Yay, my essay! Here it is:

Exposure

A teacher at my school who does a bit of magic gave me the Jawdroppers tapes. On them, Larry Anderson mentions that he exposed one of his tricks for 1000 bucks.

~Z

whats different from "you" selling a trick to someone and doing what penguin magic does? plenty. from the looks of it the majority of people are school kids. most teenagers have little life exeperience and dont see any harm or foul that could be caused by explaining their tricks. the person that is approaching you for the explanation could really be honest, and wont tell anyone, or he could start doing your trick or explain it to everyone else. If everyone knows the trick, then you wont have any spectators.

So the main difference is reputation. to get here you had to see something that was piqued ur interest. you had to search, find and invest effort so the chance you will go off and explain all the tricks, is not the same as someone who saw something the thought was amazing and starts offering money for it. Especially if it was done infront of a group a person who is offerring money for it is not reputable, since knowing the secret can help them with the status of group. If the person has to wait and finds out the secret, the chances of them exposing the workings of the trick is far less because there is no incentive for them to do so.

Again, explaining tricks to a person who will go around telling everyone around you is bad, even if they offer you money. Now of course im sure it was not your intention to have them go around and show everyone what you were doing, but that comes with experience.

Pathitic

cool your learning!!!



keep it up!


-MagicTay

if youre going to expose a trick, do it method for method.

a friend of mine at the local magic shop taught me this and this is a GREAT way of building up your magic repetoire.


if they ask to know how its done then just say, show me YOUR best trick and ill tell you who its done if i think its worth it.

i usually do this and come up with a bogus excuse how its done (believeable, but nearly impossible since i hide sleights from them)

such as for my ACR, i put thier card in the center and say "now this is the secret move *jerk hand upward* when you do this the card jumps through the deck to the top" then i secretly do the pass and then do the jerk move, and say, now you try it


or something like that

PenguinMagic exposes magic secrets for money...

To magicians, not to spectators.

-Lake

You laugh at that? There is an actual gimmick for just such a thing.

Yes I do laugh at that because I didn't have one. There's so many ways to do a coin through hand without one, that I prefer a clean way. Unless you're joking about that and I'm just not sure if it's sarcasm, because I've never seen that gimmick before. And I found that DVD case for ITBTWC that I lost. It was under some magazines in a shoe box.


Garrett

Yes PenguinMagic does that, but lets ask why. They sell these tricks so that professional magicians can learn new material and perform it to enhance their repertoire. They sell it on from people who have developed the tricks themselves. The people who create the tricks say that other magicians can use it, but they don't want to let the general public know all the secrets. If they find out all the secrets it destroys the art.

Imagine the feelings that you get when you perform something. Imagine how it feels to trick someone. If we all revealed the secrets of the trade you would never get that because after a while people will just say "I know how that's done...""A guy showed me how to do that" Now where is the fun in that!

I'm performing on Halloween night. I've just moved house so this is a big thing for me. By doing this I could get into a lot of new areas and a real new window would open up for me. It would be terrible that if I perform some of my favourite tricks people would just not be interested and know how I did it. My career would be ruined.

If people are desperate to know there are some basics you can say. If they ask where you get it from, a good answer is name a magic store far away. I usually talk about Davenports in London (not mentioning names) as the odds of people trying to find it are minimal!

If people are genuinely interested in learning magic, a simple way to check is show them how to do a basic flourish. Tell them that if they can learn how to do that then you'll see. Most people won't bother - it's too much work they'll try for one night and give up, but for someone who is interested in it and really makes a go of learning it, maybe teach them something you've designed yourself and point them in the right direction. Normally these people will take a couple of weeks and should just about get a grip on the flourish. If after a couple of weeks they cant do it then normally they haven't practised. In honesty you'll probably never find someone who will be that willing to learn. Never give out something you've paid for - otherwise its a waste of your money and lets down the whole magic society.

I did that to right when I got into magic (about 6 years old lol) so when ever I did a simple trick to my sister I would always show her how to do it! At least it was really bad magic.

Well i guess you could be forgiven if you were six... but when you get over that age its a bad idea to start giving away secrets...

One of my friends saw me doing a backpalm vanish (from the front) and went home and tried to figure it out. Once he did, he asked me to show him again, so I did it, then a pivot move, and he just threw up his hands and walked away.

No spectator can touch me

But in reality, exposing secrets is bad enough, but accepting money for a secret that most likely isn't yours is just wrong.

for reasonable amount, I will sell to them. ^_^.