An end to a fresh start

The blogger's version won't be anymore updated. If you want to keep following me it will be on tumblr.

Hope we'll keep hanging out.

Magic meeting

I have these days the rare opportunity to hang out with Tony Chang. And I think it's great thing to be able to share (more him than me) so easily and to cross our opinion on some questions we ask ourselves.

I can tell you he showed some incredible pieces. And I was baffled. I will next time show him some tricks of mine and try to get his opinion on it.

I've talked before about Tony Chang before but I want to be sure that I'm coherent with my way of thinking. And I can assure that he has various material not published so I'm not afraid he will go in the bin as some T11 character.

I will write a report at the end of the week and after that I'm going to Japan so I'll try to hang out with some Japanese magicians.

A concept I like quite much.

I was reading quickly the opus magazine vol 1 recently and have given some time to one trick about 2 selections and the presentation seems to be very good. I will up to date references later when I have the pdf under my hand.

The effect is in fact quite simple. A spectator choose 2 cards and put it back in the middle. By cutting the deck the 1st selection is produced in the center of the deck.This one is placed on the table face down. The magician turns the deck face up and while spreading cards he reveals a face down card. When he turns it over, it's not the 2nd selection but the 1st and on table the 2nd. So quite simple but here he introduced a very clever solution to dissociate the 2 selections in spectator's mind.

He asks first to remember the card then to forget it. Genius.

There is good quiproquo in this situation but awesome.

I've came up with a line I like in order to reveal the travel.

"What is the card I've asked you to remember?"

"...x of y" maybe applying here a bit of psychology in order to delay the answer or even better try the spectator to say the 1st selection's name?

"The strange thing here is because I've told you to forget the 1st one, you actually remember it much more than the 2nd one. This would explains why I have here still the 1 st selection."

"And because we didn't stress much on the second one, you're starting to forget it."

We come to a concept I call : brain hacking

I like it but I think the majority of you will think the opposite.

More an effect is simpler the better it is.

But I take the opposite here and want to drown the audience with effect and when the trick is over they don't catch everything but are convinced that it was awesome.

Of course the day after they will just say :

"Yesterday, I saw a magician he did an amazing thing"

"What did he do?"

"Hum, with cards but it's hard to explain. But believe me it was awesome."

Is this last sentence disturbing anyone?

Does the audience need to recall the whole trick or the fun he had is what it's most important no matter you're achieving to get it?

I think before wondering if it's a good signature trick or whatever. We need to focus on audience feeling.

Just a little thing

Last Wednesday, I met a guy who was in fact a magician. Honestly, I was quite happy and interested by sharing some thoughts or tricks. He asked me to perform some tricks. After that he's showed me some of his materials I was so disappointed. He performed dr daley trick and another classic. WTF. What was he thinking? And he claimed to be magician for 12 years... Despite that I think he was a good performer, he also showed us a variation of fiber optics that was very satisfying. Just not a magician guy which may not be bad at all.
I'm for sure a magician guy and you can testify that I've said I don't think it's the best solution in order to evolve because you will tend to be in a too technical / justified magic. (Dani Daortiz talk at EMC was great on this subject by the way). But still if you don't "hang out " with magicians you tend to be stuck with your assets and manage to create or even tweak.

A book I liked, ten on deck by Ian Baxter

This is a small book of 40 pages, but there is sweet materials in there.

I really advice you to read it. Even it's 70's, well this is quite modern.

It contains 10 tricks and here are the ones I liked.

Cheeky aces, which is a bundle of reverse, change, separation in a sucker trick way of 2 four of a kind. The structure is clever and the effect is great.

The somersault card, in order to not perform ACR when you're asked for a trick go on this one, simple and direct.

The wallet mystery is an innovative method for a classic trick without gimmicked wallet.

Honestly, the remaining materials are good too but I can't assure you I will once perform it so I've decided to include it in my list.

Besides that I've started studying my Hungarian lecture notes and some materials are a bit old school but found a cool variation.

Finally, I will also keep reading provocative hypnosis by Jorgen Rasmusen.

Trip

I've been these last 2 weeks in few cities, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Istanbul with friends. It wasn't a magic trip at all but every time I'm wanting to discover the magic sphere in places I don't know.

So what I do each time is to check if there is magicshop or any organization i may be able to go.

For this last trip I had one hit in Budapest for a shop. I went there, salesman barely talked english but it doesn't matter. I'm here in a foreign country and if someone should be frustrated it would be them because I'd stayed in their country and didn't know hungarian.

I've bought a booklet of the "best hungarian card magician" but I haven't started to read it so when I'll finish it I'll maybe write a review about it.

I'm also quite pissed off against myself because I didn't go party enough I couldn't do enough magic and experience other cultures' reactions to magic.

Well, this is a bit sad but it's all for magic in my next trip I will definitely perform more.

Viszumtlatasrla (spelling is not good but it means good bye in hungarian)

Close up

Sometimes you see beautiful effect but once you know the solution you don't want to perform it anymore whereas the effect is great.
I had this feeling while watching both Noel Qualter alarmed and i deck. I was very intrigued by the effect but the explanation is a bit hard to perform and don't offer liberty for me. In fact I think I'm wrong and should focus more on the effect than the solution because your public won't or shouldn't (it depends on your level) understand how it works, well this is the meaning of magic.

This comes to the trendy subject which is about criticizing the ACAAN because of it's more an equation to solve between magician than a real audience thing. It's true you could do a CAAN (forget the "any" part) which is easier and go on. Your public won't notice any difference because they actually don't know that the ACAAN exists.

I want finish this post with a small ad for yoann with his 2nd version of his site, magicalsleight. Please have a look on it and maybe purchase some of the material available.