dgmagic - UK magic blog by magician Dan Gifford

A couple of weeks ago, I had great pleasure in seeing the lecture of Jim Pace at the Leicester Magic Circle.

Jim is an experienced close-up magician from the US who was touring the UK with his lecture, leading up to the Blackpool convention last weekend.

He demonstrated a number of great effects obviously born from experience in real world situations. In particular, there was a great effect where he borrows a napkin from a table and produces a drink from beneath it. Hmmm, so what? Well the drink belongs to one of the people at the table!

As a bonus, we were also introduced to Dennis Friebe, a young magician who is helping Jim out on his lecture tour. Dennis showed us some of his ideas, which were very well thought out and effective.

You can visit Jim Pace’s website at www.jimpacemagic.com (he sells some great items) and Dennis Friebe’s site at: www.dennisfriebe.com.

At the weekend, I was working at a restaurant and performing Crazy Man’s Handcuffs, an effect where elastic bands apparently melt through each other.

While talking to the people at the table, it emerged that they had seen another magician perform a magic trick with elastic bands a couple of weeks before. From their description, and reading between the lines a little, it was exactly the same trick. However, the audience saw my version as something different.

Fortunately, the other magician and myself have each developed our own angle and presentation for a pretty standard effect. Even though the spectators actually saw the same thing happening, the presentation and routines made it seem different.

Unfortunately, a lot of magicians don’t do this. Too many perform effects exactly as described in the instructions or exactly like another magician does, which is shame.

You need to add a bit of yourself to what you perform and try to find a unique way of presenting your effects. Otherwise you look just like the last guy.

Thanks to everyone at Thames Valley Magicians Guild for the warm welcome on Wednesday night.

I was there presenting my close-up magic lecture ‘High Impact Magic’ (you can find out more about my lecture here), which I think went down well. We’ll see if anyone comments on this post.

If any of the magicians there on Wednesday is reading this, the notes for my business card production effect are available on this page. I’d welcome any feedback on the write up and whether it makes sense or not.