Do Special Effects Have a Role in Magic on Television?

Magic for thousands of years has always been a live art performed in front of audiences for immediate feedback and effect. Magicians traveled throughout the world performing strange and miraculous effects for their audiences. With the advent of television, magicians could reach a universal audience simultaneously which was a double edged sword in that it gave them the opportunity to perform for many people at one time, but it also required them to rethink some effects for the television viewer.

Most effects on television were traditionally performed in a theater with a live audience as a "proof" that what the television viewer was seeing was exactly the same as the audience so as to refute the idea of "special effects" as the means of causing a magical effect.

Magicians like Mark Wilson and later Doug Henning always told their audiences on television that the effects they are seeing are being shot with one continuous camera angle which would not cut away or be edited in any way until the conclusion of the effect.

This given premise remained up until David Copperfield took the stage and began televising mega-illusions at the end of his annual magic specials.

David Copperfield took a different road with his mega-illusions.  Based on his body of work in my opinion, he apparently believes to a degree that the audience should be able to experience the same effect live as they see on television.  To that end, most of his large illusions such as vanishing a jet plane, the Orient Express car and even the Statue of Liberty were as real to the audiences seeing/participating in them live. The people who watched the Statue of Liberty really saw it vanish.  The Orient Express car really disappeared for them.

The difference is for the audience at home there were convincers used that were not possible for the people who were live on Liberty Island.  While I cannot say what they are, I think they created a slippery slope that has caused some magicians to careen into a gray area with which I do not agree.  I just want to reiterate that the Statue vanished and was not a camera trick for neither the live audience or the audience watching from home, but the convincers for the audience at home were suspect so to speak.

Today magicians like David Blaine, Criss Angel and others have taken camera trickery to new lows.  Many modern media magicians use camera editing and special effects to create effects that they really cannot reproduce in a controlled setting.  

One example is a levitation illusion that David Blaine was using in one of his earliest specials.  The effect is that one levitates a few inches off the ground with no special props or mechanics.  The problem was that Blaine did this levitation legitimately a few times but then cheapened the original effect which does play strong in the right setting with a blatant 2 foot levitation off the sidewalk that just was not possible without "help" from a camera edit.

Criss Angel has used cameras for similar results.

My opinion is that this practice encourages shortcuts in magic and creates situations in which you cannot duplicate an effect someone has seen on television live in front of them.  Anyone can do anything with camera special effects, but it cheapens the skill level of the magician.  Only time will tell if there are long lasting effects on the magic profession, but I for one feel the use of camera based special effects takes away from the mystique and mystery many of us strive to create for our audiences.