The Magic Of Youtube
In the spirit of the best film I've seen recently, The Illusionist, let's talk a little bit today about magic. In particular, some good old-fashioned science magic.
Sat through it? Good. So the really clever thing about Mr. AGFish (if that's his real name) isn't his ability to predict the numbers that will be rolled on a die.
Obviously.
Neither is it his skillful use of weighted dice, because, obviously, he isn't using them (he's a scientist!)
So bearing in mind that his trick is patently fake and does not pretend to be otherwise, is his cleverness in the degree of classic Houdini-style misdirection he applies to his trick - making us focus on his obviously ridiculous little machine so we don't notice the simple trick he's doing?
Well, that's part of it, but I think the REAL cleverness being applied in this video is the very plain and yet apparently maddeningly counterintuitive exploitation of perceptions of what we see on Youtube.
In that only one person, in the pages of comments deriding Richard's poor scientific spirit but rich parlor-magician hucksterism, had the laterality to realise that, conceivably, someone on Youtube might be capable of performing rudimentary sound editing. nobody thought to question why the majority of the video consists of dick's irrelevant face, and then when he starts actually doing the trick proper, there's no pesky lip-synching for the (gobsmackingly simple) overdubs that have been added after the fact. (insert shyamalan-viewer "argh - of course!" here).
the reason i'm bothering to bring this up is that it's brought home to me a peculiarity of the new media: the default assumption that most people making it are completely bereft of technical ability.
this isn't any kind of snobbish clarion call, no summons to the talented folk reading to throw down their burdens and take the world by storm by exploiting the fact that suddenly expectations have dropped to the level where fratboys hitting each other in the face with hammers is considered worthy media for consumption. (though that is a shame).
i just think it's nice that media has become so personal(/unprofessional), such an intimate(/shoddy) process of creation and dissemination that it's made magic possible again.
but then, nobody on here needs reminding of that...
By homage, 5 years, 1 month ago