Magic Reports
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Just an early heads up, I will be attending the above convention, and will be live-blogging the events I attend for Magic Convention Guide I will still post short posts here (probably just the first parts of each post) with links across to each post at MCG, so you will be able to find the reports over there. Thanks to Andrew Webb for letting me do this, it looks like a great week and an excellent and packed programme I just hope I can keep up!
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Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday was another early start but what a lecture. FISM Card Champion Helder Guimaraes explained three blockbuster effects. He started with a great visual transposition, similar in style to the Daley effect but with two of the aces isolated in a glass, which changed places with the aces on the table. Cards, Signatures and Glasses was his version of a technicolour cards-across plot, with a very clean handling based on David Regal’s with no technical moves he caused two signed red cards to jump across to a blue packet, again the packets being isolated in wine glasses and held by two spectators.
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Sunday, February 24, 2008
Saturday started with a lecture from Martin Sanderson, pretty standard stuff but all done very neatly in a commercial way, Ambitious Card, Coin under Watch, Chop Cup, Bill in Kiwi and Martins Little Sausage which is his take on ring flight, using a stuffed dog, where the ring ends up on the collar.
David Solomon was excellent as expected, he was showing items from his new book, his take on Peter Kane’s Gypsy Curse, his new packet trick Knaves Gone Wild, Mexican Poker which is a great 10 card poker deal of the non-jonah variety.
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Saturday, February 23, 2008
After a wander around the dealers it was time to start with the lectures. First up was David Sousa, maybe I had high expectations having read about his red envelope act but this was possibly not the best way to start the convention. It could have been an interesting lecture in the right setting, but to 400 people in the Spanish Hall it was lost. He basically talked about making sure you can be seen on stage, especially with manipulation.
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Arrived at Blackpool, rained hard on the way, just checked in, staying across the road from The Ruskin and round the corner from the winter gardens. Just about to go and register and have a look round dealers before the list of lectures start, will try and get to them all (I will miss the close-up which I do most years anyway) and will hopefully report back later. Just grabbing a sandwich and coffee in hotel room, and typing this on the EEE thanks to somebody’s open router (not paying 10/24hr for hotel wifi, when will hotels learn that we expect free wifi now it should be as part of your experience as getting a TV and coffee facilities!
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Sunday, May 13, 2007
“From the hottest new British comedians Mitchell and Webb and the creators of the award-winning ‘Peep Show’ comes MAGICIANS. Subscribe now to the official podcast for all the best previews, interviews and behind the scenes exclusives. Lifelong friends Harry and Karl (David Mitchell and Robert Webb) are the greatest magic double act in the country. But after a guillotine illusion goes horribly and spectacularly wrong, their friendship and their careers are finished.
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Sunday, May 13, 2007
London, 09 May 2007
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Friday, August 18, 2006
FISM 2006 Contestant Scores [PDF]: link to a PDF of the final scores of the contestants, makes for some interesting comparisons!
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Friday, August 11, 2006
Sue-Anne’s FISM 2006 Competion Reports are up on hers and Tim’s blog, go and read it from their point-of-view, plus all the stage competitors that didn’t appear here!
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Sunday, August 6, 2006
For photos of the event, in case you missed it we now have 200 photos in our FISM 2006 Flickr Set.
Vista Photo Agency have been posting the official ones.
Jorgen Yng from Stockholm has posted his set.
Fotograf Gomer also have their set. Andy Reay has also posted some of his photos to Flickr.
Naquada’s Flickr Set and also a group set up on Flick for FISM 2006 which I will be adding some of my photos too, if you have any to add please join the group.
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Sunday, August 6, 2006
Grand Prix Stage - Pilou - France
Grand Prix Close-up - Rick Merrill - USA
Manipulation:
1st: Dai Binchun - China
2nd: David Soysa - Portugal
3rd: Arthur Trace - USA
General Magic:
1st: Eun Gyeol Lee - Rep. of Korea
2nd: Die Zauderer - Germany
3rd: Dion - Netherlands
Micro Magic:
1st: Martin Eisele - Germany
2nd: Shawn Farquhar - Canada
3rd: David Stone - France
Card Magic:
1st: Helder Guimaraes - Portugal
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Sunday, August 6, 2006
Saturday was the last offical FISM day and started for me with a lecture from Gaetan Bloom, he started with a trick using an apple combined with the paddle move. Then onto using Salami for a Biting the Coin type effect. Then he showed Quarte his trick with a slate and playing cards, where he has predicted which four cards will be chosen from a suit. He then showed us a few quick ideas, how to crush a cigarette packet smaller than anyone else, how to seperate ice cubes from cola, which looked very cool, with a method to match!
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Saturday, August 5, 2006
Friday was a bit more relaxed with no close-up competition to get to, it started for me with a lecture by Jahn Gallo. Jahn performed a simple bill production and then he showed us his Osaka Bill Production which allows you to produce 20-30 bills as single units. He then performed a three card monte with beer mats, his ring on rope routine and finished with a very nice simple two deck effect, where a card was chosen by two spectators from two seperate packets out of a red and blue deck, the packets placed in the pocket with the chosen card reversed, and instead of transposing the selected cards he transposed the rest of the packet.
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Friday, August 4, 2006
Just got the grand-prix finalists for the close-up from the FISM on-site message board, as follows:
Martin Eisele - Germany - Micro Magic
Shawn Farquhar - Canada - Micro Magic
Helder Guimaraes - Portugal - Card Magic
Rick Merrill - USA - Micro Magic
David Stone - France - Micro Magic
Final will take place tomorrow. Will post today’s update after the banquet!
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Friday, August 4, 2006
Thursday started off slightly later at 10:00, when I went to see the full version of the Paul Wilson presentation, as I didn’t have to duck out to line up for anything. Read yesterday’s report to see what he did, he also showed a fooling Jack Deal from Royal Road, his Fan-2-C gimmick, refried poker (his version of the Solomon/Blomberg deal). Then he talked and demonstrated card mucking and a version of a Pit Hartling trick that is on the Unreal Work DVD.
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Thursday, August 3, 2006
Wednesday started for me with a lecture by Tim Star, a swedish magician who has lived in America and is now back in Sweden. Started off with showing an empty hand and produced a silk handkerchief, and then split it into two. Repeat card to case followed along with demonstrations of a card mucking procedure. He then cleanly vanished the four aces and showed us a gimmick he had come up with to clean up lapping procedures.
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Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Today was a 9.30am start which after getting in very late/early from Tamariz the night before was a bit of a drag, but it soon picked up when the day started with a lecture by Cellini who explained his street act. He started off by explaining how he tailored his suit, then went on to explain his nuances on the Cups and Balls, Linking Rings, Salt Pour, Joe Karson’s Egg Bag, Loop Ball, Wand/Flip Stick vanish, Swallowing Cigarettes, Coin and Silk flurry and finally the Slydini Cut and Restored Rope routine.
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Tuesday, August 1, 2006
The first day of the actual convention marks the 6th Anniversary of this blog, and my 29th Birthday! And what a way to spend it… After working out a complicated system I figured I didn’t need to see Kevin James today, so I went for a wander round the dealers, picked up volume 2 of the Ascanio book, and headed for the close-up room. Like last FISM I will try and give you a brief run down of all the contestants and a little of what they did.
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Sunday, July 30, 2006
Sunday started with a continental breakfast in the hotel restaurant, then we embarked on a sight-seeing boat trip entitled under the bridges of stockholm which was an excellent way to see the islands and some beautiful buildings, we had an audio commentary for the 2-hour trip, and you can see from some of the photos how picturesque it is.
We then tested the journey to the convention center, which is easy enough for us as the central station is right outside the Radisson, we have got a train ticket for the week so you just hop on and its about 3 stops to the convention centre.
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Saturday, July 29, 2006
Well we got here, after leaving home this morning around 8:00am and its now 7:00pm Swedish time, we took a plane from Humberside, to Schipol, then from Schipol to Stockholm, a short train ride and we are in our Hotel, the SAS Radisson Viking, which has free WiFi internet, and we have a laptop, so hopefully you can expect regular postings with photos etc.! We register tomorrow and hopefully take a guided tour of Stockholm by boat, then the conference starts on Monday.
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Friday, August 1, 2003
Finally I got round to editing the photos. Monday 21st Tuesday 22nd Wednesday 23rd Thursday 24th Friday 25th Saturday 26th
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
You can download the full 7500 word report as a 60k PDF file.
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
Sadly Saturday was the last day of the convention, but I had decided to save some of the best till last.
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
Close-Up Competition 3 The third and last portion of the Close-Up competition started on the Friday morning. Before I list the competitors it may help to point out a new FISM rule. The Judges were equipped with red buttons, and if they thought the act wasn’t up to FISM standard then they could press the button, if 70% or more of judges had used the button after three minutes, then the act had to leave the stage.
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Close-Up Competition 2 The second part of the competition started early at 9.00am, necessitating me skipping breakfast as I had woken up late due to lack of sleep!
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Close-Up Competition 1 Wednesday was the first morning of the close-up competition which would see around a total of fifty acts. I will try and give a brief description from my notes for each act, which might just consist of a list of tricks, and keep it short and to the point, also I will use the same format for each contestant, listing the name, category and country.
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Monday, July 28, 2003
Turning Magic Into Gold My Tuesday started off with George Parker’s Mini Congress on Turning Magic into Gold. George spent three hours discussing his fascinating system of how to get more from your Magic. We saw him perform a few routines such as T&R sugar packet, Troy Hoosiers Charming Chinese Challenge and Three Coin Vanish and Production, followed by Ultimate 3 Fly and his version of Unequal Ropes.
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Monday, July 28, 2003
Photos On the Sunday it didn’t take us long to make the thirty minute journey to Humberside airport, and then an hour later we landed in Schiphol airport. A train and tram journey later and we ended up in Schevening, were we stayed at the aptly named BadHotel (which it wasn’t!). About an hour after that we were sat on the beach in the glorious sunshine drinking beer, the week had begun!
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Sunday, July 27, 2003
Well I am back and very tired, but very happy and magically charged! The convention was awesome I saw a lot of magic every day, and sat through all the close-up competition, most of the lectures and the gala shows etc. The only things I didn’t see were the lectures on manipulation/doves and the stage competition, so if you want to read those reports, you will have to find them elsewhere…
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