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Essential Magic Conference Day Two – Session One

July 16th, 2010 by Magic Convention Guide

Day Two’s first session of The Essential Magic Conference started with Luis De Matos talking about what called ‘Fly Paper’, that is, his talk was on the methods, andterms of how broadcasters measure how TV is being watched by viewers.

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Now this may only really apply if you are on TV, but, nether the less I did find it interesting to see how much detail is monitored on how, frame by frame, broadcasters measure a programs ratings and audience view figures.

Luis went on to talk about how he purchased viewing figures of each TV appearance and program he was in, and, adjusted his set, building on this to be able to create viewer rating based letters and references to broadcasters.

One interesting point was around ‘Framability’ or ‘Framable Frame’, in a nutshell, if someone if flicking channels, and sees one, or two frames of your act, how likely is it to hold them on that channel?

Interesting things to at least think about.

Next up was Topas, his session called ‘Ideas Society’ covered the fact that there are new ideas in magic, and saying there aren’t is basically not thinking. He talked through different ideas of using old objects with old techniques, old objects with new techniques, and new objects, with new techniques.

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He finished with using an old object, a pack of playing cards, but with a ‘new’ technique, riffling, shuffling and flicking them, in time to music, to simulate the sound of musical instruments, as alwasys with Topas, entertaining, clever, and fresh.

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Miguel Angel Geas was up next, performing a lovely coin set, and coins to glass, before Paulino Gill took to the studio floor to talk about Magic Festivals, Portugal having over 131 magic festivals for the public, Paulino talked about how these happen, and the background to them. Something thats interesting to me as a project, the idea of ‘magic festivals’, the talk was good, and something we’ll be discussing more with Paulino.

Ponta The Smith ran through some truly lovely coin moves in detail, because of language they were mainly explained visually, with Ponta apparently watching the studio monitors, and directing the camera rather than watching his hands to give us an excellent slow, clear view of each move.

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Each move was polished, and was completely convincing, and is something really worth looking forward to on the ‘on demand’ and DVD’s when they are sent out. He ended to rapturous applause from the other lecturers, and virtual applause from the attendees.

Anton Lopez performed a set, producing a small frog from card case, card changes and vanishing the frog to have it appear back in the deck bizarrely, a very different route, well done, but with some flashes due to the camera angles.

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It was well received by the live and virtual audiences, although did prompt some questions in the Q&A about the use of animals in magic.

Jason England closed the session with a good talk, and demonstration of a number of gambling controls, moves, and methods.

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We are proud to be a media partner of the Essential Magic Conference that is taking place July 15-16-17 2010. The Essential Magic Conference is the world’s first web conference for magicians. No Hotels to worry about, no flights to miss.. just 33 speakers over 3 days of conference streamed live worldwide.

You can find out more about it over at the official Essential Magic Conference site. You can also read all our coverage on the Essential Magic Conference.