An seemingly endless debate is about the relative merits of learning magic from books or from videos. I decided to save a few posts on the subject from a long discussion about it. My goal was to have a few posts that summarize the feelings on both sides instead of recording the entire argument for posterity. You will have to make your own judgement about whether you should learn from books or videos.
In the end, realize that both written and video instruction have their place in the world, and both can be useful or poor. Learn to take advantage of each, you will be well off.
By: Shane Cobalt
Videos breed clones, Books enspire creativity!
I suggest that you get a book as oppose to a video. Don't be a clone!
Expert Card Technique had exquisite amounts of everything including an ambitious card routine !! It also has endless amounts of information on just about everything for a very reasonable price!
By: crosscheck
I love reading books on magic theory but often, not always, many books
and notes on magic fall flat in proper instruction.
Either poorly drawn illustrations or cheap reproductions of drawings or the author's poor skill in explanation make the material truly worthless. At least with a video you can see the actual handling and movement.
By: Shane Cobalt
Well I believe you are right to some degree. Many books are not the
best quality but regardless the moves are usually available in other
places the routine is a common one and Expert Card Technique is a
great book regardless.
Also Books spawn creativity! Videos spawn clones! It's much easier to
copy than it is to be creative! Perhaps a good book would do a lot
more good than another Daryl clone!
The greatest minds in magic had to learn from books and they got
far. How many magicians can say "I got big from videos?"
By: Jim Maloney
You know, I hear all the time that videos breed clones, that videos
are bad, and that books are better. I don't believe it. The real truth
is that laziness is what breeds clones and, while videos are easier to
use (and therefore, more appealing to a lazy person), it is actually
the unwillingness of the viewer to be creative that is the
problem. The same lazy person wouldn't be any more creative reading
from a book. So, don't blame to medium, blame the person.
By: Tim Trono
I totally agree with you Jim. I personally prefer books but in some
cases the visual medium of the video or DVD is just better... ex. for
learning sleights and the timing, etc. In many cases I see sleights
performed incorrectly because someone didn't understand what they
read. I think the visual medium of video or DVD allows the student to
compare. Thus when learning a handling I think you use the medium that
is best and what is best for you. Some people are not great readers
and thus it is easier to learn through video... I don't think it makes
them lazy. I agree that it is the person who decides what to do with
what he or she learns... The question really then about copying comes
to presentations as opposed to sleights or handlings. But many books
offer presentations as well. So it is just as easy for someone to copy
a presentation form a book as it is from a video. Thus I agree that it
is the PERSON that decides and not the medium.
One other point... I think the visual medium of DVD or video allows a student to really SEE what something looks like to see if he or she wants to "really" do that routine. How often have you read an effect, worked on studying the text, and realized the routine was just not what you expected?
Don't get me wrong... I'm not knocking books... I enjoy reading magic books and as I mentioned, it's my preference but I think that you chose what works best for you to learn. Just be yourself and don't copy styles, lines, etc. from books or videos.
By: Josh Mandel
Shane,
I hate to say it, but this is specious reasoning.
First of all, you ask how many great magicians got that way from watching videos. The magic video business is VERY new compared to the magic book business. Two decades (less, actually) versus hundreds of years. Hardly a basis on which to make a pronouncement that one breeds creativity and the other breeds imitation.
Second, watching a video is, in many regards, like watching a professional at work. Would you care to estimate how many great magicians were influenced by watching, and being inspired by, the performances of OTHER great magicians? I would guess that almost every great professional (or great amateur) was positively influenced by WATCHING other greats. Books are great teachers, but they have some limitations. As an example: I wanted to be a comedian. I read many joke books growing up; I read books on theories of humor: writing humor, performing humor. But I'll tell you: working for 2 weeks at Zanies in Nashville with Jackie Martling taught me more about telling jokes and working an audience than every book I'd read in my life. Just watching the way he dealt with the audience, his style, his delivery -- none of which would be adequately conveyed in print -- was more valuable than all the high-toned theory I had read in a lifetime.
That's not to say that I didn't gain tremendously from those readings; they gave me invaluable knowledge as well.
Did I become a clone of Jackie Martling? Hardly. The kind of act I chose to develop, and the kind of persona I have onstage, is as different from Martling's as day and night. But that doesn't alter the truth of what I learned from him, nor diminish my ability to apply the knowledge.
Eugene Burger credits watching Al Baker, and learning from him, as one of the greatest influences in his magical career. Not reading Al Baker's books (although he highly recommends these), but the actual experience of watching, and being instructed by, Baker. Do you think Burger is an Al Baker clone? I sure don't think so.
Lastly, a video is much closer to the experience of personal instruction than is a book. In your question about how many great magicians became that way from watching a video, I'd ask: how many great magicians became that way with the benefit of personal instruction of some sort? Probably a great deal of them.
Do videos give you a greater sense of a particular magician's style than books do? Yes, of course. Does that make it easy to copy that style, IF you're lazy and apt to do so? Yes. But do books make it possible to copy somebody's style POORLY because the books contain patter scripts without communicating the essence of the magician's character? YES. Books contain scripts, and the same lazy magician who's apt to steal a professional's persona off of a videotape is just as apt to steal the patter out of a book. And unless they know how to deal with a script, they'll probably sound stilted, cardboard, hideous.
You should pick up a book on Neurolinguistic Programming sometime, and read up on Modeling. Modeling is, put simply, learning how to be successful at any given endeavor by studying other people who've already succeeded at that endeavor. It is not about being a clone; it is about studying what HAS WORKED FOR OTHERS and applying it to yourself. Learning from books is a form of modeling. Learning from videos is a form of modeling. Because magic is fundamentally a performance art, videotapes are a greater tool for modeling than are books.
You can read a half-dozen books about Slydini and how his manner and personality made his techniques so effective. But I venture to say you'd learn more from watching 20 minutes of him on videotape than you'd learn from a hundred pages of DESCRIPTIONS of his manner and personality and how they applied to his magic.
Don't get me wrong; I love books dearly, and I'd far rather curl up with a good (non-electronic) book than watch a video. If it hadn't been for Modern Coin Magic, I wouldn't have misunderstood its description of the thumb palm when I was a college student, and developed a thumb palm that works far better than any other thumb palm I've ever seen. But I read a half-dozen books on the faro shuffle and couldn't do it, not once. When Richard Kaufman picked up my deck and said, "Oh, here's what it looks like," and did one for me, I was able to do them almost instantly and APPLY some of what I'd been reading for so long. That was before I owned a VCR, but a videotape would've served the same wonderful purpose.
By: Joe M. Turner
> The same lazy person wouldn't be any more creative
> reading from a book. So, don't blame to medium, blame the
> person.
I agree with a great deal of what you said. However, I do believe that reading a book fundamentally requires more mental effort than watching a video and that even if you learn the patter as written in a book, your intonation, inflection and pauses will tend to be more like your own speech patterns than those of a video personality. In this sense, I think that given the same learner, video is more likely than books to produce the effect of "cloned performance."
By: Josh Mandel
Joe,
At the same time, a video is far more likely to inspire the viewer.
If you believe that a magician is "an actor playing the part of a magician," tell me which is more inspirational to an actor: reading Shakespeare, or seeing a spectacular performance of Shakespeare.
Similarly, which is more inspiring? Reading a script of a great magician's patter, or watching that magician perform that patter?
Which is more apt to help a student realize that patter does not stand on its own, but is intricately connected to the persona that is truly only visible in performance? A script, or a performance?
In fact, I think one can make the case that when a lazy student utilizes the patter from a book, they rarely incorporate their own personality. After all, they're unimaginative enough to believe that the script's words already fit their own personality (when that is almost always not the case). If they are savvy enough to inject their own personality, they are savvy enough to change the script to FIT their own personality.
OTOH, when a student actually witnesses a performance, it becomes PAINFULLY clear -- as it does NOT, in a book -- that the magician's patter is usually uniquely suited to that performer's persona.
Thus, while lazy students MAY have more opportunity to try to "steal" the magician's persona from a videotape, the opposite side of the equation is that non-lazy students have potentially more to gain from videotapes.
By: Joe M. Turner
I don't deny that there are positive attributes associated with video
instruction. My point was that there is a specific negative attribute.
If we want to determine the summary effect, then I guess we'd have to know the proportion of devoted students of magic compared to the number of people who are lazier and more prone to mimic (consciously or unconsciously) the patter, inflection and mannerisms of the performer they have just seen.
Does anyone want to wager on there being more devoted students than there are copycat tricksters?
Yes, there are advantages to video for devoted students. But I think the unfortunate by-product of video instruction is that the majority of viewers of videos are NOT interested in putting in the effort to make it their own. They want to just learn the moves without having to think as hard as they might have to if they were reading a book. I think that legitimate magic students are far outnumbered by the copycat trickhounds.
Both groups have money that spends equally well.
By: jason england
The act of reading is necessarily active. You must turn each and every
page, and give some, however minimal, thought to what you're reading.
Watching videos on the other hand, only requires active participation to put the tape in, and then push play. After that, one can simply stare at the screen without any thinking at all. It can be, although it shouldn't be, a completely passive activity.
I once judged a magic convention close-up contest where I purposefully downgraded a performer who did 2 David Williamson lines straight from David's second video tape. I found myself able to finish this guy's lines before he even said them because I had recently watched the tapes myself. He couldn't possibly have learned these two routines from David's book, because neither of the two were in his book.
This brings me to perhaps the most powerful piece of evidence that videos are more prone to produce copycats than books: Familiarity with the process!
I have caught myself thinking about performing a routine that I saw on videotape, and then suddenly realizing that I was inadvertantly copying the originator's mannerisms, inflection, and manner of speaking. I have never caught myself sounding like another performer when I have only read a description in a book. Why? Well for one, you don't have anything to go on...especially if you have never heard that performer before.
Let's face it, a person who only reads Sonata by Juan Tamariz is unlikely to hit upon Juan's unique style, wacky sense of humor, and bizarre "air violin". But someone who sees one of his videos is quite capable of inadvertantly adding, or wanting to add, some of Juan's mannerisms. Granted, they would look ridiculous coming from anyone but him, but the desire to mimic is strong.
I've also caught myself doing the same thing if I tell someone about a comedy line I've heard somewhere. If I quote a George Carlin line from one of his albums, I invariably wind up sounding like I'm doing an impersonation of George, and not just parroting a simple quote. The same goes for a Seinfeld line...it comes out sounding like Jerry. Bill Hicks is the same way. I've listened to the albums by these three men enough times to be able to step in at any time and perform their material.
Did I set out to accomplish this? No. But the audio format facilitates it a heck of a lot easier than just reading their lines in a book would have.
Here's a test. Try and say this like Jerry Seinfeld: "And why does that pharmacist have to be two feet higher than everyone else?"
Now say this like Bill Hicks: "Well, looks like we got ourselves a reader."
Unless you are familiar with Bill's inflections, pitch, and mannerisms, you will find it impossible, no matter how much you study the line, to say it the way he did.
That is what videos enable. They have the potential to give EVERYTHING to the viewer. Books can only give so much, the rest the reader has to actively pursue and TAKE.
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