Aaron Jones Magician » Magic Reviews

Magic Product Review: Chad Long’s Flash

Aaron Jones — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 02:16:19 +0000

These days there are tons of new magic products on the market and new ones released everyday. Myself I find very few of them anything I would buy or use. However, sometimes there comes a product that is brilliant that is something that I would use in my show. This is what I thought when I saw Chad Long’s new effect Flash. Flash is colour changing USB flash drives. The effect is based on the old colour knives effect. The problem with the colour changing knives trick is that it is uncommon that we would carry knives these days. What Chad Long did was brilliant, instead of two different colour knives, he came up with using two different colour USB flash drives, which are something modern and are objects that we might carry with us. I was sold.

I ordered the effect from Char Long’s website and was delivered to me here in Japan in 8 days which is great service. The props are well made, better than I thought they would be. Basically you don’t have to worry about the USB flash drives breaking as they are made from rubber. They are also easy to clean. There is a nice carry case to keep the flash drives together when not performing so that you don’t lose them. Note that these are not working USB Flash Drives, they are made just for this effect with no memory inside. They come with instructions that teaches the basic moves and a nice routine. The nice this about this product is that it is the colour changing knives as flash drives so you can use many of the moves and routines for the knives with these flash drives. This gives you a big pond to create your own routine.

This is a product that I recommend and that I will be using all the time. Below is a video of Chad Long performing it and it can be purchased from Chad Long’s website here for $30.00 US.

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My Review Of The Essential Magic Conference

Aaron Jones — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:51:13 +0000

Watching The EMC

The Essential Magic Conference, the first digital magic conference, was held from July 15 to the 17 2010. When I first saw this advertised I knew I had to be apart of this event and I signed up right away. I was not wrong this was a wonderful event. Over those 3 days I had almost no sleep. The live event was held from 12am Japan time until about 7:30am because of the time zone. The event was organized by Luis de Matos, Marco Tempest and David Britland. They did a brilliant job bringing a big and new project like this to life. It had 33 speakers and they all where at the Studio in Portugal, and the participants watched live from the Internet. Participants also get 1 year access to the website which will have all the sessions as on demand viewing after the event and as well receive the event on DVD. The cost for this event was about 75$US which was well worth it. Below the break I will talk about what I enjoyed about the conference.

Each day was broken down into 3 sessions each with a variety of presentations on magic theory, performances, teaching, and history. Each session was either 1 or 2 hours with an hour break after the first session of the day and a 90 minute break between the 2nd and 3rd sessions. This was dangerous for me and I fell asleep 2 of the days at this time and missed the 3rd sessions as this was 4:00am Japan time, but thanks to the on-demand I can go back and watch the sessions I missed.

The sessions were well organized and I must say the presentations were great. The presenters seemed to have spent a lot of time preparing for their time. It was also easy to see what they they were showing and understand what they were saying. Because all the participants where watching on the net and at the live venue where just the crew and the 33 magicians a lack a large audience sometimes seemed to through off timing of some performers because of a lack of applause and laughing feedback. This was very evident during the last day when Gazzo performed. This perhaps was one of the biggest differences from a real conference or convention. There of course was feedback in the chat room. Maybe next year they could have a big screen that the performers can see easily and see the feedback from the chat room.

The information and knowledge shared in this conference was excellent and I myself learned a lot. There were a lot of new and different ideas shared and I really enjoyed this. A cool thing that even though this was held on the net there definitely was a sense of community between the magicians watching. This was shared through the chat room and twitter for me. I also was able to make some new friends and make some new connections from attending this conference. People stayed in the chat room during the breaks and continued chatting. Everyone who is a member of EMC has a profile page and it would have been nice to click their avatar in the chat room and go to their profile page or have some kind of private message system.

Technically for me there we no problems. On the first day there was a problem for me and buffering of the video every few seconds but I think that this was due to a problem with my set up which I corrected on the second day and had no further problems. I found the layout good and easy to understand and I could easily switch back and forth to full screen. There were some of the normal issues you get even at live events such as bad mics and wrong videos being played at certain points but over all for the first time my opinion is that it went off pretty much without a hitch and I am sure they learned a lot and expect a even better experience next year.

There was one problem that I did have and it was not form anyone from the event or the crew but from some of the participants in the chat room. Because this was an international event, many of the presenters are not native English speakers, yet they performed, or presented in English. All of them were understandable and did a good job, but some people, a low percent, made negative comments about people’s accents that were not appropriate. Magic is and international art form and we need to be tolerant and listen carefully and pay attention and if you do you will understand. As I now perform mostly in Japanese these days I know how stressful it is to perform in another language and I have blogged about my experiences with this before. So those of you have never really had a international experience like this please be patient and listen carefully when a nonnative English speaker presents because you will understand if you put in the effort.

In this blog I think I covered all the points that I wanted and I really enjoyed this event and I look forward to it next year. It will be held again July 7th to 9th 2011. Make sure you attend next year you will not be disappointed.

Aaron

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Magic Review: iPhone Magic App iForce

Aaron Jones — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:54:26 +0000

iForce Prediction in Japanese

I had been hearing about this magic App for the iPhone called iForce. Being an iPhone lover I decided to download it and WOW. I love many of the great magic apps on the iPhone but I can’t really use them in my close-up show, however iForce is one that I can use and will use. So what is iForce? Well unlike other magic apps where the app does the magic or the magic is contained only in the app, iFoce magic app doesn’t do the magic it is just the medium for a prediction. With iForce you tell the spectators that you are going to make a prediction. You open up a doodle app on the iPhone and show how you can draw on the app. You can even have the spectators try it out. Then you ask them for example, to think of any day of the week. You then say you will read there mind and write what day they are thinking of. You then do this and lay the iPhone face down. You then ask them what day they thought of and then turn the iPhone over and the day they said is written on the doodle program your prediction was correct. So as you can see the iPhone just becomes there medium where you write your prediction down rather than on a piece of paper. After the prediction is shown the spectators can play with the app. What is great about this app is that it is fully customizable. As I live in Japan I can customize all my predictions into Japanese. In the picture in this post you can see my day of the week prediction for Monday. This is very versatile as you can create many many great effects with this. It comes with a bunch of presets so you can use it right away. There are a few different methods to do the effects with iForce so you can do a repeat with a different method. There are teaching videos built into the app but an internet connection is required. There is also a practice mode so you can practice it repeatedly with out resetting the effect which is great way to practice. iForce also works on the ipod Touch. Because of the great customization, and that the effects that are done will be credited to you not the app makes this a real magic effect that you can use in your close-up show and just for fun. For more information here is the iForce website and here is iForce in the app store.

Aaron

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Magic Review: iPhone App Rising Card App by Chris Kenner on Audioboo

Aaron Jones — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:53:30 +0000

Rising Card App by Chris Kenner

Here is my review of Rising Card App by Chris Kenner on Audioboo. For more information of this effect click here.

Listen!

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Review Of Wayne Houchin’s Art Of Magic on Audioboo

Aaron Jones — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:09:53 +0000

I did a short review on Wayne Houchin’s Art of Magic on Audioboo. Check it out.
The Art of Magic is available here.

Thats all for Today.
Aaron

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