Ed Sumner
15 Years Experience
Staffordshire, UK
Male, 28
I perform close up magic and stand up magic. I also run a children's magic company called Ready Steady Magic. You can find out more about me on YouTube! =P
As a professional magician and Member of the Magic Circle, I work hard to create incredible events.
Feel free to ask me whatever you wish and let me reveal the secrets of what I do (but not those secrets!)
Unfortunately I don't know that trick, sorry! Your best bet if you're looking for help online is to ask on a magic forum. There will probably be someone with some experience of it.
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I don’t work with an assistant, so it’s not something I know a great deal about. I did hear a great piece of advice about assistants and that was ‘never marry your assistant.’ If you want to create a magic act using assistants, then the first thing you might think is to use your partner or your friends, however you need to consider if you would go into business with these people if it wasn’t magic? I make money from magic, so I wouldn’t want to jeopardise that by creating an act with someone who I had a personal relationship with. If that relationship falls apart then so does the income. I know that that has happened to magicians before. My recommendation would be to team up with another professional magician to create an act, or if one can’t be found, another performing artist, an actor, a dancer, a singer, and to train them in magic. I think a non-disclosure agreement would be useful here. Certainly they wouldn’t want to to give away secrets while they were in the act, and if they left the act, I’m not sure such an agreement would even have any legal binding. Magic secrets generally aren’t the highest priority in legal courts.
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I'm not sure what you mean about popular again!? It's quite popular already. In the UK we recently had three television shows on prime-time TV and the first live magic show on TV for twenty years. Right now we have two major magic programmes on a satellite channel (one close up magic, and one escapes), so I think it's doing alright.
I hope that also answers your question - when there is quality magic in the media, on TV, on the internet, in magazines, when it's being discussed by people, that encourages people to think about a magician for their event and it ultimately increases the business for all magicians.
The time that quality magic stops being interesting to people is when live entertainment stops being interesting, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
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Probably. I'm not old enough to be at that stage yet, but I'm sure that you get less dexterous with your hands as you get older.
On the upside, the more magic that you do the better a performer you are. So in that sense a more experienced magician might actually be quicker with jokes, lines and entertainment and might be able to react better to mistakes.
Having said that though, it seems that there needs to be a balance. People do enjoy a youthfulness to their entertainment even if the performer isn't themselves young, and I think people can relate better to an entertainer who is close to them in age.
With all that in mind, does that bring us close to answering what the perfect age for a magician is? Who knows?!
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In short, not really. I started when I was about 15 and I remember amazing people with little bits of magic, but I always knew that I was only a little step up from there knowledge of magic. Most people can show you one or two tricks.
When I was 18 I started doing a few gigs for friends and family for free, and I did a big show at my school for my entire year and the year below. The show went really well and lots of people told me they were impressed and more so than with my close up magic. I guess around that sort of time was when I thought I could do something in magic professionally. It was still a few years until I really started concentrating on it though because I went to university to study, although I haven't really done anything with my degree (Cell and Molecular Biology, just so ya know).
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In short, yes. In long, when I'm at an event, I will try to scout out who looks like they are having fun, or will be fun and that will be the second group that I go to. I pick the second most fun group to warm up on, and then go to the really fun group. The idea is that everyone sees those two groups having lots of fun and is more likely to be receptive when I get to them.
Fun groups are usually a group of friends, sometimes a group of girls, maybe they are celebrating something, smiling and laughing before I even get there.
If it's a big event and I'm not required to cover every group, then I will avoid the groups that look less fun, but if I have to show magic to everyone then I will do. I have routines that are suited to different energy levels, so if someone is sitting quietly by themselves I can sit with them and show them something a bit slower, more conversational, in contrast to a big group where I might have eight cards selected and try to find them all in two minutes.
Less fun groups are usually smaller, quieter or interested in something else that's at the event.
That all being said, you never know and the groups you think are less fun turn out to be a blast and the groups you think are fun just aren't into it, so everything I said is completely nullified really! You've just got to be adaptable.
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In theory there are no bad tricks. Even the most simple of tricks, the ones that everyone knows could be changed and wrapped up in an interesting and engaging presentation. That's what matters right?
There are some tricks that might be more difficult to adapt to an interesting presentation and if they are very simple it might be difficult to hide the known method in order to make them magical too.
By way of an example I occasionally perform the very very old pulling your thumb off trick. I do it quickly and I doubt anybody is genuinly fooled by it, but for a moment it creates a quick illusion, a double take and it gets a laugh. Not the strongest thing I do, but when the situation is right, I'll perform it.
Another thing to consider is practicality. Some tricks performed by amateurs include very long set ups or counting procedures, like the 21 card trick. The way that I often work, it's not ideal to have to take ten minutes between each performance to reset the trick. Likewise with dealing tricks, you need something to fill that time while you are dealing cards.
Certainly I can also think of some tricks that I would find difficult to work with, but that doesn't mean that someone else might not have a fresh outlook on it.
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