The final day’s first session of The Essential Magic Conference was hosted by Max Maven

Interestingly we were told during this session that the final of todays session will be open to ALL, but will feature no explanations, We’ll bring you more on that after the next session.

Finn Jon was first up on this session talking through his style of impromptu magic, he was explaining about being able to do magic anywhere with anything, firstly he demostrated a spinning hover card with a borrowed credit card before ’smoking the credit card’.

Finn Jon then when into idea talking mode, rolling out idea after idea on magic, it was great to watch, multiply balls, cut and restored string, before moving onto some wonderful principals on producing tennis balls..

He was rolling out ideas so quick it was hard to keep up and soak them in, but in a good way, all the contents of a 2 hour lecture in 20 mins! (more…)

Day Two’s third and last session of The Essential Magic Conference was hosted by Stan Allan.

Marco Tempest was the first speaker of this session, and was talking about online magic.

He talked about his initial YouTube Videos, and how the videos he filmed with his mobile phone started to go viral, and how they spiralled to hugh viewing figures. Marco explained how these ‘free’ videos provided him with the ability to connect to a huge audience, and opened the door to sponsorships and product placement videos.

Marco really is an authority of the use of magic videos on sites such as YouTube, and it was great to hear him impart some really excellent advice on its use. He finished the set with his wonderful augmented reality based effect (the below was the preview he put on youtube of version 1)

Max Maven took to the stage next to give a wonderful talk on who he considered was the first close up magician. It’s always a pleasure listening to how Max works out all the reasoning of something to reach a single answer. He looked at the facts in his opinion of what was ‘close up magic’, and what constituted a ‘close up performance’, the contract with an spectator, the working space of the performance. It was an interesting journey along Max’s thinking, and, who was the first closeup magician? well, maybe you should sign up to the convention and find out..

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Many thanks to Paulo Abrantes for letting us use these wonderful photos from Essential Magic Conference

EMC Day one

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.

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. (more…)

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.

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. (more…)

The first day one of the Essential Magic Conference was, from the exit poll of the attendee’s was somewhere between ‘Fantastic’ and ‘Epic’.

The ground breaking conference was the worlds first internet hosted conference for magicians. Many people wondered how something like this would work, would 33 performers in a studio, with an internet audience really play well? Would we be viewing jumpy, pixelated video content? and would anyone actually turn up?

Thankfully, and completely to the credit of the organisers, the event has already been an outstanding success. Yesterdays first session lasted just an hour, and was the first of the three daily sessions, over three days.

Luis de Matos welcomed us all to the historic event, before Eric Mead, Ponta the Smith and Dani DaOrtiz presented either talks, or performances for the audience.

Dani DaOrtiz especially was extremely good from my point of view, and performed a wonderful effect with its roots deep in a laymans tricks, which, presented well, could be a real fooler. Ponta the Smith I think suffered a little from the lighting in the studio, but was good nether the less.

Session two was hosted by Topas who introduced Gaetan Bloom, Helder Guimarães, Stan Allen, Marco Tempest, Barry and Stuart, Carlos Vaquera and Gazzo

The last two hour session of the day hosted by Eric Mead featured Mike Caveney, James Freedman, Max Maven, Apollo Robbins, Richard McDougall, Paul Kieve, and finally Lennart Green.

One word really describes the first day… stunning… and we’ll say that twice.. stunning..

The on demand videos of the first day are (as yet) not uploaded, however, talking with the organisers, they have send they will be up soon, and are currently being converted.

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.