Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and hold it for a couple of seconds. Now exhale.

You didn’t close your eyes, did you? Of course not. Maybe you thought it was a silly request or, more likely, wanted to keep reading.

Why would I ask you to do such a strange thing while reading a blog post? Well, I’ve always wondered why some shows went better than others and I believe I’ve cracked it. Okay, maybe not entirely but I think it all starts at the beginning. You’re more prepared, mentally and physically, for certain shows BEFORE they start. The audience can tell when you’re having a good time and enjoying the show. So you’ve got to be ready to do just that, enjoy yourself.

The best way to do that is to warm up. You must get in the right mindset by clearing your mind of any negative things (even little things!) that happened during your day. Forget about that guy that flipped you off in traffic, the deadline you missed—forget about everything, if possible. I’ve found that not only does this relax you but it also reduces any nervousness before a show.

Want to try it? Here are some quick ideas to get you started. There are many ways to get your mind and body prepared for a performance but I believe these three simple techniques are easy enough and will work for anyone:
1. Breathing
2. Stretching
3. Vocal exercises

A simple breathing exercise is to take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it for five seconds, and exhale through your mouth. Variations involve taking a breath and then exhaling in short continuous breaths. That’s it.

Stretching exercises are very personal and, since I am not a doctor, it’s best for you to look up any of the millions of stretching resources online and start slow. Keep in mind that stretching should not hurt so be careful.

A quick vocal warm-up that I learned in an improv class is to repeat this phrase, each time stressing a different word:
Whether the weather be cold, whether the weather be hot, we’ll be together whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.

If you use any of these techniques already, I’d love to hear about your experiences. If not, try them out!

Okay, we’re at the end but I’ve got a confession to make: This post was just a warm up. I’ve asked a few of my favorite professional magicians what they do to warm up and I’ll reveal their answers to you in my next post.

Hey Guys,
The internet magic world is on fire these days amidst the controversy between Shawn Farquhar and Russ Stevens’ acts. If you haven’t heard anything about it, head on over to iTricks for the latest dish. But we here at The Clog would never stoop so low as to discuss a hot topic simply to attract hits to our site. We’re above that.

But I would like to discuss Fawn Sharquhar and Suss Revens. They are two completely different people than Shawn and Russ, but are going through a remarkably similar bout of mudslinging. I will assume you are familiar with the allegations and facts before moving on, and have watched both of these gentlemen’s acts.

Just so there are no questions; I am unequivocally on Suss Reven’s side of this debate. And I must hand it to him for being such a class act throughout the debacle. I don’t know if I would have been so diplomatic in his shoes.

What it boils down to is that I just don’t understand what Fawn is trying to claim as his. Sure, his act is different than Suss’, but is it different enough to claim as his own? I don’t need a magic eight-ball to see that all signs point to “No.” And if you think this is a purely subjective opinion, let me take you through some simple arithmetic to arrive at the conclusion:

- Take Fawn’s act.
- Subtract all the elements that Suss had previously established in his own routine. The song. The stool. Producing the cards named in the lyrics, etc.
- What are you left with?

A mediocre-at-best Ambitious Card routine done in front of a camera (which sadly only magnifies the sloppy technique).

So again, what is Fawn trying to claim? Obviously not Suss’ elements, as he clearly had precedence. So does he want us to marvel at his Tilt or break-getting abilities? I hope not.

Even if we were to pretend that Fawn developed his act independently, Suss still has precedence. I would get laughed out of the room if I said, “Well, it’s obvious to show two cards as one, so I’m going to claim the Double Lift.” Suss was there first and his groundwork should be appreciated, plain and simple. Let’s face it, it’s easy to pick apart individual parts: “Suss wasn’t the first to use a stool,” “It’s an obvious song to use for a card act,” (EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight, by the way; that’s what’s so great about seeing hinds), “Fawn didn’t use a card sword,” etc., but ANY original act can be picked apart if it’s broken down to small enough bits. If we started viewing every element in isolation from each other, there would be no such thing as originality. They say, “The sum is greater than its parts,” for a reason. We need to recognize the people who make sums. We need to recognize Suss Reven’s contributions.

And for those who claim, “But.. but… the moves are all different!”Let’s look at it another way: if Fawn came out and performed a manipulation act almost move for move with what Suss had performed – but WITHOUT the music, stool, etc. – no one would have blinked an eye (or is it “blunk” an eye?). I’m sure even Suss would admit that his moves were standard. Because that’s not the point. The point is how he put it all together and made the magic relevant. And that’s what Fawn appropriated.

If FISM is granting awards for this type of magic, I think I might enter in Blackpool 2012 doing a one-handed card trick, shouting, “I can’t do it any slower!” (in Spanish, of course). But to show the judges how original and creative I am, I won’t do Oil & Water. It will be an Ace Assembly. And it will be AWESOME!

The sad part about the whole thing is that Fawn’s act (with all of Suss’ elements intact) is actually pretty good. And all of this controversy could have been avoided if he had just been open from the beginning, acknowledging that it’s a cool adaptation of Suss’ act.

Because that’s what it is.

Tyler Wilson

Hey Guys,

This is just a little heads up to anyone out there who is planning on marketing a Colour Change any time soon: www.thesaurus.com

It’s a nifty service that allows you to find plenty of descriptive words to use in your ad copy. Ya know, other than “visual.” And for those of you who have already marketed a Colour Change as “visual,” you can use the website’s useful cousin, www.dictionary.com to find out how you most likely misused the word.

I’ve had this pet peeve for quite some time (and from reading Darwin Ortiz’s books, he seems to have similar views), but what prompted this Clog post is Apollo Robbins’ new change, The VCR Change. It is touted as a “highly visual change.” Please go watch the video and tell me if that change is in any way shape or form, visual. Let alone “highly.”

Don’t get me wrong, the change looks wonderful and is uber-fooling, but the card is turned face down, and then face up again. That is exactly as visual as the Glide. Would you call the Glide “highly visual”? I thought not.

But of course, Robbins’ change is not alone. Many changes fall into this trap out of fear that not being “the most visual Colour Change EVER!!!” somehow means it’s not good. I genuinely don’t care if the change isn’t as visual as some others out there; there are PLENTY of other considerations when selecting the right Colour Change (or heck, any move for that matter), so please sell me on what the change IS and has to offer, rather than some make believe adjectives that sound cool and cliché.

Lets expand our vocabulary, lexicon, and vernacular (see how fun it is to use www.thesaurus.com ?).

Tyler Wilson

We asked Simon Aronson to list the 5 mistakes that magicians make while presenting magic. In Simon’s words:

1. Not making the effect clear.
If the audience is to appreciate that “magic” has happened, they first have to feel confident that they understood what has occurred.  If what you did was confusing, or furtive, or complicated, or made too many demands on their attention, they won’t follow or appreciate the effect.

2. Not emphasizing the impossibility of what you’ve accomplished.
The spectator needs to appreciate the challenge conditions, the elimination of any possible cause, and the fact that what he saw does violate the laws of physical and mental nature.

3. Not keeping an appropriate pace.
If your pace is too slow, boredom settles in, and minds and attentions wander.  If the pace is too fast, eyes can’t follow and minds lose track.

4. Not maintaining the spectator’s interest.
Your patter should have a hook that catches and holds your spectator’s interest, or appeals to her imagination. Avoid clichés, hackneyed comedy, and repetition. Cover any dead time with engaging lines.

5. Not being likable.
The spectator’s main reaction will depend on how they feel toward YOU.  If they enjoy your personality, they’ll relax, work with you, feel comfortable and non-challenging, and give you a break.  If they dislike you, they’ll be stand-offish, challenging, heckling, and suspicious. Your eye contact, smile, warmth, self-effacing nature and respect for the spectator himself establish a basic bond.

6. Not making the magic memorable.
Make it personal to your spectator (use her name, her borrowed object, her birth date, or do it in her hands). Or create an “impossible object” and give it to her as a souvenir. You want the spectator to remember this impossible event, long after it’s past.

7. Not being able to count to 5.

This two-part essay is for Clog readers who, like me, are fans of both magic and film, and who are curious about where the two genres intersect.

Watching a magician and watching a film aren’t such different experiences. Both require a willing suspension of disbelief. Whether a Star Destroyer emerges from light speed or a quarter from your ear, we celebrate the escape, the deception. But film and magic are more than theoretically tied. Both have ancestral and modern day connections. From turn-of-the-century magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès and his creation of special effects to modern maestro John Malkovitch in this year’s The Great Buck Howard, it’s hard to separate magic from movies. But despite the frequent cross-pollination of the forms, films on magic are tricky to pull off, particularly when decision makers are non-magicians.

Acting Magical

The famous French conjurer Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin said, “A magician is really an actor playing the part of a magician.” It stands to reason, then, that a film actor would be an actor playing the part of a magician playing the part of an actor playing the part of a magician. Deception abounds, and few are up to the task.

Most actors overplay their magician-roles in a narrow effort to emulate the mannerisms and articulation of magicians onstage. Actors and directors too often forget that we magicians are ordinary humans perfectly capable of conversing without spastic eyebrow activity or hand flourishes. Most onscreen magicians deliver dialogue on and offstage with the same melodramatic inflection. And why can’t a magician survive a scene on or offstage without doing a simple trick?

Magicians are played as archetypes rather than real people. They’re mostly foils for other characters, inserted for sheer variety or a splash of mystery. Rarely has a film explored the magician as human, and so magic characters continue to be defined by their work rather than their personalities. (Contrast the hollow magicians in The Prestige with the perfect, perfect House of Games, where we’re treated to a host of real folks, and how they act on and off the job.)

The Pitfalls of Magic

All too often, professional magicians watch their Hollywood counterparts and think, Oh, please-not another top hat. When non-magicians write about magic, the scripts usually degenerate into the same tired clichés: characters (and audiences) wondering what is real and what is illusion, magic tricks performed while lives are at stake, and the venerable rabbit in the hat. And, perhaps because magicians are a secretive group, famously loath to reveal their modus operandi, screenwriters rarely portray magicians as the craftsmen they are. When the smoke clears and the mirrors are removed, we are inevitably left with a magician character who actually possesses real powers.

The reason so many magic films duplicate these same plot conventions is simple: the writers aren’t magicians. Wikipedia and the local library provide interesting anecdotal material, but screenwriters have largely failed to get under the skin of a magician or penetrate our secretive fraternity. The viewpoint is always from the outside looking in, trying to understand magic in terms of the audience.

But there are successes. John Fisher’s The War Magician was a best-selling book in 1983 and it has been optioned as a film. Here Fisher recounts the (generally) true story of how magician Jasper Maskelyne helped avert a major battle in Africa with magic principles. But we’re treated to Maskelyne’s ingenuity in applying magic to his role as a World War II general, and the story will translate perfectly to the screen (rumored to star Geoffrey Rush and Tom Cruise). Look forward to The War Magician.

Special Effects

Rarely is the craft of magic featured on the silver screen. Instead, directors feature magic’s ugly cousin-the special effect. The result is always a feat that looks like a special effect. Though you may not know how magic effects are done, you can probably detect when a magic trick is done and when you’ve been duped by CGI. The magic tricks in most films feel like outtakes from the Spiderman franchise.

But magicians can’t complain about CGI. After all, they brought special effects to the screen. French stage magician Georges Méliès directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, including A Trip to the Moon (you know the one…where the human-faced moon gets a bullet-shaped space capsule in his eye). Most of his films exhibit magic tricks-animated furniture and disappearing ladies, and his mastery of misdirection and surprise informed his filmmaking style. He pioneered multiple exposures, time lapses, invisible splicing, dissolves, and manual coloration, all of which were new ways to achieve classical magic plots. Today, we understand Méliès’ tricks as a simple snip of celluloid, but at a time when the Lumière brothers were screening one-minute films of factory workers, Méliès was making inspired shorts with inexplicable events beyond the audience’s scope of imagination.

Méliès’s life story has a somber ending. He died penniless and unappreciated because he never believed magic could be woven into story. Méliès’s shorts depicted magic tricks as what they were to him: drawing room amusements meant only to deceive and entertain. He never believed magic could hold an audience’s attention intellectually, so his shorts were candy for the eyes, nonsensical but impressive magic of only a visual nature. As such, his films were steamrolled by more ambitious, substantial epics.

Next week, I’m going to provide a survey of some magic films I enjoyed (and some that I didn’t)… so  come back then to follow along and get your Netflix on.

Since we launched the Cardfolio, we’ve been noticing a weird trend: celebrities everywhere have been doing everything they can to get hold of them. Apparently they need to write down their ideas about card tricks just as much as we do. To prove it, here are some photos that we’ve noticed recently in the international press:

Weird, huh? We couldn’t make this stuff up. It seems that the Cardfolio is now the world’s coolest accessory.

Quick—what’s the greatest magic trick of all time? Not fair, you answer, because magic is an art, and art can’t be comparatively rated. You’re right, of course. Trying to create a list of the “best” magic tricks a futile exercise.

But that’s exactly what I was asked to do. And I accepted.

Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir (of the New York Times) have coauthored a new collection—The Final Four of Everything—and it drops today (May 5^th) at bookstores worldwide. And the 13^th list in the book is my contribution: Best Magic Tricks.

The concept of the book is bold; this from the back cover: “The Final Four of Everything celebrates everything that’s great, surprising, or silly in America, using the foolproof method of bracketology to determine what we love or hate-and why.”

The authors approached me about compiling a “bracket” (think March Madness Final Four) of the 32 best magic tricks. I had to whittle the list down to the top four and eventually choose the “best” magic trick of all time.

But is there a “best” magic trick? How could, say, a card trick be better or worse than an illusion? And what is a magic trick anyway? Is escapism fair game? What about stunts? And how about the exposure issue? Merely listing these tricks might pave an obvious path for googlers to discover the methods.

But as futile and crass as the notion of a “best” magic trick seemed, I accepted for three reasons. First, I licked the exposure issue. I made the editors agree that I would only describe the tricks, and often not call them by their actual names (for example, “Card Warp” became “Turning a Card Inside Out” by Roy Walton). Second, I came to realize that, somewhere in this ranking process was an important lesson on the impact of magic and how it is perceived. Third, it would be fun. I mean, we all do it for movies, music, and girls we’ve dated—why would ranking magic tricks be any less interesting?

This is my introduction from The Final Four of Everything:

Tom Robbins said it best: “Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.” Ranking magic isn’t any easier. But we can all agree about what makes magic great: the illusion of impossibility. Anything impossible is considered: telepathy, telekinesis, and unexplainable escapes are all fair game. Tricks that are topical rank high, but timeless tricks rank higher. Believable tricks are preferred, and above all else, we are in search of memorable, meaningful magic.

So what is the top memorable, meaningful magic trick? You’ll have to check out the book! But here’s a sneak peek at my top four:

• Sawing through a Woman
• The Bullet Catch
• Human Levitation
• Vanishing the Statue of Liberty

Disagree? That’s what makes this interesting. I’ve shared an advance copy of the book with friends and family, and it makes for great debates, whether it’s about famous bald guys, best romantic films, or the best rollercoasters. And the offical website, www.bracketsmackdown.com allows you to create your own brackets.

The book can be previewed on amazon, here: http://www.amazon.com/Final-Four-Everything-Mark-Reiter/dp/1439126089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241534624&sr=8-1

Special thanks to my consultants Stephen Minch, Rod Doiron and Tom Cutts.

“I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident – almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.” –Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was one of the most creative inventors ever to grace this world. He knew that ideas wouldn’t just pop into his head, but that he had to go in search of them. The fact that his inventions revolutionised the world (many of them even before he was 30 years old) has always inspired me to read about his ideas and work ethics.

One of the most important things we can take from Edison is his notebooks: he religiously wrote down every single idea that he had. He started recording his ideas in 1871, two years after becoming a professional inventor and was no slouch in keeping them up to date. After he died, 3,500 notebooks (spanning an estimated 9 million pages) of his ideas and correspondence were found in his homes and offices.

Edison realised something extremely important about creativity: a good idea comes from tens, possibly hundreds or thousands of bad ideas. Whenever an idea failed, he would look at the reasons for the failure and try again, putting into practice what he had just learnt. Most importantly though, he’d write down the idea and why it had failed.

When he did find the perfect solution to a problem (perhaps that’s not the correct wording – I’m not sure that there actually is a perfect solution to any problem), he would look back at other unsolved solutions and see if that would provide further inspiration. If Edison was ever uninspired, he would also look back at his old ideas and attempt to retrospectively solve a problem that he has previously been able to devise a solution for.

What can magicians learn from this? Firstly, we should understand that no idea is a bad one as it may eventually good idea. Secondly, we should realise that however few ideas we have, we must always write them down for two reasons: to remind ourselves of those ideas and to allow us to look back and failed solutions and find a fix for them.

Notebooks are an important tool and I think all magicians would benefit spending time writing one; even if they don’t consider themselves “creative”.

It’s time to pull that old apparatus out of your dresser drawer, Cloggers! I’ve spent the last month writing this post. Every hour that has past, every minute, every second has been dedicated to bringing you this sensational list of new uses for those old props. The truth is, folks, I just wrote this five minutes ago but don’t let that dampen your mindset. You don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to what these legends had to say:

If it weren’t for Rich Aviles’ Modern Uses for Classic Apparatus I wouldn’t be where I am today. Canada.—Jay Spankey

At first glance, I was puzzled. But after a few more glances and a wink, I was sold!—Daniel Garcia-Mendez-Aviles

Now I have so many new uses for my favorite apparatus! Thanks, Rich!—Jenna Jameson

Let’s get started:

Zombie Ball (and foulard)
The foulard makes a great blanket. However, the Zombie Ball is not a great pillow.

Vanishing Jet
Keep the jet. Don’t vanish it.

Paul Fox cups
Use for drinking.

Dancing Cane
Also known as Walking Cane.

Milk Pitcher
Water, Tea, Kool-aid Pitcher.

Folding Coin
Use as a real coin in a vending machine (I have accidentally tested this, and it works).

Duck Bucket
I guess you could use it to hold water, or anything, but please stop putting ducks in buckets!

Silk Hankerchiefs
Wipe your nose.

Himber Wallet
Show your wallet empty when someone asks to borrow money.

Squared Circle
Can be used as a magic trick to fool people. Just kidding.

Egg Bag
Click here

Thumbtip
Condom? You’re right, the thumb tip is too big.

Dove Pan
Cook dinner

Magic Wand
Backscratcher

The list keeps going but the caffeine is frittering away and I’m beginning to realize how incredibly absurd this post is. So here I stop. You’re welcome.

I recently lied to you. I told you that there are no facts in magic. There are actually lots of facts in magic. For example, here are some proven facts for you:

I’ll be back with more facts soon!