Transcript
“Magic 101: The Ethic
My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic which is magic with ordinary objects; decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away. Ethics in any art form especially in magic are very important and it’s kind of the dos and the don’ts of what’s respected within the community. I think first and foremost is creative property is probably the biggest issue in magic and basically if you come up with an idea, it’s yours. A lot of people like to steal other people’s material. And something to think about especially if you’re trying to become a magician or learn magic through these how cast videos is if you see something just cause you see something that somebody else performs doesn’t mean that now you can perform it the same way that their doing it. A lot of time maybe somebody created an effect or an illusion or a trick and they’re the only ones doing it because they created it and you should respect that. Another big important thing is exposing magic. And I know it almost sounds redundant why am I teaching magic with how casts if you’re not supposed to expose magic but there’s a huge difference between showing somebody how a trick is done and teaching them a trick that is appropriate for their level of magic at the time. And now everything I’m teaching you here is very rudimentary, beginner magic and it’s a great way to get started as to learn some really cool beginner magic. You can even go to the library and pick out some books 793.8 is the call number. But you don’t want to just give away tricks. There’s a huge difference between teaching tricks and teaching how a trick is done. Exposure is number 2. It’s a very big thing. There’s a very important rule in magic that you know that can be broken if it’s done correctly but it’s you don’t do the same magic trick twice for the same group of people. And when you do magic you want to instill wonder. You want someone to be surprised. You want them to not know how it was done. You want it to be magic. You don’t want it to be a puzzle. You don’t want it to be the spectator against the magician. You want everyone to be on the same side. And if you do a trick for somebody once, they don’t know what’s going to happen, they’re blown away, their having fun, it’s exciting. And then as soon as somebody says do it again they know what’s going to happen and now all of a sudden it’s not a situation where you’re going to experience magic it’s a puzzle and someone watching it with a different mind set and their watching it to figure “
