Day Two’s Second session of The Essential Magic Conference was hosted by Marco Tempest, and started with Carlos Vaquera talking about something I always struggle with, ‘Practise’. He talked about how you can make the best use of practise, how to focus, and manage the obstacles that get in the way of practise.

He talked about breaking up your practise time, and how to focus, talking round the idea of almost having a methodology to your practise, somewhat akin to sports, visualising the moves, the effect, linking the moves with the words. His talk was interesting and something I’ll look forward to reviewing on the DVD and on-demand to fully understand and try some of the ideas.

Apollo Robbins was next up, walking through a very nice and clean coin production.

The nice thing about this was that he did it close up with a spectator (as above), and seemingly showed his hands back and front empty whilst moving theirs. A short, but nice section.

David Britland, covered for me what was possibly one of my favourite parts of this second session.

David spoke about an unseen, and unreleased TV program called ‘The Mind of Dr Frost’ a program that starred TA Waters as a physiatrist in what David described as a ‘Hannibal Lecter does magic’ program.

He talked about how the show was presented to the BBC in the UK, and how for a number of reasons, it was never shown or commissioned. The EMC registrants were treated to a showing of the pitch show, a wonderful production in which it was a joy to see TA Waters perform.

As a bonus, registrants were told that they would also get a copy of the show in their DVD pack, as well as the full routine for one of the effects on the show. An extremely good talk from David.

De’Vo Vom Schattenreich continued to keep his identify secret, as he walked the attendees through his De’Ring routine and effect.

A simple but visually very strong instant ring to finger. A fairly short set, but well explained and presented.

Paul Kieve covered ‘Five tricks you’d never see in a magic show..’

Opening by reading a number of theatrical descriptions from The Invisible man, The Witches of Eastwick and others, scened that would be extremely hard to create without special effects on video, let alone on stage.

He talked through these effects, how to create an invisible man, how an actor could be visibly impaled on stage, and how and actress could vomit feathers and cherry pips on stage night after night. It was great to hear how the roots of magic had been used to create theatrical effects that weren’t specifically magic tricks, but enhanced a stage show production.

Dani Daortiz returned to run through a wonderful card set, including a lovely triumph routine that was a fooler

Again, excellent presentation and performance with a front row seat!

Another panel discussion then followed, this time around ‘FISM – The mother of all competitions’

The panel consisted of Topas, Helder Guimarães, Richard MacDougall and Eric Eswin, and was moderated by Max Maven.

Richard MacDougal talked about the opportunities that came from competing and being placed at FISM, and Eric Eswin talked about raising the standard of the FISM competitors.

Topas talked about whether FISM should look to link itself with ‘well known’ magicians that are better known to the public, and the attendees discussed if FISM should look to what EMC have done with broadcasting on a global basis.

Closing the session was Guy Hollingworth, who could really only close this session with one effect, Reformation.

The visual signed torn and restored card effect that started a new era of torn and restored cards was a pleasure to watch up close. A wonderful end to the second session, before the evening starts.

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.