Hey guys, I'm having fun with all the card productions and split fans.

let me ask you a question, Have you ever tried "Card from silk"?, I start my routine with card from silk with tenkai palm, I produce 10 cards more or less with this palm, then I make a transfer to the other hand, I place the silk in the right position and I start with card from silks with backpalm. Its fun.

Try it and then you tell me.

MAGO68

hey Steve Knight,

pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is tendo's rolling card production? I've not heard of this one. could I get you to give me a brief run down (either here or if you would rather send it to kallak_1@yahoo.com)

as a side note to Geoff Weber, I found a local magic shop (the only one for a million miles apparently) and I went ahead a bought a few marvey manip decks. So...now I am going to start working with the Neilson ones.

not quite sure why I thought to tell you that, but I remembered you were talking about using them.

Kallak

You might like the Murphy decks. I think I like them even better than Neilson.

Sable

what are the murphy decks like? I mean, they're manip cards obviously, but what about back design, pip markings (one on each corner?), stuff like that.

Kallak

The backs are flesh coloured, the fronts have pips in all four corners and they're incredibly thin. I think some of the Marvey cards are thinner (they come in two thicknesses), but Murphy's are as thin as I like them for all around manipulation. The thinner Marveys are good if you just want to do fans. I can back-palm two full Murphy decks, and could do a third, by hand starts looking funny.

Sable

I have both the Murphy's and Marvey's (extra thin) manipulation card, and I still find the Murphy ones are thinner...but I can't back palm two full murphy's deck..Sable your amazing.

I'll second that. I don't personally own the murphy decks so I can't really comment that they are thinner or not (anyone know for sure?), but I'm looking at the extra thin marvey's and I couldn't backpalm two full decks if my life depended on it.

Well, before you get TOO impressed, these Murphy cards are about a third the thickness of a regular deck. If you can backpalm a regular deck, then you could (in theory) backpalm three Murphy decks, but like I said, your hand looks really odd with three decks.

Sable

That's still pretty good though. On my best day, I can only do about 25 tops.

though I've only been working on this for a few months, so I guess that a full deck is *possible* given more time.

Kallak

Thought I'd add my two cents in here. As to the early post about what cards to use...If I do a backpalming routine or a perfect production I use regular bycicle cards that are well broken in with a dash of fanning powder. (I find I get more "snap" with the cards which, I feel, adds a little energy to the performance.)
For most other productions that I do I use a neilsen palming deck because it allows me to get higher fexibility per number of cards, although I'm thinking of trying out a few new brands to see if there is a difference.
A note on volume of cards produced: I have a routine that I am working on now (It's not perfected yet) where I use bycicle cards in both hands, one hand with a backpalm, one with perfect productions. I find that If you are able to complete a decent pivot you can pretty much go on forever producing cards....here's how:

As one hand runs out of cards, do a pivot and a reverse production (i.e. produce from front instead of back with whatever method you like) with the other hand and turn your body at the same time, allowing the first hand to duck out of sight for a moment and grab another stash of cards. It's a bold steal but if you get the timing right no-one will know the difference. Everyone will be to busy looking at the card you just produced. It uses the idea of an "offbeat" to accomplish the steal. I do this in a very fast paced production routine so that to the audience (only my roomates so far) it looks as though the hands are just overflowing with cards. An added bonus is that between steals you can momentarily falsh both sides of your one hand empty while the other is still producing cards. Mix that in with a few tenkai and pop-out productions and you've got the making for a great fast paced, high energy single routine.
All in all, I don't think one needs to be backpalming TONS of cards. I think if you get your timing right, all you need is about ten cards at a time...In this way your hand doesn't look cramped or unnatural and you can do all of your productions with relative ease and grace.

One question for all of you. I have an "appearing card castle" that I got from a friend. It packs really flat but it's about 8x11 inches in it's coss section. I don't use any table or anythng when I do my productions so I'm kind of at a loss as to how to incorperate this as a final production to end my single production routine. Any Ideas?


Jonathan Lareau

Has anyone tried using parafin instead of zinc stearate? Shimada mentions it on one of his tapes.

I sure haven't, though I do think I remember the reference you're speaking of. Do you remember how he said he applied it and what kind of paraffin to use. Come to think of it, I think that's why I never tried it.

Sable

I asked him when he was in Orlando for the IBM convention and he acted very cagey about answering. I told him he mentioned it on one of his tapes. He then said white parafin and only a very small amount. He uses the Nintendo manip. cards which are hard as bricks.

What kind of clips does Jeff McBride talk
about???

Nobody has posted to this thread in a while so I will hope that somene replies I wanted to know, for those of you who do split fans, what type of split fans you do? I'm talking about the discrepancy between producing all of your cards at once (i.e. fanning, splitting, refanning, dropping a la Jeff McBride) or producing only the cards that are to be dropped (the split being made as the cards are produced). Check out Lewis Ganson's Card Manipulation or the Shimada tapes for a reference. I learned and mastered the McBride version but now I'm playing with it the other way. My initial results seem to be that, while more difficult and slightly less pretty (i.e. hard to make a perfect circular fans) that this other technique may be stronger magically as cards are simply produced and dropped without having to move the hand to cover the split. Once I get a little better at it I'll post a video on my website and send the link.

What is your experience?

So to all of you card manipulators....where does one start into card manipulation? A McBride video?

Thanks
-Brad

"So to all of you card manipulators....where does one start into card manipulation? A McBride video? Thanks -Brad "

McBrides video's are a good place to start. I usually recommend folks to learn the pivot move and backpalm single production first. You can easliy combine these two moves into a 15 second routine. I have found that once you have a basic routine down, it is much easier to add new productions to it. If you try to learn several productions first, then try to combine them into a routine, you could be looking at a couple of years before you have a card manipulation sequence in your act. A simple routine such as starting with two cards in front palm position, extending your arm up and pivoting to backpalm, then producing the two cards together from backpalm can be accomplished well in about 8 weeks. Once you're to this point, you'll probably find practicing and rehearsing manipulations much more rewarding, and adding new production moves will become much easier.

Michael

Jeb and Kendrix, In reguards to parafin, Julianna Chen uses parafin on her manipulation cards. I talked with her after one of her performances and she said she uses wax for her fans. I have some of her cards she used and they have a thin film of wax on the cards. I tried it myself and am sorry to say I either did not do something right or don't really know how to apply the wax correctly. As a side note, meeting and talking to Ms. Chen was a real treat. Very charming and graceful, she took a lot of time in talking with me and made me feel like she was interested in talking with me about card manipulation. She is a class act on and off the stage.

I'm from the Jeff Sheridan school of thought on card fans. But unlike Jeff, I do like some cards produced today, I like used bee cards from any casino. Here in NY, you can get it at 99 cent stores. I find that fanning with bees gives you a bigger fan and it's easier, I don't even use powder or anything on my cards,I just use a new deck when it gets a little sticky. I think Jeff Sheridan is putting out a video tape pretty soon.

I've seen all Jeff McBride's tapes too, which are very good. I think McBride is a good place to start, and keep in mind McBride's teacher was also Sheridan.

xoxo Maritess
http://www.girliemagic.com

Interestingly enough, Bobby Baxter was Jeff Sheridan's teacher and totally disagrees with the way Jeff produces cards. Baxter prefers smaller fans (like Cardini) so that the difference in sizes is not noticed so much when they are split off.