What is your criteria for wanting to release an effect through Lost Art ? Do you look for ease of method, eye candy, whether it is a "worker", originality, etc?

Oh man that is a good question and a kind of loaded one but I'll do my best.

So it first starts with do I like the effect? if the answer is yes then I show the effect to the team and see what they say. If they like the effect and want to move forward we do that. If not there's a discussion as to why we don't like it or what can make the effect better. But for ease lets say they all like the effect and we move forward. We then contact the person who did the effect and have a dialog with them asking them about influence where they learned this effect if they came up with it on their own. Then we look at the method and see if there's anything like it and if there's any trail for crediting that we can find. There's a process there that's almost too much to type but we go through it and if we feel that the effect is good, solves a problem, teaches a lesson or is just great magic then we move forward to production.

There are somethings that we don't consider too much when looking at effects.
1. If it's a "worker" because not all magic has to be for working magicians and what people consider a "Worker" is based solely on your skill level. For instance one of my go to effects is Raise Rise and a few other things that are very technical and some would say angle sensitive. But for me they are working routines. So we developed a rating system called the A.T.S system that tells you exactly what you're getting and who this is intended for. We were the first company to have such a thing and we're glad that the trend has spread and some other companies are starting to use similar things as well.

2. Originality this is a hard one because there are few truly original ideas. Most are a remix of some sort of something that inspired the person to develop this method. So what we instead look for is helpful additions. Does this new effect help the method or make it better, does it teach a good lesson, does it solve a problem. If the answer is no then we usually pass on the project at this point. If its eye candy it can be cool but it has to be something that we like. I think that's the main point of it we have to truly like what we're releasing because it takes a lot of work to do and produce these products and we want to be able to be proud of the outcome and who we work with as well.

We are very picky and choosey on the things we choose to release and that's why we are not pumping out dozens of effects a month. We take our time and as we speak we are changing the way things are produced and what we are producing so we're in the middle of a big shift that we think will help get our products out more because we do believe in the magic so much.

I hope that answers your question man if anything is not clear I'd be happy to clear it up.

Thank you very much. I love that philosophy of selecting what material to put your brand name on sell. I wish more companies did that