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Nick23 Special user England 580 Posts |
Some videos I feel are worth every penny and some I felt were good, but not worth the ALL the money. Now I know its quality not quantity, but why are some DVD sets spread out over so many DVDs?
Some DVDs are long (2-3 hours plus), but some are short (1 hour or less) but there are often several volumes of the shorter DVD’s. If you have 3 one hour DVDs, Im sure you would have more customer satisfaction if there were only two 1-1/2 hour DVD's. You would feel like you were getting more than you deserved. Does it just come down to the fact that the more DVDs there are in a set the more we will have to pay for the material?
Nothing I do can't be done by a 10-year-old...with 15 years of practice."
-- Harry Blackstone, Jr. |
what Special user Lehi, UT, USA 643 Posts |
When I started magic a few years ago (I'm still very new by magicians standards), I thought that books and videos were very expensive. I have come to realize that as educational material goes, magic is not unreasonably priced. For every hour of good material I watch on a DVD or read in a book, I have hundreds of hours of practice ahead of me.
When I started out, I wanted to breeze through mountains of material and soak it all in. Last year I went through a phase where I put together a show (and performed it a number of times) which required hundreds of hours of rehearsing and building a simple set and routines without learning any new tricks. I re-reviewed many of my books and DVDs during this phase , but not to learn tricks, but to improve my performing and routining. The trouble I see is not that the material is too expensive, but that there is so much good material being released, that I have a real issue deturmining which I should buy and study. I could easily spend all of my time studying and never perform a polished piece of magic. Have you seen all the excellent magicians with first rate material these days? Jim Cellini, Mickey Silver, Ellis & Webster, Dean Dill, Tommy Wonder, David Roth, Michael Ammar, Daryl, Dan Harlan, Johnny Thompson, Mark Wilson, Al Schnider, Jay Scott Berry, ... (thats just off the top of my head, there are countless more) Each of these authors offers more material than I can get my hands around any time soon. The challenge is not to accumulate as many books and video as you can, but rather to select the material and utilize it effectively and, heaven forbid, creatively. Good luck. This is a great hobby, Mike
Magic is fun!!!
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Kozmo V.I.P. 5473 Posts |
"When I started magic a few years ago (I'm still very new by magicians standards), I thought that books and videos were very expensive. I have come to realize that as educational material goes, magic is not unreasonably priced. For every hour of good material I watch on a DVD or read in a book, I have hundreds of hours of practice ahead of me"
Cellinis dvd's are more expensive than about any on the market...it's because magic is too cheap....it should cost more....you should have to put more effort in your art... As a producer of dvd's....we evaulate what's going to be on that dvd....how much is enough...well, you want everything to be really good...not everything is great on a Sankey video but there is certainly value...Lonnie Chevrie and I just did 2 new dvd's...will be out next month...BUY THEM...5 effects on one dvd and only 4 on the other...but those effects are workers..you will do an effect off these dvd's...they are very strong...value for your money. Personally, I'm a pro...so I look at it differently than most folks...I think and feel that if I get one thing..a line...anything that I can use, then that dvd was worth the money...I have hundreds that I have gotten nothing from.... And there's so much stuff...and a lot of it's crap. When we do a dvd we do it with the intention that someone is going to get something out of it...our target audience...and our target is not always every magi...it may be specific say just for a certain kind of performer, some one mentioned Cellini...well for a street perfomrer ala art of street performing volume 1, 2 and 3,,,,but magic that can be done anywhere a much broader audience will appeal to this....so I have rambled enough koz |
Tim Ellis V.I.P. Melbourne, Australia 1234 Posts |
How long a DVD... it's the very question that had stopped us from producing our DVDs for so long.
Our ELLIS IN WONDERLAND lecture, when done full length, would run over 2 hours, sometimes longer if we went into a detailed Q&A session with the audience. We looked at a lot of DVDs and saw them in three DVD sets, with a few tricks on each DVD and decided we didn't want to go that way. Sure, if you sell three DVDs, the cost of replicating the DVDs (the smallest production cost of all) is low, but the potential profit margin is larger. Some DVDs only have one trick on them and run at 20 minutes. On the other hand the FLICKING FINGERS DVD is over 3.5 hours. Once we assembled all our material, we decided to shoot 3 DVDs simultaneously. (ELLIS IN WONDERLAND, 24 YEARS OF LIVING NEXT DOOR TO ELLIS, and RUNAROUND SUE). We filled 25 one hour tapes with undedited raw footage. Eventually, we cut the material down and found we had almost 4 hours on Wonderland, 3 hours on 24 Years, and over an hour on Runaround Sue. We looked at the option of splitting the two large DVDs into 3 or more as a set, but it would have ruined the continuity and the format of the DVDs (when you see them you'll understand what I mean). Our technical director (Ben Whimpey of Orsino Images) looked into it and discovered that the standard DVD memory would take a certain amount of footage (just on 3 hours) so we had to spend more money and bring out WONDERLAND on a dual layer DVD (the same as a double DVD set squeezed onto one disc. The Fingers also had to do this. In Australia, buyers of our advance copies do get two discs, but the version released next week is on one disc). 24 Years was just on 3 hours, but by clever computer stuff, Ben squeezed it all onto one single disc. Through our experience I can tell you that if they wanted to put a 3 volume set of up to 5 or 6 hours on one disc, it would be quite easy. So it must be an artistic (or commercially driven) decision by the producers. The other thing we've tried to do with our DVDs is to take advantage of the medium by adding galleries, slide shows, bonus features etc. DVD is a wonderful medium for teaching magic (as is the printed page). When people explore the possibilities further, you'll see there are some advantages it has over books as a teaching medium. Personally, I think books and DVDs should go hand in hand. But as Mike said, the key is to select your material carefully and spend the time studying and practising. DVD is a great way to see the tricks in action so that you can decide what you'd like to learn, but when you really want to study the ins and outs of a particular trick, a well written text is hard to beat. TIM ELLIS
www.MagicUnlimited.com
www.timellismagic.com Visit our online shop for instant downloads and ebooks https://shop.timellismagic.com/ Blog - www.magicunlimited.typepad.com |
stevenamills Veteran user 397 Posts |
Quote:
On 2004-10-18 19:34, Tim Ellis wrote: Tim, It's really nice to see someone actual thinking about giving the purchaser value for their money. Thanks! I'm so tired of finding 1 DVD worth of material crammed into 3 or 4 disks that I've nearly quit considering multiple disk sets. I look forward to your releases. sam |
ehands Special user Mississippi 524 Posts |
"I could easily spend all of my time studying and never perform a polished piece of magic." -Mike
What, that's crazy! And the same madness has come over me! After only a mild bout as a child, it hit me again 7 months ago. I'm still having loads of fun and I do not buy so many tricks now, but have switched to buying books which are harder to fully utilize. The switch doesn't solve my distorted buy/learn ratio, but maybe is a syndrome along the the road to recovery. I have done a few small charity shows. Your recovery seems more advanced. So, please provide more insights into how life might be when/if one gets control over the magic-buying madness. PS: I never was aquisative or compulsive about other things, thank goodness.
"Oh look, we have created enchantment." Blanche DuBois
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