Teller parla (!) a proposito della rivelazione degli effetti
Ne riporto solo alcune parti, se sapete l’inglese leggete l’intervista completa. Ecco una mia personale traduzione di alcuni passaggi.
Matt: “Many atheists argue that science doesn’t explain away wonder and awe, but delivers more. Do you ever think in those terms when deciding whether to reveal a trick?”
Teller: “Some magic tricks are better as an experience when explained. They’re more interesting, more multileveled, more ingenious. [In one act, we get to watch Teller wiggle through tight spaces.] Most are disappointing, except to a real connoisseur. To me, a carefully timed palm of a card may seem like a beautiful thing. Someone else might say, “Oh, so he just took the card in his hand? Big deal.” You make the choice on aesthetic grounds. Virtually all the tricks Penn and I have explained were invented with an eye to explaining them.”
Alcuni effetti sono molto più interessanti e apprezzabili se spiegati in tutte le loro sottigliezze. Molti invece sono deludenti tranne che per il vero appassionato di magia, per me un impalmaggio fatto nel momento giusto e’ una cosa bellissima, per altri “Oh! Ha nascosto la carta nella mano? che fregatura!”. Idealmente tutti gli effetti che Penn e Teller hanno spiegato sono nati proprio per essere spiegati.
Matt: “So why don’t you explain all your tricks?”
Teller: “Because the short explanation—the explanation that you’d have to do during a theatrical or TV performance—is dull and no fun. The greatest secret to making a deceptive piece of magic is you do it by the ugliest possible means. It’s complex, it’s unromantic, it’s unclever. Because there are no big secrets. There is no safe full of magic secrets somewhere. Jim Steinmeyer said he thinks most of the public believes there’s a big safe that contains all the magic secrets. The biggest job for a magician, he says, is to conceal the fact that that safe is empty. Because every magic secret is just a minor modification of something that you fully understand in everyday life. Take suspending something with a thread, for example. Everybody’s not been able to see a piece a thread when they were trying to put it through a needle. What makes it difficult to find is lighting and background. If a magician’s using a thread on stage, say, to levitate a ball, he must use lighting and background to conceal the thread. There’s no obscure secret in that. You learned that playing in your grandmother’s sewing box. Every magic ‘secret’ is hiding in plain sight in the everyday world. It’s not news, and eminently drab.”
Una spiegazione fatta in tv o in teatro sembrerebbe solo sciocca e insignificante. Una vera spiegazione di un effetto e’ complessa, noiosa, poco romantica, perche’ non ci sono grandi segreti. non c’e’ una cassaforte piena di segreti, Jim Steinmeyer dice che il pubblico si aspetta, crede, in questa cassaforte, ma il vero segreto che i maghi preservano e’ che la cassaforte e’ vuota. Ogni segreto e’ solo una piccola modifica alle regole della realtà che tutti accettiamo. Non e’ un segreto che la levitazione di una palla avviene tramite un filo, il segreto e’ nascondere il filo usando luci e scenografie.
Matt: “So you think people would be disappointed by the explanations?”
Teller: “Disappointed and bored. On the other hand it’s great fun for an audience to fantasize about the romance of magic secrets. It’s rather like crime fiction. Real criminals are simply awful people doing cruel things. But caper movies are fun. So when Penn and I deal with the idea of magic secrets, we create tricks backwards. We create fun, caper-like explanations, then work backward from that to a trick. Take for example our Cups and Balls. Penn and I were sitting at a diner, and I was playing with napkins, and I had an empty water glass. I turned the water glass upside down, balled up a paper napkin, and put it on top of the inverted glass. Then I balled up a second napkin and palmed it. Then I did a standard cups and balls move: I tilted the glass to make the ball roll off, as I loaded the second ball underneath. And the way the eye followed the falling ball made one not notice the ball being snuck under the glass. It was such a fascinating thing that we spent months composing a whole routine structured like that, where we could do the cups and balls with clear cups. To give humor to the presentation, we presented it as ‘We’re exposing the ancient Cups and Balls Trick!’ We do a sawing-in-half in our show, in which we apparently expose how the trick is done, then have a terrible accident and actually saw the woman in half. It takes 25 minutes to set it up. Pushing squishy stuff into tubes and setting triggers for servos. The audience doesn’t want to see that. That’s watching homework. It’s ugly.”
Lo spettatore e’ deluso ed annoiato dalla spiegazione di un effetto. Ma comunque spera sempre e sogna che la Magia abbia dei segreti. E come un libro Giallo, i veri criminali sono persone orribili che fanno cose crudeli, ma i film Noir sono interessanti! Per questo quanto Penn e Teller vogliono creare un effetto di cui vogliono spiegare il funzionamento lavorano a ritroso per renderlo interessante. […] Facciamo un effetto dove spieghiamo il trucco della donna segata in due, dove ad un certo punto le cose non vanno per il verso giusto e sembra che davvero stiamo segando in due una donna. Ci vogliono circa 25 minuti per preparare tutto, spingendo finte interiora dentro dei tubi. Il pubblico non vuole realmente vedere “questo” e’ come guardare qualcuno che fa i compiti, e’ noioso.
Continua su / Continues
http://www.vanishlive.com/magic-news/2015/08/02/teller-on-revealing-magic-tricks/
