Day 10 - 17. 6. 2015

[Ondřej Pšenička]

Warm-up in the morning was again held by Martin. David wasn’t there yet.
Then Tom lectured first on Slydini’s motion vectors and then talked a little more on structure.
Oh, I forgot to mention what Johan gave us as a 10 minute assignment after the warm-up. To write a review of a show you will open in exactly one year. That was pretty uncomfortable to do. Of course I want it to be great, but I also don’t like raving about myself. So yes, that was a good exercise.

Here is a summary of what Tom was teaching.
You can’t see everything at the same time. You see it in an order that was defined by Slydini’s motion vectors.
People will always look at an object in motion rather than a still one, at the one going toward the audience rather than away from them, at the one going upward rather than downward.
Slydini thought that an object going up can’t be canceled by anything. Tom says that it can be canceled by an object moving up from a higher place or in front of it.

Then we got an assignment on structure. Me, René, and Lauri. We did a scene at a bus stop - a guy asking for a cigarette and a lighter. We used the vectors as well. It was fun.

After lunch we continued working on our projects for tomorrow. Johan bought some hand puppets and the little red riding hood he got is so much better than my princess. I am not sure if I already mentioned that holding 6 cards in my mouth for a few minutes is not very practical so I had to come up with a new method. I tried quite a few things and hopefully came up with a working method. We’ll see if it really works tomorrow.

Then I continued preparing for my close-up show at The Magic Bar and I had to skip the mini-lectures again. And this time even a Skype lecture with Will Houstoun. The Magic Bar was waiting for me.

I got there at 5 when a group of potential guests was already peeking in. They were from Florida and they had a little princess with them so I knew I won’t be able to use some originally intended words in my show. They went for a little sightseeing tour first. I am starting to think that the space I dedicate to some not so relevant things in this journal is wasted. I think I’ll be more brief.

So that night was supposed to be weak - not many people. Arne told me that he thought we are going to be there alone. It was about 22 people in the dining room and later about 15 magicians in the other room. We decided that I’ll do 2 shows so everybody gets a chance to see it.

The first one was not so great. For the Florida guys, Bob and Chris from Australia. About 4 Swedish guests and Erik and Axel and a few others. It went well besides the first and the last trick. The first one was the Personal Card and I just couldn’t set it up right. I had to go through the deck 3 times to set it up correctly. And then the triathlon. To hope to succeed in classic forcing at least 2 of 3 selected cards when you’re not great in doing a classic force is in the very least very brave - or foolish. So I continued forcing cards and failing in forcing cards until there was about 7 cards selected and I forgot who I forced the right cards onto. So I started fishing. By revealing the other cards. Asking people who picked a heart, low heart and so on. And in the end when I was down to those two force cards and after the revelation of the first one I started counting cards for ACAAN since I already had a number from someone. And then I realized that the 10 of diamonds have already been revealed and what’s even better that when I got to 49, it was the 6 of clubs. So I asked him what was his last name. He said PAUL. And I thought, Dammit, that’s not going to work. And the little princess started spelling it as Powell, that felt better, so I started dealing backwards and the Ace of Diamonds fell on the last letter. Good save, but a terrible feeling.

Then the Australians came, Bob and his wife Chris. He gave me his business card - he was a magician. Travelling from Australia, through China, across Russia to Sweden, and further down through Prague to Croatia and then to Rimini, Italy. He talked about street magic, performing at the Red Square and being taken away by police, about FISM Beijing being their first and I told him about the course and he didn’t know who Tom Stone is. He confused him with David Stone. So when I found that out I put him in a drawer with average, mediocre magicians. Anyway, I introduced them to the other magicians in the next room and went on reseting my show.

The second show was for the wizards, the first row was Simon, Alexandra, David S, Jerome, and PFS friends Amanda and Guillermo, then in the second row it was Denis, his wife, Mattias, Nicholas and his other friend Hampus and in the back Inga and Xoaher. And other magicians like Balazs, John-Henry, Jacob, even Arne came to see the show. And it was great, It went so well that I decided to end with chaos and not do the triathlon. I finished the show and since the energy was so good, I decided to perform the Industrial Revelation that I felt at my belt. I started putting the coin through and it wouldn’t go. I tried harder and nothing, so Is started thinking what else could I perform? And then I just asked Jerome to tell a joke and went to the bar to reset.
Then I came back starting it with the same patter - this time the whole thing the way it should be. And while they were sending the block around I decided to force two cards, do ACAAN and reveal the prediction in the paper crane. It was logical. It didn’t occur to me as I forgot to introduce the 3D deck. But the number and the crane were already in and since I forced both of the cards immediately, it was perfect. The effects were great. And in neither case I had to do epitome, I got busy with other cards the first time and it would just mess up the timing the second time.
The second show felt very good - people liked it, magicians liked it and I was relieved.

I also did some tablehopping, I remembered the good old Daryl’s card stab, which is still a very effective trick. Ten minutes before the close-up show I decided to do the hallelujah rope routine on stage as a little pre-show which turned out as a good choice.

Then Hannah asked me if I can help her with Ninja Rings so I did and Jerome really liked my performance of ninja rings, compared it to Shoot’s technique. That means that I have to practice a lot of course.

Arne liked my show. He said that I’m very good. Then I went home in the company of Jerome and Mikael. But before that I talked with David S outside of the bar for a while. First of, my edge deck totally fooled him. Secondly he thought that the ending of chaos somehow doesn’t work. So next time I may try it with only one effect - just spread the new deck order and swap the cards. Also when I’m writing it now, it doesn’t sound to me any better. Anyway, the whole sequence deserves a little revision so I’ll put it on my list and when I’m back in Prague it’ll get fixed and improved.