I decided to remove my pants for this post...

Lets talk about magic demos. There are more or less three prevailing kinds.

Filmed Live during a Show : These might be the most preferable for the serious professional entertainer. You can see how it works in front of a normal audience and hear/see the impact. Scott Alexander is pretty good about doing this as he pretty much lives on a cruise ship it seems.



Sometimes it's a teaser, sometimes it's a full performance, and sometimes he is black. Regardless, it's likely he has done these routines more than thrice and it shows. His stuff does tend to be on the expensive side but at least you know these tricks have seen battle.

Filmed using random people who said yes to being on camera:  This is the kind of demo you usually see for the bigger stores like Penguin, T11, E and so on. They walked up to someone and asked if they wanted to see some magic (or more likely lied to them about filming for a TV show and testing out effects on camera all without signing film releases). This kind of editing usually cuts around the important moments and might even splice in some reactions from other magic effects or jokes. There is no real way to know.



You have to be careful with these videos as what you see may not be what you get, especially if it's chopped all to hell and you don't see how they get into or out of the effect. I wish more of these demos would specify if it was for your social media feed or for real world performance.

Filmed in your parents living room a studio for just the camera: This one you tend to see for solo releases and kids who own a smart phone and don't tend to see sun light too often. This one tells us the LEAST of the three. You don't see real world reactions, handling, or practicability (I'm not entirely sure that's a word). If the ad copy sounds too good to be true it likely is. Here is an example:



On the website it says "Examinable Box has been Blake's GO TO opener for years" and yet there is no live video to be seen. You'd think after all these years he would have recorded at least one of those shows right? For the price tag of an effect like that, I'd like to see real people reacting to the prop to see if it justifies the price tag.

There are hybrids of all of these and some outliers obviously.  Just make sure you educate yourself.

Buyer beware.