Discourse in Magic

In episode 47 we sit down with David Malek…THE KING. He’s not just the King at entertainment, but he’s also one of the most skilled card man alive today. This episode is all about maximizing your entertainment and exactly how to do that. If you know who this man it’s no surprise that David’s interest in magic stemming from gambling. It’s hard to birth card shark like this who wasn’t enthralled by gambling. The day that made it all change was when Darwin Ortiz performed at his college. That helped spike his interest in things like riffle stacking and the Zarro shuffle; moves that would inspire his work as a technician. David however is not your classic card magician. He’s not well known for his hours of book reading, or constant back and forth posts on the Magic Café, but for his wildly entertaining performances that send laypeople and magicians howling of laughter. I once watched him WHIP UP a room full of magicians. The audience that many of us consider to be the most difficult of audiences to stir up with material made for laypeople. Not only was everyone baffled by his magic, but you’ve never seen a room of people (so old) laugh and cheer soo hard! That’s exactly what we try to break down in this episode. He walks us through exactly what it takes to be a wildly entertaining performer. Think of the big names: Leonardo DiCaprio, Madonna, Prince. People that are worth even more than their paid. That’s exactly what it takes to be a top level magician as well. You need to give 200% to the stage. As prince said,” the show has it to be better than the album, is just has to”. In magic it’s the same. If video lives up to your life performance you need to become a better performer. You should be able to whip up the audience LIVE! The other tip that David gave us is to perform the same tricks over and over and over again. Why? Because it’s through repetition that you’re able to isolate the important moments, gather lines that are given to you from the crowd, and allow yourself to interact with the people around you. That’s what Copperfield does. That’s what Lance Burton does. It’s what the greats do, and there’s no way around it, so you should too! For me it’s simple. As soon as you can perform without thinking about what your next move is going to be, or what your next line is going to be, that’s when you are truly performing. Anything before that you’re still learning. If we take that mentality and apply it we could have the best 15 minute act in the world. If America’s got talent or Penn and Teller Fool uUs has taught us anything it’s that 15 amazing minutes of magic is more than all you need to be successful. (Google Steven Brundage) We also touch on the idea of what makes an exciting card effect. One of the things that David brought up was how little the effect matters compared to the personality and character of the performer. His examples of walking through how exciting his effects are: cutting cards, spelling tricks and counting packets. Tricks are said to be some of the most boring in magic. But I swear, if you watch David perform them you will agree that the entertainment value pushes his performance over the edge. His breakdown and analysis of how to be entertaining is exactly why he’s considered one of the greats. With skill matched by no one, a shtick which nobody could copy, and wisdom from years and years of time on stage. I heard incredible quote the other day “Only take advice from people who you would switch places with”. Well, I think David’s advice is priceless. Which probably tells you a lot about who I look up to as top of the line performers. If you want to get in contact with David you can head to either of these websites or what I recommend is following him on Instagram. Between the photos of people reacting, and the photos of people laughing David’s Instagram page is a great thing to see on your feed every day Contact Instagram Website DoubleGeorge.com markedcards.org

In this episode we sit down with John Guastaferro and we chat all about making your own effect awesome. John is an expert at working with different important elements and putting them together to make a beautiful trick. Since reading John’s book “One Degree” I knew that he had the right type of approach to magic. Creating beautiful masterpieces by focusing on what he knows and diving into theory, character, and branding in the process. One of the things that we chat about in the episode is the difficulty and fear of starting fresh. For me, I hate the flashing cursor on a blank screen. It makes it feel like anything you put down is wrong. John makes it very clear that he never starts fresh. By working off of what you’ve been using the last time you analyzed your magic and put pen to paper, you never have to start new. That doesn’t mean that your brand and your brand identity can’t change over time. As John explains even Instagram was once just a fun way to put a silly filter on a photo. Now, Instagram is a tool for connecting to others all around the globe in your niche! Another wildly important thing that John talks about is his constant note-taking. By making sure to take notes any time that something comes to his mind, he forget his ideas less often. By making a habit of it, you know where you keep them, how you take notes best, and you’ll be be a master in no time. He recommends things like Evernote or just the standard Apple note software because it syncs with his computer and he can make separate folders for different ideas. John also breaks down his napkin approach. It’s all about putting the characteristics down onto a napkin sized piece of paper, with either words or images so that you can better understand your brand. This was always one of my favourite parts of John’s book. My favourite magic books are all about theory. John did a great job with the theory aspect and branding in his book, and this episode! One piece of advice that he gave us was to write down effects that you like and effects that you don’t like and then try to distill why that is. It seems like all of these processes are about distilling why you like each thing, and what you want to do with that! But as always, it’s abundantly clear that you have to understand who you are before you can make the perfect effect. What that means for you is keep performing, but do a lot more writing down and breaking down of your past performances, and trying to understand who you are and what makes you special. That is the key to being a great magician. Introspective work! If you’re interested in buying either of John’s books you should head over to his website here and take a look. This weekend John is lecturing at the Blackpool magic convention, if you see him there say hi for us! We’ll be here freezing our asses off in Canada. Contact Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

Nick Wallace spills the beans on exactly how scripting a show creates an incredibly powerful experience for your audience! In this episode he breaks down exactly how he works with a director and why he would never create a show without it. Nick started off doing Fringe Festivals just like Keith Brown from Episode 38 all about Fringe shows. If you listened to that episode, you’ll remember Keith actually mentions Nick as being his inspiration for starting to do Fringe shows! Nick started off using his brother as a director for his shows, but after meeting an awesome director that he worked with in a play he decided to pair with him. He wanted to work with someone who does this professionally! He now has something that nobody else on the podcast has spoken about. Nick has a team creating his show with him! Instead of him worrying himself about every last detail, he knows that he has a support system. In fact he has both someone to make sure that what he’s putting on stage is great, and he has the motivation to be wildly prepared because he’s getting advice from a professional. I’ve always found that working with others is something that brings out the best in you, because you’re trying to show each other your best work and be the most valuable, and earn your keep. Since all magicians talk about making an experience for their audience why aren’t more of us talking to directors to make our shows? Nick takes this into his own hands. He creates a unique experience by creating a séance for his audience making sure not to overdo the magic. Instead, Nick does his best to scare his audiences, by being clear, subtle and articulate. Finally we deep dove into the topic of scripting. When you work with a director, you need to script your material. You need to have something to edit, you need to be able to execute everything that you planned. Not only is your success dependent on it, but so is your directors success. Nick scripts his entire show, memorizes it, performs it, and is not afraid to rescript, replace, or remove things altogether. Just like two months ago, when the theme was  “crafting your show”, Nick highlights most important point of all. The importance of knowing exactly who you are as a performer so that when you add new material and try to script your act, you know exactly what to do.   Contact Facebook Instagram Website

In this episode we sit down with James Harrison to talk all about the importance of your props, your identity and paying your dues. James was a special guest on the podcast because he won January’s contest. But we’ve known James for a long time. He’s been a friend of ours from Toronto* for years! James is the only pickpocket that I know in person and to tell you the truth i’ve never seen him pick a picket. I’ve only ever seen him do awesome magic (and steal a couple watches). As he expressed on the podcast he’s been trying to expand into other fields. One of the things that he wants to play with is presenting a magic show which isn’t all positive vibes. Instead James wants to experiment with different things in magic. Giving your audience different feelings. Feelings like uneasiness and feelings like not knowing if what you did was real or not. In an earlier episode Ben Train stands for the fact that one should not lead their audience to believe that they have powers which they don’t actually have. James disagrees with that in this episode since he thinks that you should put forth something and not necessarily worry about exactly how your audience perceives it.   Think back to High sSchool english class even if you read a book by an author that was still alive did you ever send an email to ask what they really meant? Of course not! Once art is created and put into the world you cannot control how people perceive it! Another thing we spoke about on the episode of the podcast was the need for originality. Do you need to have an original effect? An original method? An original premise? The answer from the episode is it depends on what you’re using it for. If you’re using it for claiming that it’s your own then you need to have your own method or at least a wildly original presentation. If you are using it as a performer and you purchased the trick it’s not the end of the world if you do what is out of the box. You should slowly make it your own instead of coming up with some convoluted garbage. Let your expirience and your character help shape it as your own.  It’s important that these questions have context. If you’re performing for your friends you can do a trick exactly the way the creator did it with the same handling and very similar pattern and that’s OK. You bought the trick and you’re allowed to do it! It’s frowned upon by the magic community, but that’s OK you’re not performing it for the magic community! What you have to think about is when you’re performing for paying audiences. If you’re performing for paying audiences then it’s OK to use the method that you bought but it’s important that eventually your presentations become personalized and unique. Don’t be the guy doing someone else’s trick with someone else’s performance for an audience that hired you! You want to be doing your unique performance for an audience that hired you. Contact Facebook Twitter Instagram Website   If you actually perform, and you want some help I have a recommendation. Join us on a 7-day Masterpiece Challenge! I want 100 people to join me on a challenge to turn a trick into a masterpiece, just head to discourseinmagic.com/masterpiece 

In episode 43 we sit with Chad Juros to tell us his story of magic. I’ll save most of the details for the episode itself, but I can provide you with a short version of Chads incredible story. Chad was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia as a child. During many of his years and months at the hospital Chads father brought magic to help take his mind off of things. That repeated itself a second round as Chad returned to the hospital a few years later.  Fast forward a few years more and Chad ended up performing magic for his father bedside in the hospital. His father was was given under a year to live after discovering brain tumors. You can imagine the heart ache that has been brought to a family, childhood cancer, and death of a parent, but Chad responds with positivity and fulfilling his fathers dying wishes to continue to spread his magic wherever he goes. With his fathers final wishes Chad builds a foundation called Spread the Magic. In it Chad is able to help struggling patients, and is able to perform magic and help kids get their mind off of the illnesses that are ailing them. Chad turns quite an eye opening story, into an inspiring piece. Most importantly he shares how he took that story and used it to drive what he does today. Using your experiences, ideas and talents to help the world are some of the best tools that you can use. In this episode we chat about the segment that he had with David Copperfield on Good Morning America. The clip is below, and I highly recommend you watch it, it compliments the episodes very well!   He’s also been on Fool Us, and yes, we attached it below   If you want to get in touch with chad feel free to contact him below on social media, from his website, or check out his new promo video! Contact Facebook Twitter Website

Welcome to our first ever live show! We invited Wes Barker, Eric Leclerc and Chris Ramsay to Toronto to record an episode but we said HEY, why don’t we invite the local magicians too. SO WE DID! And it was a blast! Take a look! from left: Jonah Babins, Chris Ramsay, Eric Leclerc, Wes Barker, Tyler Williams (Thanks to Eric Jackson for the photo) Currently if you want to see the live video from the event, you can check our Facebook page. But we’ll be taking it down shortly since Chris Ramsay is planning on releasing some footage from the event on his account, and it’ll be better than what my iphone + tripod shot. We touched on topics like interacting with you fans, managing the regular creation of content, what is good magic content, creating under a tight time frame, new ideas, clickbait magic and tons of other topics that matter to you. If you have every worried about your magic content not being good enough or not getting enough views you’ll probably enjoy the episode. More than that there’s quite a bit of jokes and antics in the episode because put these 3 guys on stage with alcohol and you get something different that on stage with a deck of cards. We dipped into all major channels from TV to Youtube, to Facebook and even into Vine for a little bit, we spent most of the time talking about Youtube. If you want to check out what these guys have been up to you, I’ll link below to some awesome videos from their accounts! Chris Ramsay Wes Barker Eric Leclerc   Leave a comment below, and let us know what you thought of the live show? Should we do a live show in your city? Let us know!

In this episode Tyler and I sit down with Caroline to chat all about everything it takes to build a community and following. Caroline Ravn is the queens of outreach. In the episode she gives us tips about how to get published in an article. Want to hear how to do it?…. You build a friendship with people in charge, you pitch them stories of your fantastic life, and you reach out to them with deadlines to take on your new stories? One more thing…. When they ask for an interview they are going to want to come to YOUR HOUSE. Make sure there are cookies in the oven. Something so simple swill translate into the best articles written about you! On top of doing a great job for print media, her social media is on point as well. Mainly Instagram. The keys to Instagram are a little bit different. Daily photos, fan engagement,  and sharing the amazing work of her peers. Hard work!! But clearly it pays off! Caroline is storming through magic and laying her path in the process! She’s seems to be doing what everyone else is doing except faster and better. Make sure to check out her social media below, particularly her Instagram! Contact Instagram Twitter Website (in english )

If you don’t know who Asi Wind is, I recommend stopping the podcast episode and checking him out. Google, or Youtube or whatever. You’ll find him.. Not only has he released incredible effects that have ROCKED the magic community like Double Exposure, Catch 23, and more recently Gypsy Queens but he is also a leading magical thinker. Thankfully I was able to spend some time with him at the 2015 Motor City Magic Convention, and Sorcerers Safari! Bot otherwise not a ton of places online to show how great his non-method brain is eh?……. ******Cue the Discourse in Magic Intro Music********* If you’re even somewhat cultured and up to date with magic and you watched the recent David Blaine special you might have seen Asi in it. Not just his face, but you could see Asi’s fingerprints in a ton of Davids work too. Especially on some late night TV, and promo for the recent special! In this episode of DIM we cover many topics but the plot that holds true for the full episode is “sincerity“. It took just one example to make it clear. To paraphrase: ‘ If you think the weight on the ink of a card isn’t an interesting plot, why do you think your audience does’. What Asi shares is that it’s important the we respect our audience. Respect them by performing things that we enjoy, and that resonate with us! People come to the theatre to see YOU and YOUR SHOW. Which means they care about what YOU are interested in. Why do an invisible deck like hundreds of others? More than anything his mentality shines through in his magic and other hobbies: “be a student forever”. If you think you know everything about magic right now, it’s time to think again. Finally Asi gives us some snips from his upcoming book. (That’s right! Asi is coming out with a book soon!). If you want to check out some of his products you can here: https://www.artofmagic.com/products/asi-wind Contact Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

If you’ve ever wondered how to get into a Fringe Festival, what it is, how to use it to make money and why you would want to do it, you’re in the right place. In episode 38 Keith Brown lays it all out for us. Fringe. What is it? Every year in cities all around the world there are theatre festivals under the “Fringe” name. It’s a festival that last typically 10-14 days with theatre shows, everything from comedy to student plays, to magic. Some of the smaller ones like Regina are 5 days, But fringe is a festival that happens all over the world! Bigger ones like Australia last a month. Best of all, the performers are either first come first serve or picked from a lottery, which means next year, you or I could have the same chances of making it as Keith If you want to figure out how to apply, or anything else that you need to know this is the official Fringe Festival website (each cities festival has their own website, but this is a great resource to find them! fringefestivals.com Also here is an AMAZING resource from a friend of Keiths: samsmullins.com Between the URL above, this episode, and the open invitation to contact Keith with any questions, you have no excuses! As Keith explains in the episode the beauty of the Fringe festival is that it’s an opportunity for you to put on show after show after show, and they cannot sensor what you do. That means that this is the time to find out if the fun art and ideas that you have in your mind produce great theatre when they come to reality. A Fringe tour is the perfect place for you to do a routine dozens and dozens of times. Keith really helps us out by holding nothing back. He’s honest about exactly what it takes. While there seems to be a sea of benefits to joining a fringe festival, like anything it requires work. Keith shows us exactly what to do, and how to engage with people at the fringe festival and invite them to your show. Most importantly he reminds us of something that is incredibly important going in. You and the other fringe performers are all on the same team. You all want to promote each others shows, you are teammates and not competitors. Having that mentality is one of the most important lessons that Keith gave us from fringe. Since such a big part of the festivals success is word of mouth, you need to be on your best behaviour, do some favours, and win some friends. They could help make or break the success of your show! If you want to check out more about Keith you can follow his website, or check him out on social media (PARTICULARLY INSTAGRAM STORIES :)) Contact Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

If you’ve ever seen anything that Chris Funk has ever done (which you probably have) you know how special what he does is. His performance and effects are like no other. His presentations are unique. They’re about himself, his past, interests and the things around him. He’s not afraid to add dynamics to the show that other people don’t: Personal stories, live music, and major theatrics. Chris funk is the master of makign a show that is reflective of himself That’s exactly what we spoke to him about in this weeks episode. When we came at the episode we were asking about how to craft a show and looking for tactics, but Chris made the truth clear. Have an amazing show, and everything else will fall into place. It seemed like every single question was answered with the same idea. Making sure that you’re show is made out of things that relate to you, describe you, and help you share your ideas. Otherwise there is no way to stand out. If you don’t know what I mean by stand out here are some of the videos that Chris Funk has starred in on TV (and now youtube) It was great because we received not only the much needed motivation to make your shows about ourselves but that he also gave us the advice about how to do that! It seems like some of the things that are at the root of all of this is scripting, effect selection, transitions, mindful marketing, originality of performance and thoughtfulness. I shall close this article with the same as the close the episode “Magic is the only talent you can buy” – Steve Martin Let’s prove him wrong shall we? As always I would love to know what you think about the episode, and share in the comments below! Contact Facebook Youtube Twitter Instagram