You just might after 4 or 5 views thru the video.... ...

Wow I was just thinking of this thread the other day as I watched my new Osterlind DVD's. My wife made the comment. "to get on these DVD's do you have to have big bo*** and wear a tank top?"

All in all I am happy that the L&L DVD's are not like Sankeys where they are the performer and the entertainer. I just wish they could find some new blood. I know almost all of the spectators names. The funny thing is so do the performers.

I would ask my same original question again though.

Maybe performers that have shot a DVD there can respond.

After some of these spectators have sat through countless DVD shoots. Is it not possible that the majority of them go back after and purchase the DVD? Even if they never practice anything they still will understand how things work. Wouldn't that limit them as a real spectator?

Having said that. I obviously know something about magic and many magicians fool me. Have to put a plug in for Osterlinds DVD's. Always high quality and his material to me is always original.

I am buying those DVD's just so see David

There are tapes from the 80'2 or early 90's where david is on too (with much longer hair ^^)

Anyone knows wich tapes I mean?
I cant remember where I saw the younger david :-(

That is not a reality. Only magicians and wannabe magicians are so obsessed with secrets that they buy DVDs just to know secrets. All of the laypeople in the audience are true lay people, they just love seeing a good show.

In my opinion, the audience's reaction is a total red herring. The audience isn't just reacting to the trick, they're reacting to the performer. You could take the trick that gets the biggest pop from the audience and turn it into a real bomb, and vice versa.

The performances are good for more abstract reasons. You get to see how the entire act is constructed. You can see how the performer plays angles and manages spectators who are helping out on an effect. You can see if the misdirection techniques work, or if the sleights are realistic. You get to watch timing in a way that you'd never get otherwise. Even if the reactions themselves are amplified, you can see which effects are stronger or weaker within the context of the same act based on a direct comparison -- even if all the reactions are over-the-top, if the third one gets twice as much applause as the second, it's not a bad gauge.

If there's an over-the-top reaction, just consider it as motivation, a personal milestone to shoot for in your own shows. I've done tricks for audiences that got many times better reactions than they did when shown on an L&L tape (and unfortunately, the reverse has happened as well). In the end, the real test of the material is what you're going to do with it in your hands.

Besides, don't we as magicians actively seek out those audience members that will give us the most pop? And, once we find them, don't we use them sometimes more than once? It's for consistency and predictability. There's merit in the idea of seeing a performance that features unexpected factors that mute audience reactions, but if we're going to go down that route, in my opinion, I think we'll need to see multiple performances of the same routines, so we can get the best idea of how that routine fares in the real world.