Hi,

First of all, I didn't know where to put this so if anyone knows, please move it the the right forum.
So, two friends of mine and I are getting a TV serie in Austria. However we are quite new to the TV scene (not to magic;)).
If anyone has some experience with magic on TV, we would appreciate it if you could share your experience with us.
Or what we have to care about and so on. Any tips or tricks.

Many thanks in advance,

Matt

Television has a voracious appetite for material... this is something you have to start planning for immediately.

I personally do not have television experience, but this is what I have been told by a magician with a great deal of television experience (on of the pioneers). You need to find ways to stretch your material, recycle with changes, acquire new professional level material efficiently, and think about guests and collaborators to take some of the pressure off. You may have long experience professionally and be able to do five hours off the top of your head... but television will eat that in no time. From what I am told, this is one of, if not the biggest hurdles for a regular magic themed television show.

Good Luck and all the best...
Maybe grace us with a clip on youtube when it gets on.

Hire a consulatant, some one really good. Like me :-P haha

Id recommend Doug McKenzie if your budget allows it. Or Danny Garcia.


-Six

To pay a consultant our budget is definitely too low...
But thanks for the recommendation!

Hi Matt,

this book could be very helpful:

"Lights!, Cameras!, Magic! A Guide to Performing Magic on Television" by Dick and Virginia Williams

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=17

Best wishes

Daniel

Thanks for the tipps so far. I have already ordered the book.

Has anyone any other tipps and recommandations?

I would watch successful magic shows and analyze how they make the magic look good. Not to copy anything certainly, but to try to see how they choose to portray various illusions, and to build suspense for the larger effects in the program. You'll notice how they can take an effect that takes less than a minute to perform on TV, and build up anticipation and suspense by periodically reminding the audience of what's to come, and building up the conditions under which it's performed, trying to make it seem impossible.
You'll notice the current trend of getting away from a stage-like performing environment in TV magic shows. This is an attempt to make the magic seem spontaneous, and to try and break down the separation that people experiance when seeing something on TV. They'll often have something done on the street that could never work in real world conditions, but they make those choices to create immediacy and get the people watching to identify with the audience on screen, and to believe that they would see and react the same if they were there too.

Also, remember that there are a lot of great effects that can be enhanced by taking full advantage of the fixed perspective of a TV camera, and if you can work with the directer to plan the shots so that the trick is viewed from the perfect angle, a lot can be accomplished that would otherwise be impossible.