re so close to the piece.

One final note on critique: getting input from experts is great. Listen to what they have to say and the rationale behind it. But critique from laymen and random people is still valuable. An idea I like to keep in mind (and I forget where I first heard it) is that when it comes to critique, people are almost always right; and when it comes to their reasons behind that critique, they are almost always wrong. So listen to what they have to say because it’s based on their (valid) perception!

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