In all fairness, this is how it's always been It's after all a place to voice your opinions on products, and sometimes people lock horns, but the world keeps turning. I think it may have become more so the more products are released onto the market, so it feels like it's always some negativity around, because unlike the times of the occasional release, we're now swamped with 20+ releases every day

Im all for some KFC (ZInger Tower Burger meal please!) and some Jack though


All the best,
Dan

John Carey has released some good stuff. This is a stinker.

Do creators have to release their every brain fart as a stand-alone download these days?

Yes they do.

BMW payments are due, and stomachs can't survive on Ramen noodles; they need beef Wellington.

Sell a hundred $10 downloads, and that's an easy thousand

Or more accurately sell a hundred $10 downloads and that’s around $350 for the artist, less tax at 20% about $280 which for a Brit translates to £204 or around 10% of the monthly bills, 20% if you don’t have kids to feed.

Mark

The whole point of this forum is to give our opinions and discuss new effects. Creators always seem to forget this is when they release a poor effect and it gets torn apart.

My point being is if we're going to take 7 minutes of someones time, don't we owe it to them to show them our best work?

It certainly seems that way.

Mark,
However much people are making from it there is no excuse for the deluge of poor effects. You make it sound as if we should have sympathy for sellers having to pay tax on the money they've made from people buying their rubbish releases.
Regards,
Martin

So, Mark, releasing 1 garbage download is enough to pay 10% of the monthly bills.

So creators have to release 10 pieces of garbage a month.

I see.

What a racket.

But, of course, I've known that for quite a while.

I have kids to feed and I've never released any garbage effects.

But I'm still waiting to hear from Murphy, so that may change.

Or maybe I'll just release it on my own.

It's relatively easy these days.

Low quality audio and video, jumpy camera shots, incomprehensible instructions, too loud annoying music, screaming girls, abandoned warehouse in a dangerous location setting, piercings and tattoos all over my face and body with my shirt off to show how cool I am- I'll do it all.

Gotta wait until I get the piercings and tattoos first.

I don’t have the download so I make no claims on the quality of it one way or the other. I just wanted to correct the figures into a more accurate reflection of reality. Nobody has to buy any download if they don’t like the effect. As long as the trailer is honest (and John’s always are) people can decide whether they want the effect for the price offered. If it is good people will buy it if it isn’t people won’t.

Mark

I'm afraid this "if people don't like it they shouldn't buy it" excuse doesn't cut it.

The increasing glut of poor downloads is harmful to magic and Mentalism in the long run. The companies distributing magic should have much tighter quality control. They are insulting magicians and mentalists by trying to make money releasing garbage.

One mans trash is another mans treasure. I haven’t seen this download and so I can’t comment on it but John’s teaching is usually extremely good. Likewise his trailers are honest and show exactly what the effect looks like. Art is subjective I personally think most of Picasso’s work is garbage but people are happy to pay millions for it. There is a lot of things that I don’t like that other people do like, there are some effects that I like that others think are naff. Who is the arbiter of what is worthwhile if not the market itself?

Mark

The guys running magic shops used to be the arbiters. The good ones didn't stock any old garbage just because someone wanted to make a buck from it.

If we want this art form to be taken seriously we shouldn't encourage a free for all where we're supposed to pretend that good material is all in the eye of the beholder. The Invisible deck is a brilliant effect, not because of people's personal preferences- it is objectively brilliant because it ticks so many boxes that add up to great magic and Mentalism. If someone says they think the Invisible deck is a poor trick, it doesn't mean it is. It means the person speaking understands nothing about magic or Mentalism.

The Supreme magic catalogue would tend to prove that statement incorrect. I couldn’t count the crap that I purchased from magic shops in the old days that cost a lot more than $10. The phrase Caveat Emptor was never more relevant than when it comes to buying magic and that has always been the case. At least in today’s world you can see what the effect really looks like which is a major step up from the wildly inaccurate descriptions in the magic catalogues of old.

Mark

An interesting way to dodge expressing an opinion on the subject of the thread yet you feel you can contribute to it.

I don't have any of John's works but any snippets I've seen of his works have been...derivative and not particulary original. I think he's popular because he puts out stuff that people can do easily. This is a prime example because it requires little technical skill but it's quite weak (IMHO) so requires more effort to "sell" it. I can't, for the life of me, imagine what thought process went on to think this is worthy of a release of it's own. Back in the day it's the kind of thing that would have been in a magazine or on something like the Trick a Tape magazine videos Pat Page used to do.

This isn't just nastily slagging off something for the sake of it - too often we have thoughtless and baseless praise or criticism. The overwhelming theme on this thread from most people is that this effect is less than stellar but that's the risk we all take when we publish an effect.Take it on the chin and go on to the next release but don't ever expect people to not critique something because of the times we're living in. In fact it gives us more time to think about and post our opinions!

I don’t need to dodge expressing an opinion on this as I don’t have an opinion to express. I read most threads on this forum whether I have an opinion or not. In this case I commented purely on the financials of releasing effects because I do have some knowledge and an opinion about that.

As far as my opinion on John’s releases in general I find that John usually has a knack of stripping out the fluff and complex moves without compromising the effect. I can’t say whether this is true of everything as I am not familiar with the full body of John’s work. As to originality I am not sure how much originality you can squeeze into classic effects like triumph, ace assemblies etc. I think John’s work is designed to be accessible rather than new fangled and unique.

On this particular effect, like many other threads I read, I have no opinion one way or the other, I don’t generally do card tricks and so unless a card trick is specifically Mentalism I rarely have any interest, nor do I tend to offer my opinion on things that don’t interest me. I don’t even form opinions on coin effects despite many years as a hard core coin guy. I see absolutely no need to go watch the trailer for this or purchase the download just to formulate an opinion because I made a comment on the commercials of selling magic.

For me to form any kind of useful opinion I would need to purchase it, learn the method and then determine whether I could use it or whether it contained $10 of value (I am assuming it is $10 based on the original post I replied to. I am not going to buy a card trick when I don’t do card tricks just because some people on here think I should have an opinion on one.

Mark

No Mark, to form any kind of opinion ALL you have to do is watch the video link of the performance of the effect. No purchase necessary to determine whether this is a good or bad trick in your opinion. And we can get into how much people earn from releases but ultimately that's not all that relevant to this specific thread because it's about one release, one trick and whether that trick is more than a brain far and whether it deserves a release.

I completely agree with your point about the number of poor quality downloads out there - there are many hundreds of them, many ill-conceived, not worked in the real world etc. etc.

What I do not agree with however, is that any of John's material falls into that category. You may not like this particular trick, but John is a creator and performer with a great deal of experience, liked and respected in the magic community - and for good reason - he's not a fly by night flimflam artist desperate for a quick buck. His routines are well thought out, and very well taught. He brings a wealth of experience and knowledge of magic to everything he does, and regardless of whether you like this or not, it's not fair to compare it to some of the sh*t that gets pumped out by Murphys every week by teenagers in their bedrooms with little or no real world experience.

“Wether it deserves a release “, wow. Very interesting

NM

I wholeheartedly (and humbly as I can be) disagree!
As a matter of fact, I would disagree vehemently if I only understood the word "vehemently".

Magic's downfall is exactly the opposite, it's the ability to easily look up a routine you saw and learn how it's done. It is in fact the absurd glut of magicians putting every thought out there for paid download that SAVES magic! With so many exposed tricks out there people have to look so much harder to see how I do my more "basic" magic.
That's great for magicians who's audience has the Internet at their fingers while they perform, or who have it at home and a longer/better memory.

If you want to buy something, but do not understand the old "buyer beware" you are not the victim, or you're your own victim. I don't go to a store and shop with a blindfold on and complain that the store robbed me, and if you do, that's not the store's issue.

Also, it makes so many of the fly by night(?), bought at the store, unpracticed "street" magicians so besmirch the very IDEA of magic that when the poor abused spectator sees a good magician they are even more amazed!

Love, Josh

PS. I don't buy "tricks" so I can't speak on the OP's clearly beloved subject.

So Magikmax... just because Carey has put out good stuff, that somehow makes him immune to putting out anything bad?

And Josh... You think lots of bad magic being released is good for magic, so that people can't google your tricks whilst performing?

Just looking for a clarifications here...

All the best,
Dan