Here's Why Magic 'Cut Points' Suck

I gotta tell you — almost everything I have learned from older, wiser, more experienced magic consultants, writers, directors and producers is gold. There are passing comments I overheard as a teenager on magic shoots that I hold onto tightly today in all of my work.

There’s one thing, though — a particular technique — I’ve come to realise completely and utterly sucks. Ugh, it’s so bad. But it was kind of a golden rule early on that people on a variety of magic TV productions will follow. But, alas, the final straw has been snapped, and there’s no going back. I refuse to use this particular technique going forwards.

Let’s unpack what the technique involves, why magicians do it, and an alternative I’ll be using going forwards. Here we go.

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I’ve written in the past about how magicians use live edits to hide things like switches and pre-show. You’re basically filming a trick with the pre-arranged knowledge that a section of the performance will be secretly cut from the final edit. The viewers at home will seamlessly miss out on seeing a particular section of the performance — perhaps a switch of some kind.

This is all done to enhance the final cut and make a more fooling or sometimes simply a faster final TV segment.

How do magicians hide such flagrant use of editing?

Well, they use cut points. In rehearsal and blocking, they’ll decide on a particular moment or pose that they repeat before and after the soon-to-be-missing section.

For example, a magician might borrow a bill and hold it up with both hands — presenting it to the spectator and the viewer. Then, they’ll go on to carry out a switch of some kind before returning to the same pose — presenting the bill to the spectator and the viewer. The middle section will be cut from the final edit.

It makes sense, in principle.

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Here’s the problem.

It almost always sucks.

You can just feel something is wrong when you watch the final cut, even if you don’t register the cause. It’s like seeing a continuity error in a movie and just feeling the feeling that something happened between those shots.

Magicians almost always do not get the pose perfectly correct — and even when they do, how weird that they didn’t move an inch between cutting away and back to them. It even feels weird when they get it right!

Seeing magicians use cut points feels like watching an old movie when the only way to make someone vanish on screen was to pause all the actors on the spot, get someone to leave the frame, and then continue the action. It’s like those early vines where people would use jump cuts for all sorts of magical edits.

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So what am I going to do instead?

Well — like always, I’ll continue to avoid using cuts to cover aspects of a trick wherever possible. But I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t frequently happen in telly magic land. Magic television shows are not scientific documentaries — cuts are very normal and needed to keep the viewer awake, especially in our new world of short-form video.

Instead of using the term cut point and looking for when we can use a cut point, I’m going to use the term cut away and look for reasons to cut away.

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We can hide a cut by cutting away from the action and then cutting back to it at a later point. This is how they hide all of the dodgy edits on reality shows like The Kardashians and Love Island. No one is telling the islanders to pause still at points to make the edit easier. The editors are simply finding a justified reason to cut away and return at a later point.

For example, a magician might borrow a bill and ask the spectator to place another item on the table. Then, they’ll go on to carry out a switch of some kind before continuing the trick. The switch will be hidden by a cutaway to the spectator placing the item on the table — cutting to see this — and then skipping ahead in time when it cuts back to the magician.

This is not the same as standard misdirection. In such a case, the switch would take place at the same time as when the spectator is placing the second item on the table. In this case, they happen one by one.

1. The magician borrows a bill.

2. The spectator places another item on the table.

3. The magician switches the bill.

4. The magician continues the trick.

The edit will cut directly from step 2 (shot of spectator) to step 4 (shot of magician). It’s perhaps easier to imagine step three is a two-minute long forcing section or a concise pre-show moment — something that couldn’t possibly be carried out at the same time as step 2.