talkmagic.co.uk

Hi,

I've recently bought a Raven and been practicing a lot (for hours on end)

I recorded a video of my performance, let me know what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1SZdzYi69c

One thing I will ask though. And I'm going to have to be careful how I word this... one of my finger tips looks *strange* when I turn my hands over (If you know the explanation, you'll know what I mean), and I was wondering if there is a way to disguise this.

I was just wondering, is the Raven X2 any good? I have been hearing mixed reviews about it but am thinking of getting one (and no, I don't know entirely how it works)
I love the Raven, and would love to buy some more "vasishing" gimmicks. Which are your favorites and which are best?

Thanks,

James

Hi James.

I'm not sure how long you have been magicianing ( ) but in my opinion your concerns are not a big issue.

What you are talking about can be dealt with by pure misdirection. Don't show your hands for so long. If you show them as long as you did in the video, people will become suspicious. If your hands were 'clean' would you show them as much? No.

Think about how you perform a French drop. You don't flourish your hands as much then so don't do it now.

You have magicians guilt and need to deal with what you are doing. Practice how you would perform this if you actually could vanish a coin. A simple open palmed gesture would suffice. Think how much a TT has to be misdirected. The Raven is so much easier.

On a plus note, you nailed the vanish. Get yourself some top shelf patter and you will be away!!

Alec

Nicely done, although one point is that your right hand looks about as natural as the pope in a brothel. Relax it & drop by the side maybe until the time when you show it empty. Or if you're sat down relax it onto your knee. You had a nice show of the sleeves at the end too.

Try this, imagine that you've really got magical powers and that you can really make coins vanish with a wave of the hand. What would it look like, how would you act if you really didn't have anything to hide? Video yourself pretending to vanish a coin like this and see how it looks and how it differs from the video with the Raven. Then go back to your Raven performance and try to get it looking as closely as possible to how the pretend vanish looked.

Like most people, I have a Raven tucked away in the magic drawer. Once you learn a good sleight of hand vanish you will do away with the thing. I found The Bat a lot easier to use and have a technique which doesn't use the thing the Raven has which I believe you are referring to.