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.

Working the Chain Gang

Ever had trouble learning a routine that has many steps? Ever considered learning it in steps by learning the last step first? Sounds kind of freaky doesn't it, yet...

Psychologists have studied various techniques for teaching complex tasks to developmentally disabled persons who otherwise have trouble learning. They see the steps in a task as a chain of actions with stimulus-response links. What they try to achieve is to make a given action step or its result a stimulus to the next action in the chain.

There are three ways of teaching a chain. The first is probably the most intuitive, and the one usually defaulted to by persons who are not developmentally disabled. This method is called Total Task Presentation. The learner attempts to do all the steps in sequence from beginning to end until the task is mastered.

The second method is Forward Chaining, in which the learner masters the first step completely, then proceeds to the second step, and so on. In this way, the sequence of steps is built up gradually from first to last as each step is mastered.

The final method is Backward Chaining, in which the chain is still divided into simple steps, but the last step is learnt first. Once mastered, the second to last step is taught. This allows the student to automatically flow onto the end of the task, using the end state of the second to last state as the stimulus for the response of the last step. The routine is progressively built up from last to first, so that by the time the first step is being mastered, all the other steps should follow automatically as a series of linked stimulus-response actions.

Now, I am not advocating that any particular method of learning by chains should be used. What I'm suggesting is that if you are stuck on learning a magic sequence, trying a different method of chaining may help you to make progress. It pays to understand not just what you wish to accomplish, but the different methods by which you might accomplish it.

Be seeing you,
Escherwolf.