The Mighty TV

Recently, I was wat­ching the You­Tube clip of David Roth’s per­for­mance on the Penn & Tel­ler show. I was inte­res­ted in see­ing his hand­ling of the open ser­vante. A glance at the pic­ture will tell you that the direc­tors of the show made my stu­dies very simple. In fact, the Bird’s Eye view of parts of the rou­tine are almost like out of an ins­truc­tional magic book. Okay, the logo camou­fla­ges it pretty well in this case … 🙂

This made me aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties when per­forming on TV. I’m not a big fan of these types of recor­dings because obviously they want to give the audi­ence an all-around view. But why? To make the per­for­mance more attrac­tive? Or is it the notion that an audi­ence these days has the right to see ever­y­thing on their mega screens in detail? I am in no way cri­ti­ci­zing the P&T show because these guys know what they do. And I am sure David was infor­med and agreed on all this. And there was­n’t really an expo­sure of the secret (at least for the laymen).

The pro­blem for me is not so much the secret-kee­ping aspect. In my opi­nion, this reco­ding atti­tude redu­ces the magic to a sort of puz­zle. The rou­tine is bro­ken by the direc­tor and the per­so­na­lity of the per­for­mer and the flair of the per­for­mance sort of gets lost. The focus is only on the hands and the props used. And all that is done so that a few stu­pid and bored couch pota­toes sit­ting on their sofas have a good view of things they don’t under­stand any­way. I don’t think this is the right way to make magic more attractive.

The solu­tion? I don’t really have one. I don’t per­form on TV, and when asked to do so (yes, I have been asked quite a cou­ple of times in the past), I always refuse. I note that some per­for­mers handle it very well and they over­come these obs­ta­cles. But what I have seen with the majo­rity of magi­ci­ans appearing in mor­ning TV shows and talk shows (often inex­pe­ri­en­ced ama­teur magi­ci­ans who are blin­ded by the appa­rent fame and publi­city) is a dif­fe­rent world.

Usually, they don’t have the luxury of working with the direc­tor who under­stands and respects the needs of magic on TV. The­r­e­fore, we see a lot of flas­hes and unin­ten­tio­nal expo­sures, which is a sad thing. A solu­tion? I don’t have one … except maybe: “Don’t do it!”

Pass it on!