Genii-Aug 2012 Real Secrets

Genii THE CON CO N JURORS’ MAGAZINE

REAL SECRETS

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INTERVIEW BY RICHARD KAUFMAN 46

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how doyou interview a ghost?

The folks behind Real Secrets aren’t dead, but their identities are certainly ghostlike. Who are these people and what is this about? I don’t know who they are … they won’t tell me. But—succinctly—what this is all about is sending in $180 for a year’s worth of tricks and joining a group (if they’ll have you), then getting fun stuff in the mail each month. I submitted the questions for this interview by email and the answers appeared sporadically in my inbox. Back and forth, back and forth over several months—a lot like a series of séances in which one speaks into the darkness and hopes someone in the great void hears you and responds. Not only did the Real Secrets team eventually respond, they sent all of you a gift. With this issue you have received the props for a devilishly clever effect (actually three identical sets so you won’t have to worry about wear and tear), along with two pages of instructions—a simulacrum, if you will, of what you might find in your mailbox one month if you’re a member of Real Secrets. In order to better appreciate the somewhat unusual attitude that the Real Secrets team has for this whole enterprise, why don’t you crack open the goodies first. Take the faux receipts out of the envelope, isolate one full set of six different receipts, then turn the page.

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read the instructions and try the effect. It’s so simple that it’s hard to believe it works, but practice it a few times, then go find the first person you can and do the trick. It’s a great feeling, and one that Real Secrets aims to deliver over a dozen times a year for at least the next two years. I like what they’re trying to do; I first read about it on my own Genii Forum, so I paid my money and waited for the first release in the mail. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what it was, though the prop is named later in this interview and members will recognize it. It came with a strip of … something else that was not identified. A few weeks later when I logged onto the Real Secrets website with my handy-dandy password, voila! Instructions for the previously mysterious bonus item appeared. The second month we received something entirely different with a prop that is also mentioned later, and have been told that at some point in the future another trick involving a different principle hidden within the props will be revealed to us. Another bonus effect, this in the form of a video with supplementary illustrations, suddenly appeared on the website a few weeks later. It uses a piece of rope. Can I say that? Rope, rope, rope, rope, rope. Hmmm … I’m still a member, so I guess that was okay. The third month we got something that was even better than the previous items. I would really like to tell you what it is, but if I do they’ll boot me out and that will be the end of it for The Chief Genii. Cat’s got my tongue. Sorry, but I like the tricks too much. I can’t say any more, but the Real Secrets Team actually has a few beans to spill, so let’s get to it.

Genii: What is Real Secrets? Who are you? Do you come from another planet? Are you obscure Marvel superheroes that they haven’t made a movie out of yet? Real Secrets Team: Real Secrets is a membership-based community. What connects the group is their interest in magic and their desire to participate in a movement to strengthen the notions of secrecy in the larger magic community. Genii: I feel like a metallic computer voice from some 1950s scifi film answered that question. When you talk about the community aspects, it sounds like Logan’s Run for old magicians. Aren’t you just selling magic tricks? Real Secrets Team: Every month the members automatically receive the custom props and illustrated instructions they need to perform a new piece of magic. Each offering is the kind of magic you will want to carry in your pocket and actually use. Our contributing magicians are a pretty impressive group: Gaëtan Bloom, Cyril, Robert Neale, Max Maven, Chad Long, Woody Aragon, Michael Weber, Axel Hecklau, Sebastien Clergue, Paul Wilson, and Charlie Frye. Every one of these creators has contributed to the project and this list is nowhere near exhaustive. We are proud to be supported by a team of the best minds in magic which is strong and ever-growing. Genii: I hear the tone of a professional public relations person somewhere in there. So, to cut to the chase, is it essentially a modern version of Thayer’s Trick-of-the-Month Club? 50

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Real Secrets Team: That would be an over-simplification. Yes, you do get a new, complete piece of magic delivered to your mailbox every month. We do provide that, but it is just one small part of what we offer. Members also receive additional materials to expand the usefulness of the current offering or to see a past offering from a fresh perspective. We have designed this in a way which keeps the relationship with the magic fresh, growing, and interesting. There is also bonus material in the form of notes and additions from other members, and exclusive offers and sneak peeks at upcoming books and effects. Genii: I know the somewhat controversial answer to this already, but I’ll ask it for those who don’t know. If potential subscribers have missed a few months, can they buy the earlier items and catch up? Real Secrets Team: The idea is not to “catch up,” it is to allow your participation to begin and grow. If I tell you there is a great use for the 1976 Johnson Products Magna Coin Box, the idea may appeal to you, but the object is long gone. That does not mean your knowledge and understanding do not grow and expand. We support the idea that a secret is only of value if you if you treat it as valuable. We watched something interesting happen the first few months. There were some members who wrote to us and said, “This is good magic, but it does not fit me.” A few days later additional notes and expanded ideas were posted on the Real Secrets website and those same members wrote back to us saying, “This is perfect! I have been using this everywhere. I love it!” We saw what

we had hoped for: Something changed, but it was not the magic or the props. What changed was the perspective of the magician and suddenly something which had seemed unusable became a personal favorite. Genii: Your Zen like reply didn’t answer the question so I’ll do it. No, customers can’t purchase the tricks which have already been sent out. When you subscribe, you start with the next effect. This doesn’t make guys who like to collect stuff just to have a complete set sitting on their shelves happy at all. But I have to conclude that Real Secrets really isn’t interested in that type of customer. Folks who are looking for some dandy tricks to fool their magician and non-magician friends appear to be more your target audience. Moving on, your ad copy says “never-before-seen miracles.” What does that mean? Are these new effects, unknown methods, fresh handlings and routines, or what? Real Secrets Team: Real Secrets has created magic with scratch cards, voodoo, receipts, gum, jelly beans, bills, rope, playing cards, rubber bands, photos, stamps, drawings, candy, coins, business cards, impossible objects, and more. Sometimes it is a new effect. Other times it is a fresh adaptation of a classic. We are not willing to offer details that are too specific, but one of the early offerings included an object you can carry in your pocket that allows you to give a classic “gambling” demonstration which usually requires playing cards. Another was a set of innocent looking, incredibly realistic, reusable objects which you could use to read your spectator’s mind. Genii: “Voodoo?” Perfect—I’ve had a voodoo doll ready for a good trick for the past 20 years. Non sequitor: what’s that upside-down writing thing you guys wanted me to use as the start of this article? Real Secrets Team: It’s an ambigram. Think of it as an unofficial logo. Look at it one way and it says “REAL.” Turn it upside down and it says “SECRETS.” This is indicative of what we strive to do: build in surprises, allow members to shift their perspectives and lead them to discover new things. We want to serve our members in a way that helps them renew their sense of astonishment and discovery. Whenever we can, we build something extra into all of the magic we are sharing. Charter members received props for one of our most highly complimented offerings, but it wasn’t until months later that we revealed two other effects had been built into the original materials. Something they already valued became even more valuable, not by buying something more, but by learning something more. And doesn’t this idea expand to most every book or DVD on our shelves? Genii: The PR person at work again: you’re selling, not “sharing.” Stop trying to hypnotize me through verbal suggestion. Do you hide the additional effects built into the props to play a game or make some point? Real Secrets Team: If we were only selling, anyone and everyone could be a member, and you know membership is far from automatic or guaranteed. As magicians we presumably enjoy secrets, mysteries, and the pleasure of learning and collecting new magic. The reality is that anyone who is holding this magazine and reading this article almost certainly owns more magic than they could learn and perform in their life. So why spend time and money collecting more? One answer is that magicians are humans who, often more than most, crave novelty. All magicians have the challenge of managing their hunter-gatherer desires to acquire more secrets. Real Secrets

acknowledges and satisfies the hunger for novelty with new magic every month, but it also provides the ongoing opportunity to keep looking at magic and the world around us with fresh eyes. Genii: Such gentle and welcoming language. Are you sure this isn’t Logan’s Run? All right, so the name of your enterprise is “Real Secrets.” What’s with all the secrets? Real Secrets Team: All forms of art have their secrets: how to best mix the paint, the proper angle of a cutting tool against the stone, a better way to make a musical note sustain. Magic is different from these other arts because it is open and honest about having and keeping secrets as part of the practice. Mystery is an important part of the form. As magicians, we are eager to keep our secrets and learn everyone else’s. One problem is that when we do not invest sufficient time, money, or effort in the acquisition of a secret we tend to not value it deeply. Why protect something you do not personally care about? Genii: No one protects things they do not care about. So I would say that one of the goals of Real Secrets, aside from sending us tricks, is to make the secrets I pay for important to me. Do you think this is about magic or is it something larger? Real Secrets Team: Throughout history, information has grown more widely available with the adoption of each new technology: from common languages to the Rosetta Stone, from tablets to books, from radio to television, and now the Internet. Perhaps the two things all of us need to adapt to are the growing speed of access and the pervasiveness of information. It is now AUGUST 2012

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Genii: That’s a good point. Kind of scary. I gather you see your

business model as a potential way to fix that.

Real Secrets Team: It is not up to us to “fix” anything, but we

possible to, while sitting in a theater and watching a magic show, do an online search of the particular performer, his material, and his methods while the show is still taking place. Think about what happens if a magician uses the words “Invisible Deck” during his performance of that trick: “I’m holding an invisible deck.” If anyone were to search for that phrase on a smart phone during the show, the instant results would include video performances, video exposures, written explanations, and dozens of places to buy the prop online. All of this instant availability happens without the spectators leaving their seats and with no former associations or connections to magic. Yesterday’s heckler had his theories; today’s troublemaker has search results as proof. 52

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believe we are sincerely trying to deal with our secrets responsibly. A unique feature of Real Secrets material is that it is currently Google-proof. There is not, as of this moment, a way for audiences to search out any information about the effects or methods we have shared with our members. Consider that for a moment: think about the comfort and confidence that comes from investing your time and effort to learn something that cannot be exposed on a smartphone during or following your performance. This is what magic used to feel like. This is what magic can feel like again. Genii: That’s a nice fantasy, but all it takes is one anonymous jerk to expose your items on YouTube and that ruins it for everyone, doesn’t it? Real Secrets Team: Anything is possible, but someone who went to all the trouble to ruin it for everyone else would have to really hate themselves and the art of magic. Just maybe, that same person might take one of the effects and try performing it. When he realizes the response he is getting and enjoys all the benefits that follow, simply because he chose to appreciate the magic, he will personally understand the significance of protecting the art from exposure. The most effective way to eliminate an enemy is to make him an ally. Genii: I think there’s a Haiku on that subject. So, lots of original magic; a philosophy based on the improvement of the attitude toward magic secrets for the good of everyone: many good things and lofty visions—so why won’t you folks reveal yourselves and take credit for all of this? Real Secrets Team: We believe that while one of the most important aspects of performance is the persona of the magician, people who sell magic often try to create a brand that is about their own personal style. Think about Paul Harris, Jay Sankey, Dan and Dave Buck. There is only one of each of them in the entire world (actually one of the Buck brothers has a pretty good stunt double) and no one who buys their magic becomes a Harris or a Sankey when they perform it. There was a time when it was painfully obvious you were watching a student of the great Slydini. An integral part of his teaching process was to have his students mimic everything about his performance—each moment, every move, even his speech. At Real Secrets our focus is on the magic, not the individual performance style of the person who creates it: the effects, presentations, and methods have to be everything, because the personality and branding is up to each individual performer. We may send out a piece of magic built on the great thinking of Gaëtan Bloom, but we want each magician to perform it in a way that is unique to his or her individual style. Genii: But you do tease potential customers with names of contributors. Real Secrets Team: Think of it less as a “tease” and more of a promise of the level of quality. We mention contributors and inspirations in a general way on the opening page of our website, but without details. Only members get the details. If one of the items we send out incorporates thinking from Martin Gardner, Paul Curry, or Shigeo Futagawa, we are going to give explicit credit to each of them for their contribution. There was a time when our secrets were valued. To gain access

to those secrets, you had to prove yourself. You had to be able to maintain a confidence and prove your sincerity and trustworthiness over a period of time. We are working to restore this way of thinking, this appreciation for how special magic secrets really are. We want to share great ideas, we want to inspire, we want to get people to think, but we will do it in a way that is respectful to the art. We want to help people to regain their appreciation for secrets. Genii: When people sign up for Real Secrets, they have to agree to specific Terms of Service that have caused a lot of controversy. No member can reveal or in any way share the methods of items from Real Secrets with anyone else who is not also a member—but we can perform the material for other magicians and laypeople. Real Secrets Team: Yes, you can perform the material for other magicians. First, we only want magicians to join if they willingly agree to abide by the rules of the enterprise and the Real Secrets community. These rules are not a secret, and anyone who does not agree, or has any problems with our way of handling things, need not join. There is no reason for magicians who do not like the rules to frustrate themselves needlessly. Anyone who is looking for magic they can perform on YouTube or secrets they can openly discuss on forums have plenty of that material already out there. We simply ask that they don’t do that with the material we develop and share. Second, we want to protect the investments of our members. People are becoming part of, and investing in, something special. We want our members to have magic that not everyone has access to, thus before we started we came up with our Terms of Membership which include not allowing people to post clips on YouTube, not allowing members to publicly describe the effects, props, or methods. We are saying that the current lack of respect for secrets is not something we support. Genii: What happens if a member violates a Term of Service? Home detention complete with ankle bracelet? Real Secrets Team: If they violate a Term of Service, they are no longer a member. Choices have consequences, but with us, the consequences are neither arbitrary nor a surprise. The Terms of Service lay it all out clearly: Any time you want to stop being a member, you let us know and we refund the pro-rated balance of your money. Just like that. We have had two people ask for their money back so far, and neither case had anything to do with the quality of the magic; they came to the realization that we were serious about the rules and they did not like the rules. We find their decision completely rational and reasonable, and we believe giving them the

balance of their money back is equally rational and reasonable. We have also had a few people violate the terms. They are also no longer members. Genii: Okay, it’s time to blow away some of the smoke and give the folks who are reading this a little information about who’s behind the curtain. And I should unequivocally state that despite some chatter on the Internet, I have nothing to do with Real Secrets. If I did, customer service would be better. Real Secrets Team: Originally we were not going to give any names, but we realized that without some credibility, it was too big a leap of faith to get people in the door to see how great the magic is. Even though creators including Cyril, Max Maven, Michael Weber, and Bob Neale openly supported us, there were still quite a few skeptical magicians who were very vocal about being uneasy. On the other hand, we had several well-known performers and two big online magic companies offer to be the face of Real Secrets, but we knew all along it was about the magic and the underlying principles, not about aligning ourselves with someone else’s brand. Another reason was a lesson we first learned in the business best-seller Good to Great by Jim Collins. Collins discusses how good companies have a well-known and usually charismatic leader. That means that a lot of the attention of the press, the public, the investors, and the consumers is focused on who he is and what he does. Collins used people like Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch as examples. But this was not true of the companies he identified as great. In those enterprises, the leaders used all their power, charisma, and skill to focus attention on the products and the services offered by the company. With Real Secrets you are not buying an imaginary relationship with one magician/creator. Instead, you are investing in a venture that is focused on delivering great magic to all of its members and protecting the secrets and value of the magic. Genii: More names, please. Real Secrets Team: Real Secrets’ creative team of contributors consists of an ever-growing group of individuals, and we are enthusiastic about publicly sharing those names: Gaëtan Bloom, Cyril, Robert Neale, Max Maven, Stephen Minch, Mathieu Bich, Chad Long, Woody Aragon, Michael Weber, Axel Hecklau, Sebastien Clergue, Paul Wilson, Charlie Frye, Ramon Rioboo—the list goes on and on. But in addition to the creators there are also designers, experts in manufacturing, and people who understand the fulfillment side of the operation. We have succeeded in getting every month’s offering into AUGUST 2012

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the postal system well before the last day of the preceding month. That means many of our members get their new delivery on the first of the month if not a day or two before. We have members in Asia, England, Continental Europe, and the Middle East, so postage rates and delivery times do vary, but we have been actively tracking shipment and delivery times to some of our most remote members, and have adjusted the ship date for those locations to get closer to a first-of-the-month delivery. But the two most important groups involved in Real Secrets are always our contributing creators and our members. Genii: As a publisher, I well know that the awful service of the United States Post Office is beyond your control. Because of where I live in the U.S., I often receive my monthly Real Secrets fix after many other people. Topic change: How did this all start? Whose idea is it? Real Secrets Team: It happened at an informal gathering of inventive magicians who normally don’t sell any of their magic. These guys love creating and are very collaborative, frequently working on ideas together. They were discussing a magic product that had recently come out which consisted of some cool props but not much beyond that. They all agreed it was a good start, but it was released too soon. It was clear to each of them that the goal should always be to create a quality product and to deliver strong magic built on solid thinking. One of the team mentioned how great it would be to receive something interesting in the mail every month; a trick, object, or device that would inspire magicians like themselves. Everyone loved the idea, but no one realized how much work would be required. The team worked about a year presenting everything from basic ideas and principles to finished routines. Months went by. Many ideas were discarded; other ideas took new directions. After we had assembled, prototyped, routined, and field-tested our favorites, we realized we had more than enough finished material for two years of great monthly offerings. We worked with our most trusted manufacturers and produced the entire first year’s worth of content. All the objects and all the printed instructions were finished in advance of having a single member, so we could honestly promise our members a year of great magic and deliver on that promise, no matter what. In the magic community we have seen how enthusiasm cannot take the place of real business expertise. Most magicians have paid in advance for subscriptions, books, and props that came after much too long a wait, or never came at all. It was and is important to us that we never put our members in that predicament. 54

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Genii: You’ve advertised that the monthly installment of Real

Secrets often includes bonus material and notes. As a paying customer, I have been pleased by the bonus items, whether they come in the mail or mysteriously appear on your rather spartan website. Sometime after the second installment came out, an entire new item appeared on the website in the form of pdf files to be downloaded for both instructions and props. So it appears that I’ll be getting a lot more than just 12 items a year. In fact, after the first three “regular” monthly installments, I’ve already received six tricks. Real Secrets Team: We are glad you like the material. We have a very simple website and it is simple by design. It is a place where people can join, and it hosts password-protected sections where we post notes and additional material. The extra material has included improvements for, and different routines with, the effect of that particular month. Many of our members send in questions or ideas, and we answer those questions and share their ideas on the website when they give us permission to do so … and some serious heavy-hitters have offered some great thinking. One of our favorite stories so far involved the effect we offered the very first month. One of our members wrote, “This is not for me. It is clever and well designed, but this is not the kind of trick I would ever perform. I hope future months offer things that are really different from this.” A week after his note, we posted an alternative presentation for that effect developed by one of our many creators. The same member wrote back saying, “This is great. This is my new favorite effect. I love this. I hope all the future Real Secrets items are just like this!” Both of his reactions proved what we believed all along: Great magic is only great for an individual magician when he finds a connection between the trick and his own style. The trick that went from “not for me” to “I love it” did not change. The thing that changed was the perspective of the magician. This kind of growth and insight only happens when you give the ideas time and a place to grow. In addition to the main effect and the notes each month, members have also received bonus material. The bonuses have taken the form of physical props, original routines, video demonstrations, illustrated explanations, and some unusual materials for members to experiment with. Real Secrets’ members not only get a great new trick in the mail at the beginning of the month, they keep getting additional new magic and inspiration all month, month after month, all year long. Genii: Real Secrets has done almost

no traditional advertising, but before you even started there was a buzz on boards like The Genii Forum and 50-plus pages on The Magic Café. There’s a second thread going on the Magic Café right now about the second release. Real Secrets Team: It was interesting to watch. We wanted to be very clear about what we would be providing to our members and we wanted to announce the criteria for ongoing membership. But many magicians on those boards felt entitled to know more. They quickly started turning on each other seemingly just for the sport of it. It got ugly fast. It was a little disheartening to us as our team consists of some of the best magical thinkers in the world and we had worked together to create some beautiful things to share with other magicians. All of the creators have been involved in magic for many years and they look at magic as a brotherhood where they met some of their best friends. Many of the Internet boards had Real Secrets discussions that were not about Real Secrets at all—they were just threads filled with name calling, in-fighting, and general orneriness. Those things have nothing to do with Real Secrets or the people associated with it, so we stopped reading those threads and continued to focus on the things we care about: great magic and our members. Genii: Your rules specify that the material you provide is not to be shared online or by using services like YouTube. I don’t know how you can possibly enforce a restriction like that. Any member can make a video or slide show and post it under a pseudonym on YouTube and you have no way of knowing who it is. Real Secrets Team: This is not a cat and mouse game or some kind of power-play on our part. Our rules are clear. If someone joins, they have contractually promised that they will respect these rules. Someone who decides to break their promise has identified the kind of person they are with that single act. This is also why members agree not to share the secrets with non members. It is not just about magic ethics, it is about responsibility as an individual. The ideas we share are special and different. We want to keep them that way for our contributors and our members. Thus, we have also asked members to not share the effects online. They can discuss whether they love or hate Real Secrets. They can share their ideas with us and, where appropriate, we will share those with other members with permission. But not everyone can keep a secret. Not everyone can follow the rules. Not everyone likes what we are doing or the way we

are doing it. For those reasons, it turns out that not everyone should be a Real Secrets member. We have not allowed some individuals to join. We have terminated memberships in cases where we have seen a breach of secrecy or disrespect for the rules. We don’t want to be parents or dictators. We simply want to lay out the rules, and if people can follow them and decide to be part of our community, we feel it can be a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s like going into someone’s house. As guests you have to follow the rules, and if you chose not to, that’s fine, but you are simply not welcome into the house. And at the end of the day, these are magic tricks. We are not telling people they can’t have food or air; they just don’t get to share in the creations of our team. Genii: Well, if you don’t allow certain people to join for whatever reason, and you don’t allow others to join because you feel they’re “disrespectful,” then you are functioning in a way that could be interpreted as extremely strict. Certainly we haven’t seen anything like this before. But I have a feeling I’m not going to make any headway with you in that area, so let’s talk about something else. What do members get? From the list of items you spoke about earlier, obviously not all the tricks require a deck of cards. Real Secrets Team: We have not, as of yet, included a single card trick. We love good card magic and many of our creators are fantastic card magicians, but we have intentionally tried to focus on other directions. As all of our promotional information describes, the team has focused on things people might find naturally around them: receipts, game cards, scraps of paper, loyalty cards, blow in ads, etc. When you take out a deck of cards, you are immediately “the performing magician.” When you take out and do a miracle with a receipt, it makes the magic more believable. Our main criterion is great magic, so even as early as month two we were offering stand-up items as part of the bonus material. Genii: You are also offering a few special items for subscribers by other creators or that are not generally on the market, right? Real Secrets Team: Yes, we, like our members, love great magic and we are always on the lookout for something special. If there are items we love that may have not hit the market yet, or may have been generally overlooked, or may not be available for the mass market, we will try and connect our members to that kind of material: for example, Woody Aragon’s book, Ramon Rioboo’s book from Hermetic Press, one of Chad Long’s newest AUGUST 2012

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effects, and more. We have, with permission from the creator and producer, given our members insight into these items and occasionally added our own touches and ideas as a free bonus. Our goal is to help Real Secrets members discover great magic and connect with great magicians they might have overlooked due to the sheer volume of new items released or the lack of familiarity with a particular magician. We will also be releasing a few Real Secrets brand items that we could not include with our subscriptions due to size or cost of manufacturing. We hope to maintain and increase the level of trust with our members similar to those of a trusted food, movie, or book critic, but that comes with time. Genii: On your site for members you have notes about the effect of that month. There was some controversy when, without any warning at the start of month two, you deleted all the notes for the first release and began putting up notes for the second release. This upset a few customers who hadn’t copied the notes or printed them out. At least one even cancelled his subscription because of it. It’s one thing to give your customers some warning and say, “These notes will be removed in five days.” Not doing that seems antithetical to good customer relations. Real Secrets Team: That only happened once, with one set of notes at the end of the first month. Our members now understand how the process works and have no problem with it. But it points out that there is a type of magic buyer who most values the thing he cannot have. In reality, every member had that material. They could read it, copy it, print it out. But it was up to them to treat it as if it was valuable to them. A few folks mistakenly treated the website like their bookshelf and assumed it was up to someone else to make the information available to them forever. It is up to each of us to treat information with care. All of magic’s secrets can go away—they can be exposed to the public, they can be lost, they can be forgotten. Every month offers a new focus. Obviously, members can gather the information and simply archive it, but we hope they will see the value in moving ideas forward. We are sharing the ways the creators and other members work with the ideas, try them out, give the material a chance, and see what they can do with it. We opted for a notes format as opposed to a forum because we want the sharing to be focused on the magic of that month. Take a look at any random thread on almost any magic forum and you will find that the discussion keeps going off track and often becomes personal. We are providing our members with a clean, efficient place they can come to focus on the magic. No namecalling, no digging through hundreds of off-point posts, just great ideas about the magic of that month. Genii: Well you could solve that problem by having your forum tightly moderated. You certainly run the rest of your operation with a strict hand, and I would expect that members posting on your forum, if you had one, would stay in line because they don’t want to have their subscriptions cancelled. But, running a Forum myself, I can understand why you would not want yet another full-time job. Next question: Why do you send the instructions for each month’s trick in written form rather than posting a video on your website? Real Secrets Team: Real Secrets is designed for people who love great magic, not for people who love to share their opinions online. Our team grew up reading magic books and magazines. They are all inspired by the writings of creators like Martin 56

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Gardner, Karl Fulves, Bill Simon and others. We provide our members with everything they need through basic, clearly written and frequently illustrated printed instructions. We give as much detail as is necessary while keeping the instructions as concise as possible. People don’t need lengthy patter, extra steps, and multiple variations before they have become proficient with the basic performance of the effect. Our format also helps protect the secrets. Video clips are too easy to link to, duplicate, or post, and if anyone sees the video they think they have seen it all. Members have learned that our material has a lot more built into it than first meets the eye. If someone tries to steal Real Secrets material, they will not understand all of

the secretly incorporated additional features. Our members enjoy discovering that the trick they already love has other benefits and secrets. We may wait months to share some of this information with our members. We can’t stop people from stealing, but we can make it more beneficial to be a part of the entire process than to be someone who just steals a single idea. Genii: In my introduction, I told my readers to have some fun before reading all of this by opening the package of receipts you’ve provided and doing the trick. I wanted them to get that rush of appreciation for how clever the trick is right away. Tell me more about the effect. Real Secrets Team: This is a perfect example of a Real Secrets style effect, object, and method. We always place our members first, so while we created this for Genii, we gave it to Real Secrets members first and they have had this for a few months as one of the many additional bonuses they receive. This method was inspired by an old idea titled “Four-Tell On Dice” by Shigeo Futagawa. Many have explored thinking in this area including Max Maven, Stewart James, Martin Gardner, Maurice Kraitchik, Walter Gibson, Mel Stover, Karl Fulves, and others. We were intrigued with Futagawa’s idea which used unusual multi-colored dice. He had taken a principle that was traditionally applied to two dimensional surfaces and transferred it to a three-dimensional object. We examined the workings to really understand how this effect worked. We realized we could reengineer the underlying methodology and then build it into

objects that people see every day—cash-register receipts. We figured out how to make the effect even fairer while actually having the props do all the hidden work for the magician. This is an important lesson: Before we can effectively vary or alter a piece of magic, we must first understand the method on an intellectual level—the thinking, the working details, and why things were done the way they were. Genii: So, as a customer I’ve paid my Benjamin and a half for year one, and the first four items have been great [they’re not paying me to say this—I really enjoyed them], so what am I looking at down the pike? Real Secrets Team: We already have enough material to keep going well beyond year two, and we are enjoying doing something we all love and believe in. We all felt that if we stayed true to our beliefs Real Secrets would be successful. As our membership continues to grow, more will be possible in terms of scale and scope. We intend to keep going as long as our members are happy and the magic is great. No matter what, our promise is that every member will get what we promised and what they paid for. Real Secrets will be ever-evolving. We will continue to learn, change, grow, and most likely expand our vision as well. We are looking at doing some products under the Real Secrets brand for the general magic market. We are having new people we respect join our team almost every week. Our ranks are growing and our members are happy. Everything else is a secret. •

TOAM

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AUGUST 2012

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