Issue 30 - Jan. 10
Making Magic Art
E-Book by Austin Brooks
Available from: http://www.store.magicianadvertising.com/product.sc?productId=11&categoryId=8
Price: $9.95 (approx. £6.50)
Originally released in 1998 in printed book form, this
title is now being offered again as a 49 page E-Book. In it, stage performer
Austin Brooks attempts to encourage performers to look more critically at what
they put into their stage acts and makes a plea that they move away from just
collecting a bunch of magicians' props and performing them in a standard way,
and instead that they try to inject more meaning and emotion into the effects so
that the audience cares more and can identify with what they see happening
before them.
In order to illustrate the points he is trying to make,
Austin reveals quite a lot about himself and his own approach to creating
different angles for trick presentations. It appears that he bases much of his
work on his own personal failed relationships and the emotions that those
situations created in him. He uses those emotions to inject meaning into the
routines and in this way he believes that the audience cares more about what he
performs.
To be honest, I think some of his routines sound like they
would go down better in his native US than they would in the UK. Layering heavy
pathos on to magic doesn't normally cut much ice with British audiences.
However, the principles that he explains for creating a coherent look and feel
for your act through the correct combination of props, music, dress and staging,
are all good ones and are worthy of some note.
This is not a book of tricks. In fact Austin positively
encourages you not to use the routines that he outlines because they are
personal to him and his situation and would almost certainly not fit for anyone
else, but there are some good pieces of advice included which might prove useful
or even inspirational to younger performers looking for guidance on how to
create their own personalised act.
Austin does not write particularly well, and this E-Book is
irritatingly full of bad grammar, spelling mistakes and poor syntax. A proof
reader would have been a good idea, although as is often the case with E-Books
in particular, none appears to have been employed. But if you can look past the
E-Book's written inadequacies, there are some interesting points of view to
learn from, and at the price it doesn't constitute bad value. ML
What's Hot: could point the younger magician in a new
direction
What's Not: the standard of the writing
Star Rating: **
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