Audience vs. No Audience

Stone Cold Magic Magazine | Audience vs. No Audience | Magic DVD Question Let me start by saying that this particular article will likely have a very narrow audience. Let me also remind you that this column (No Stone Left Unturned) is the section where we talk about the business side of magic, making money, getting more gigs, etc.

That being said, the subject of this article is magic DVDs. I personally make money from magic in multiple ways: I Teach Magic to Local Students; I Do the Occasional Lecture to Magicians; I Perform the Occasional Gig (I don’t perform much these days); I Create and Sell my Ideas in the Form of DVDs and Books.

I imagine that many of you fall into at least one of the above categories. In fact I know specifically that several of my readers have published books and DVDs, so hopefully this article won’t go completely unread. The focus of this article is the question of whether or not to have an audience on your DVDs.

In other words, should your DVD include footage of you performing the effect before a live audience? Remember, when you sell DVDs, you’re not just selling to “magicians.” These magicians are your “customer” just like the restaurant you work for or the corporate gig you worked last week is your customer.

So when you make a DVD, make it one that your customer will truly appreciate. There are many facets to the production of the DVD.

  • How many effects to include
  • Gimmicks/Props to Include
  • Menu Navigation
  • Lighting
  • Sound
  • Wardrobe
  • So much more

However, we’re only going to focus on one thing . . . Should your DVD have an audience. For those of you who’ve watched my DVDs you’ll know that I prefer not to have an audience. The remainder of this article will basically be me “arguing” my opinion on the matter. However, I’d like to open this up to debate, so please post a comment below, and don’t be afraid to disagree with me. So here goes . . .

Back in the day when books were the only source of learning magic, generally, there wasn’t much in the way of presentation; it was more a focus of the effect and the method. Generally, you had to work out your own presentation. The advantage of that was that the reader would spend the time to master the effect from a technical standpoint. Then he would have to be creative and make the effect fit his own personality and character. The disadvantage of that scenario is that all too often the magician would just learn the technical side and have no performance presentation. You end up with a journey of the props as Eugene Burger would say . . . or worse, you end up with the standard street patter: “watch, watch, watch, watch, look, look, look, watch.”

I think overall, however, the book “model” worked pretty well and sort of forced magicians to work things out themselves. The point I’m getting at here is that in the book “model” – an effective model at that – did not have a live performance in front of an audience, yet it still worked out ok.

That being said, I think one conclusion that could be drawn from the book “model” is that “selling” magic without a live performance is very doable. However, it does lead to some downsides. For example, many people watching a lecture/non audience video will assume that “those tricks would never fly for a real audience.”

Here’s how I see it. In Quantum Mechanics, there is a concept often mistaken for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that basically states that the observation of an event actually changes the event. That applies to audiences on film. When they’re being watched, the behavior changes.

Think about all of the DVD trailers you’ve watched with a performance out on the streets where the people are screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and cursing . . . Seriously . . . that kind of stuff only happens on camera. Very rarely do you get that kind of effect when from someone who is not on camera. The other extreme you can have is the dead pan audeince reaction. Again because they’re being observed, they try to “play it cool” and they end up not giving a true reaction. So the effect comes across looking not very powerful.

Additionally, when you have an audience (assuming the reactions are real), you’ll want to focus on the audience reaction rather than the effect. This is what made Blaine a household name . . . the audience reactions, not his “ability” to violently shake a spectator’s wrist and “secretly” steal a watch.

The problem, in a teaching video, with focusing on the audience is that you can’t really see the effect. Sure, with multiple camera shots and the L&L audience, you can pull this off, but I’m guessing that most of you don’t have L&L knocking on your door offering to pay you for a DVD gig, and I further assume that you don’t have the resources that L&L has to make your own DVD at their level of quality. So . . . we’re back to low budget productions with low budget audiences.

Having an audience further requires extra people on the set which slows things down and further complicates things. You can hit “the streets” for your audience and do your explanations in the studio. However, this presents other problems, namely lighting, background noise, permission wavers for the strangers you approach, plus the whole artificial-reaction-because-I’m-being-observed thing.

When you consider the extra people, the logistics, lighting, artificial reactions, camera angles, etc, my vote is for no audience. If you’re strictly getting a DVD to learn new effects, I think that the audience is totally not needed. However, if you’re looking to learn presentation skills and audience interaction skills, then the audience is absolutely necessary, however the effects are not. In that case – if you’re creating a DVD about audience interaction – the DVD should focus entirely on the interaction and banter between you and the audience as well as their reaction. The effects are totally irrelevant.

Let’s stick with the model of a DVD that teaches effects, however, for the time being. Going back to the “observer principle” we can further infer that when performing for an audience, the performer (being observed) is different from when he’s not performing in front of an audience. So when you produce your DVD, you may find that you perform for a camera a bit differently than you do for your audiences. This is fine. The point is to teach the effects and let the customer (the magician who bought the DVD) create his own presentation. The last thing you want is a clone of you.

For the sake of simplicity, clarity, learning experience of the customer and so many other things, my vote is “No Audience.” What’s your take?

Until Next Time . . .