Scody:

Two things. Kieth doesn't have a choice about watching routines without sound. He is deaf. Everything he experiences is without sound.

I don't think the preamble needs to be eliminated, just shortened. Eliminate any unnecessary verbiage. Write your text down and perform surgery on it.

BTW, this is not the first cups and balls routine I have seen performed to this piece of music. I'm not saying that you saw the other one, and I will say that it is a creative idea.

Wow!!!
Really Bill?
I'd love to see it if you have a reference!!!

*** *** ***... arg... poop!

That seriously bums me out...

I feel for ya HayWire, that sorta info would put me down in the dumps! Happened to me a few times, there was this one time I had a brilliant idea to use a plunger in a Benson Bowl routine, worked on it for months...

It was a fellow at a contest that I saw several months ago. Don't feel bad about this. The song begs for someone to do some kind of magic routine to it.

I don't recall his name. If it had been really noteworthy, I would have remembered exactly who it was.

There was a fellow who used to be on the forum here who is a professionally trained singer. That is, he has operatic chops. He also does magic. He had a brilliant idea to do a levitation to Music of the Night.

He had been doing it for a couple of years when he learned that Darren Romeo had the same idea. The difference is that Darren had been doing it in Vegas. Even though my friend had been doing it earlier, he didn't have a big enough name in the business to do anything with it that wouldn't look like he had not copied Darren. (My friend also sang it better!) So he lost a signature piece.

Back to your cups and balls routine. Since I can't recall the person's name -- I was not a judge at the contest; I was there in a different capacity -- and he hasn't put it on you tube, you have got first claim on it.

So, you are at a crossroads. Do you want to put the work into it to perfect it? Or do you want to discard it before you invest any more time into it? I would take the routine, write out the introduction, tighten the script and play the routine for everything you have got.

You have a good premise. The idea of a person challenging the Devil in any field goes back several millennia. The theme pops up all through the Bible. It comes in through Faust. The details vary from version to version, but it's the same story, with three different endings.

Ending 1) The protagonist is victorious. The Devil loses and has no claim on him.
Ending 2) The Devil is victorious. The protagonist is dragged, kicking and screaming into perdition
Ending 3) The Devil is victorious. The Devil starts to drag him away, but the protagonist does something altruistic and wins in the end.

I will PM you an ending that you might find interesting that nobody has done.

Great routine. I agree with Payne about clearing up the table a little.
And also, fill in or shorten the "dead spots" and you will have yourself an
even better routine.
Thanks for posting!

You have a lot of guts for doing something completely unique.
Congrats, Haywire.

Your original post is the exact opposite from the
"What are your top 5 ..." posts we see so often.

Someone willing to pave their own way.
Please don't stop working on it. In 5 years, you'll have a masterpiece.

Congratulations!

Hi, Haywire!

Can the routine be improved? Sure, it can, but then what routine can't be? I guess if I had one critique it is that you look "guilty" during the steals and loads. That is, your body language changes--you tense up, become stiff and almost totally still, when the rest of the time you're fluid and frenetic. If you can integrate that fluid, frenetic feel into the stealing/loading, even if your technique isn't great, nobody will realize you did anything.

I do agree that there is a bit of extra, meaningless verbiage at the beginning of the routine that doesn't add anything. And I've never cared for the back and forth multiple times vanish, but that's just personal preference. Otherwise...

I stinkin' LOVED it! It was fun, and funny, and interesting, and entertaining! The audience was into it and enjoying it--who cares if some magicians on an Internet forum liked it or not! The smiles and rousing applause of the people for whom you were performing (NOT the camera) tell the story--it is clearly a successful piece, and one that proves the point of my article in The Magic Menu: YOU are the magic!

I would much rather watch you performing this routine than yet another cookie cutter performance of the Vernon routine with the "this cup is deeper on the inside than the outside" bit, the "this cup goes right through the other one" thing, and the exposure of a French Drop. IMO, the only person who ever really did that particular routine justice (that I've seen, anyway) is The Professor himself.

The reason Aldo Colombini's C&B routine won a FISM prize and was so popular and raved about? It was DIFFERENT from the same old standard routines! Your routine has standard moves, standard steals and loads, etc--but it is still DIFFERENT! And FUN!

My advice? KEEP IT! Polish it, get over feeling guilty about stealing and loading, and you will have a real gem of a signature piece that will, in your audiences' minds at least, distinguish you as world class.

One of the most entertaining Cups and Ball routines I've seen.
Thanks for posting.

Love the presentation, love the song, and the whole act was good. I especially like the juggling at the end. It adds an additional skill to punch the ending, just make it last several seconds longer to end in time with the music.

But, the loads were awful. I know you said that practice will help fix that, but I don't think it will. It's your timing and misdirection that is off. You are spotlighting the loads because nothing else is happening to direct the audience's attention.

For instance, when you load the lemon into the hat, there is nothing happening and so we are watching you do it. You either need to make a lemon roll off the front of the table so that the audience is forced to watch it fall. This gives you a moment to load the melon because the audience is watching the lemon instead.
You also might want to think about a spring mechanism that lifts the melon up into the hat for you, rather than having to grab it with your hand.

But it's the same for the first lemon loads. The timing is off, and there is no misdirection. Some magicians do a ball to pocket sequence as a reason for getting the loads. I don't know if this will work with your routine, but you may want to consider it. Otherwise, I might be tempted to use a black-art well table...

Steve

Good feedback, Steve. If I know Scody, he will fix those things, and that's what re-structuring is for. I've had to do that with my cups routine and had to remove a couple fun bits because they left my hands in the wrong places.

Scody, that was great fun to watch. Your energy & persona are very entertaining. Congrats! Take on board some of the constructive criticism and ignore the nasty, petty little "biters"...they'll never have their moment in the spotlight anyway.

Geoffrey

I agree. Heck, you can criticise *any* performance, but Scody has the most important thing, the thing that really matters to audiences (the kind that part with their cash to see you, not sit in armchairs watching YouTube clips), and that's a magnetic, likable character.

The rest... well, that's easily tweaked.

WOW, being deaf justifies this kind of treatment to anyone? I know the condition and I respect them...I'm also afraid about what he is going to said to me if he read this.
My best always...
Hansel!

Just watched the video again, and I stand by my words!

Scody ,
A lot of the energy which supports the routine is conveyed verbally, explaining Madkiki's difficulty in getting entertained and misdirected by the patter. This teaches us that a good patter in itself is a misdirection.

Your routine goes 180° opposite to mine. I'm trying to demonstrate that there are things that juggling and sleight of hands cannot explain, and therefore can only be magical...

Now admittedly, you are a very good and pleasant juggler and your routine is undoubtedly entertaining. In my line of thought, I would rather see the juggling part at the beginning with the cups presented as preventing that sort of beautiful skill to be used. Now Madkiki's criticism, instead of being denied and feeling offended, can be easily fixed by a juggler of your caliber. Just reconsider the execution of your sleights under fire; it can only support a nice creative work and effort. Don't listen to anyone, look at your own routine without the sound (that's what Steven Spielberg does for his films) and see what moves you want to fine tune, if any... It will also help you to follow Bill Palmer's advice more efficiently.