Book Review - The Ostrich Factor

Title: The Ostrich Factor - A Practice Guide for Magicians.

Author: Gerald Edmundson

Publisher: Self-published (2004)

Format: Plastic ring bound paperback, U.S. letter size pages (slightly longer than A4).

Where do you get it?: From the author - (who is happy to autograph it for you)

http://www.geraldedmundson.com/tof1/whatistof.htm

The book's reference to being a practice guide may mislead some prospective buyers. This is in many ways a performance guide. It improves your ability to perform by integrating all the aspects of performance that a magician should be aware of into all aspects of preparation for performance. Rather than approaching the topic of performance directly, the writer ensures that you consider and include in your planning and practice all those things that he suggests are required for successful performance. This is no high-faluting' theory, but an immensely well thought out and practical approach to performance preparation. This is a book that is meant to be applied to your aproach to magic.



So what is this "Ostrich Factor" that he speaks of? This refers to magicians that put their head in the sand, failing to recognise the need to apply a conscious approach to various aspects of their craft. The suggested approach should avoid the pitfalls of failing to adequately address certain aspects of performance.



Edmundson takes you through all the aspects of a successful magic trick or act from the very beginning where all you have is a visualisation of what you want to see in your performance to the very end where you actually perform in a structured manner. He suggests approaches to learning the apropriate sleight of hand moves, until you build up the trick, and eventually the routine or act. At each stage you are led to carefully consider and integrate the aspects of performance that are required.

So what are these aspects of performance I keep referring to? As well as the actual techniques used, he asks you to integrate such aspects as attention control (Think of Tommy Wonder doing his cups and balls), use of misdirection, blocking of movement (Think of the works of Bob Fitch and Jeff McBride in this area), scripting and use of patter, rhythm, and a whole lot of other things such as practicing cues for audience reaction. Then he brings it all together and shows how you develop your entire act from these beginnings, with tips on many practice techniques.

This book will be of no interest to those that want to learn a quick trick, and see no use spending time developing decent presentations. For those interested in serious self-development in the craft, then this book is highly recommended.

Robots and Gollums and Clowns, Oh My....

Clowns are funny. Clowns are entertaining. Everybody loves clowns, don't they?

I think most people do, yet there are those that find them creepy. Disturbing even. Small children may initially react with terror to a clown before they learn that the clown is just a funny man. I'm reminded of Seinfeld's Kramer and his aversion to clowns. I think of the creepy clowns in fiction, such as the clown in Stephen King's It.

So what gives. Why do clowns so easily give rise to the creep factor?. I don't know - not for sure, but I recently read an article in New Scientist that seemed to raise some possibilities. It was talking about the creep factor in the character of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, which they referred to as the gollum effect. It refers to the fact that people are more creeped out by human like creatures rather then non-human creatures. It is like the twisted humanity is disturbing on some level.

This is an area of some investigation by robotics researchersinterested in human-robot interaction. These researchers call it "The uncanny valley" effect. Robots that are clearly robots do not seem disturbing to the average person, but the closer they come to simulating human features, the more likely they are to seem disturbing. They think that this causes a breach of expectations in the mirror neurons of the brain - the appearance of humanlike characteristics in something that is less than human jarring on the mind.

It is suggested that this is an innate reaction to the detection of infectious disease. A diseased person seems less then human - the characteristics of their disease jar on the expectations of humanity, causing an avoidance reaction, which would probably be a wise move on the part of primitive persons, who would thereby avoid infection.

This brings us back to clowns, humans who act in aberrant ways, and appear different to regular humans. Could it be that adverse reactions to clowns in some people and small children is caused by the same process? Just a bit of speculation, but something to think about.

Be seeing you,
Escherwolf (who has nothing against clowns).