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cataquet
Veteran user
England
361 Posts
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Posted: May 15, 2002 9:52am
OK, look down the list of things you perform. What single trick has the most effects in it? I'm allowing for dupication here, so if you have a coins across routine that uses 4 coins, you get 4 transportations (coin goes from one hand to the other). Now tell me what the effect is... My guess is that the winner will be (in most cases) a cups and balls routine, with about 10 effects in it.
However, note that while a high number of effects could be good, it could also be a sign that the trick is too long or too complicated! A few weeks ago, I sat down and realised that one trick I was performing had 30 (!!) effects in it. I cut it down to 10 and although the routine is now only half as long, it's now a much stronger performance piece.
Bye for now
Harold
Harold Cataquet
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Geoff Williams
Special user
St. Pete Beach, FL
606 Posts
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Posted: May 15, 2002 12:47pm
It's difficult to classify exactly what an "effect" is by your terminology. Does a vanish and a reproduction count as two effects?
If an "effect" is also a "happening", there are 20-30 effects in my "Flurious Jr." jumbo coin routine that occur in a very short span of time.
"Saját légpárnás tele van angolnák."
(Hungarian for "My hovercraft is full of eels")
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cataquet
Veteran user
England
361 Posts
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Posted: May 15, 2002 6:34pm
Without making this a completely separate topic, an "effect" is best described as a perceived abnormality. Various definitions exist for what an effect is, but it's just something that the spectator would notice as being a surprise. He tore the card up (not an effect), and then he restored it (one effect). If you restore it piece by piece, then it becomes two, three or four effects.
If the ball disappears from your left hand and reappears in your right, that's a transportation and should be counted as one effect. However, it could be counted as two effects. It all depends how the spectator interprets/remembers it (the ball jumped from his left hand to his right).
I have a real problem with "flurious" routines because most of them are too confusing. Usually, the spectator loses track of where the coin is, or ceases to care. My flurious routine (which I do with a die) has 2 appearances, 2 vanishes, 2 color changes and a jumbo finish. It's all done to a rhyming patter, and done slowly.
Phew, lot's of side issues here, but it looks like "Flurious Jr" is your mega-effect routine. Is it also your best received effect?
Bye for now
Harold
Harold Cataquet
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Allen Gittelson
Regular user
San Francisco
145 Posts
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Posted: May 20, 2002 11:13pm
My rendition of Darryl's Rope Routine has 11 magical occurences in it and the entire routine is about 6 to 7 mintues long. That's an average of one effect per 30 seconds, but the effects don't happen at an even rate. The pacing of the routine is part of what makes it work so well.
In thoughts,
Allen
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Kaliix
Special user
Connecticut
634 Posts
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Posted: May 21, 2002 8:09am
I have you all beat. I do an ambitious card routine where the card comes back to the top 23 times. Now that's magic! 
Seriously though, I do Three Ropes and a Baby by Richard Sanders and I counted 12 magical moments in the routine.
To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean”, says the persevering soul; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal. ~ Swami Vivekananda
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Philemon Vanderbeck
Inner circle
Seattle, WA
2867 Posts
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Posted: May 21, 2002 12:56pm
I'm a mentalist...
I'm lucky if I do one effect in 10 minutes.
- Philemon Vanderbeck
Elemental Entertainment
"I use my sixth sense to create the illusion of possessing the other five."
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Allen Gittelson
Regular user
San Francisco
145 Posts
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Posted: May 22, 2002 11:04pm
The measure of good magic is not how many effects are in a single trick, but I did find this an interesting thing to think about for a moment. The rope routine I do is not very representative of what I typically perform, as this is from my street act. I am primarily a mentalist, and the interesting aspect to me of looking at this from this perspective is not the number of effects, but rather the routining, pacing, plot, etc.
For example, I think the pacing of the rope routine I perform works extremely well. I wonder if I paced my entire show in the same manner as this effect how well that would work? I don't mean cramming a buch of effects in a short period of time. I'm more imagining the pacing of my entire show if I took the rope routine and stretched it out for the length of my show. But each of the effects is one of the different pieces in my show. For example, the opening piece of magic is interest catching and shows that there is something really going on and that hooks people in for more. By the end of the show, my audience and I can invest more in a presentation, as we have built a relationship with each other over the course of the show.
In thoughts,
Allen
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cataquet
Veteran user
England
361 Posts
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Posted: May 23, 2002 7:17am
The reason I started the topic was that I had a ring & rope routine which I developed for a nightclub spot. It was very well received, but I performed it silently with music. I tried to incorporate the effect into walkaround, but it just seemed really long without the music, despite the patter.
I sat down and wrote down the effects (as the spectator saw them) on a sheet of paper and realized that I was doing far too much. So, I cut down the routine and now this routine is one of the highlights of my act.
The ambitious card is a perfect example of where too many effects is almost surely too much. The ring and rope is another one of these.
What would be interesting is, now to ask, how many DIFFERENT effects are in your ACT? That is, if you look at the ring & rope, in most routines, there is only ONE effect: ring goes through rope. It was this fact that made me look to shorten the routine (in the end, I virtually cut it in half).
So, what about the total number of DIFFERENT effects in your ACT?
Bye for now
Harold
Harold Cataquet
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