Featured Magic Video of the Week – David Sousa’s FISM ’09 Performance

This week’s featured magic video is from the elegant and classy David Sousa during his outstanding performance at FISM 2009. This routine is just so slick and has tons of surprises!

One Heck of a Show!

When I knew that Dan Sperry will be going to Australia for a show, I checked out some details about it. What I stumbled upon is just jaw dropping! Just imagine 7 great magicians from different genre of magic all put into one big show! The show will run for 2 hours with 20 minutes interval at the Sydney Opera House, Australia.

How I wish I could be there to watch it!

From the Sydney Opera House Home Page :

“Get ready to be blown away by the biggest, boldest and most spectacular magic show ever to be staged in Australia!

The illusionists is a world first. 7 of the greatest magicians on the planet are coming together for the first time, bringing with them the very best of their individual acts and a whole team of magical assistants. The result is

4 Tips To Take Care of Your Magic Props

Taking care of your props is very important for every seasoned magician. It doesn’t matter how many props you have or how big or small they are, the important thing is that you keep them in tip top shape.

With that, let me tell you about the story of my floating table. Perhaps it is one of my earliest expensive prop that I bought from a local magic shop. It looked nice and it could be very useful for a big show that I and my group will be doing, so I bought it without any hesitation. It was really a great piece and using it on stage was great.

After the show, I stored the table in our magic pod or what my group calls “Demaguz Bar and Cafe” Yes, we had a commercial magic place once but that’s a different story. I stored it there thinking that it would be safe. To my dismay, the table got broken into pieces.

The Blog is Back from the DEAD!

While having a sip of coffee on a rainy day, I thought of going back to blogging. I’ve been in the blogging world 2 years ago or something. You may not know it but this blog reached over 100 posts. Though some of the posts were not related to magic or entertainment, some where write ups of my random musings and whatnot. I decided to delete all the blog posts and decided to stick to the magic niche. Trust me, I really did try to work it out and even decided to get my own hosting. But my job and other stuff got the best of my time and blogging became the least of my priorities.

Hopefully this time it’ll be more active. Cheers!

Currently Fixing the Site ~ Nate Marx

Awkward!

Have you ever been at a point wherein you wanted to try something new, something that you’ve been practicing for gruesome hours  in the four corners of your room in front of the mirror and when the moment comes to test it to an unsuspecting group spectators, you just got rejected?

Being rejected is a bad feeling, in fact it is very awkward not only to magicians but to everybody else as well.

Even famous magicians get their share of rejections such as David Blaine, Criss Angel, Alonzo to name a few. Every close up magician has been in that uncomfortable situation.

Yes, you may try your newest trick to your friends and relatives but there is something unique about trying it to strangers. You will be able to feel that eagerness, the nervousness, the anxiety, the hype whenever you try it to people that you don’t know. My point of advice is that, just make sure that you’ve practiced the trick and studied it a million of times before you head out there.

Importance of Magic Study Part 1

The difference between professional magicians to semi professional or amateur magicians is that professional magicians do magic shows for a living. It’s their bread and butter that make them survive everyday. They may have the same skills but they differ when it comes to financial gain. To read more about this, you can check out Leodini’s post regarding this matter.

This articles does not intend to down throttle anyone, this is just my opinion.

The hard part of being a professional magician especially if he is just starting to do it professionally is learning the ropes of the entertainment biz. As I observed there are ‘magicians’ out there that do magic as a profession by performing at kiddie parties with little knowledge on the artform itself. Yes they can produce a cane out of thin air, a dove out of a torn newspaper and make something float but as I ventured about them, they have little consideration to ‘magic study’.

Video of the Week – Barry and Stuart’s Suicide in C Sharp.

This week’s video of the week is one of my favorites videos over at Youtube. I never get bored watching these guys perform perhaps its because of their witty and comical personalities. It’s as if these two are made for each other. Their tandem is one of the best when it comes to magic. If America got Penn and Teller, Scotland have their Barry and Stuart.

One good reason why I like this video is because they took the audience at of their comfort zone by performing something gory but in a lightly comedic manner. This video is called Suicide in C Sharp – a unique idea of using a great magical effect.

Pepper’s Ghost Illusion rocked Japan!

Those Japanese never fail to amaze me. One of the latest Jap mania is the Japanese virtual pop stars. Yes, you read it right – VIRTUAL POP STARS. But these pop stars are not being seen on TV alone but in real life, in a real environment, on a real stage and infront of real people.

This technology came from the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion which was developed by John Henry Pepper in the 1860’s. The Pepper’s Ghost technique uses a plate glass and other lightning apparatus in order to make an object appear or disappear and even make it turn into something else. This technique was used by magicians and seance performers during the olden days as if to manifest a wandering spirit. Today it is commonly used by horror houses like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

The Japanese did a lot of thinking about this idea

DVD Review: Jay Noblezada’s In the Beginning There Were Coins

[DVD DESCRIPTION (shortened)]

“Most magicians’s don’t perform a lot of coin magic. They may know a few moves, but they don’t take that next step and get to the point where coin magic is ‘go-to’ material. That’s a shame because there are so many moments each day that a little coin magic could make into memories. Coins are everywhere. To master coin magic is to have a passport to entertain at a moment’s notice, anywhere in the world.” — Jay Noblezada

My Take:

This DVD has taught me a lot for someone who is just getting into coin magic. There are a lot of reliable DVD’s out there on Coin Magic. It shows you the basic essentials of coin magic in a progressive manner. Starting from simple to more

A Creepy Card Plot

So here’s my ambitious start for natemarx blog 2.0. Let’s talk magic. I’d like to begin discussing about one of my favorite card magic plots, The Cannibal Cards. I’ve been into card magic right from the start. I guess that’s where most young and young at heart magicians begin their magic journey nowadays. Simply, because you can buy a deck of playing cards almost anywhere. Finding one isn’t that difficult.

I love classic card magic compared to the new trend of card magic nowadays that are fast and furious like most young magicians perform. I don’t intend to down throttle the fans of the Buck twins, its just that I love the Dai Vernon type of card magic. Flourishing or XCM has never been my genre.

The reason why I love this effect it’s because it portrays a slightly creepy tale of murder and deceit. It has comedy, suspense and packs a good kicker. I love effects that involve a lot of patter since it can attract your audience to be more focused and involved in what you are doing. Moreover, it explains the mystery why sometimes there are cards that are missing from the deck though the explanation itself is a presentation of a mystery.

Version 2.0

If you are an avid reader of natemarx.wordpress.com then you might have noticed how indecisive I was about my blogging. Just realized that I don’t want to go through the same trouble and effort of creating backlinks and stuff to my site in order create traffic. I’ve been in and out of the blogosphere for quite some time since I’ve been busy with my online job, my magic group and my thesis.

This time I would like to focus on this site. If you noticed, I deleted the old posts that I made. Yes it was a lot of workload but I want to have a fresh start.

This is how I start things up. I try to remove the old stuff and go with the new ones. This blog will have a new appeal to it since I will be concentrating more on my passion and that is magic. Changes will gradually be implemented and new stuff will be introduced to give it a more magical appeal.

Hope you guys could bear with me.