The Genii Forum

Tom Moore

Well the name and the key traits of the character (wearing a turban of his dads, wearing a kimono of his mum, playing the part of a crazy eastern mystic inspired by films popular at the time) are all developed at the same time in a panto performance. So if in 1947 he was using the name “ali bongo” t...

Tom Moore

Probably best not to get your facts off wikipedia Mark - technically his first network TV appearance was Good Old Days in 1965 but here is a Pathe newsreel recorded early 1964 which shows him performing what is clearly a well established act https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sclA7D4WO_I I have seen ea...

Tom Moore

Ali was born in 1929 Medway magic society was founded shortly after WW2 By the early 1960’s Ali is appearing on tv & newsreels with his very developed and well known act by an established performer; not as a newcomer trying out something new. So absolutely nothing you’ve claimed is correct mark.

Tom Moore

Only if amongst everything else he invented there was a time machine. The ali bongo character was established and working in the late 1940’s, milo and roger don’t start their career until the late 50’s. since they were all of a similar age it’s much more likely they all took similar experiences and ...

Tom Moore

Actually (and I’m worried how old this makes me feel) the zombie was still relatively contemporary when this special was shot and Norm’s act was considered incredibly cutting edge and dynamic at the time. Vincent Price made several tv magic special appearances around this period - there was a handfu...

Tom Moore

It’s just been confirmed that “plus grand cabaret du monde” (the biggest cabaret in the world) European tv show will end after the current season. It’s hard to explain what a cultural institution this show is - a 2 hour show of pure variety (with 3-4 magic acts every episode) and no gimmicks other t...

Tom Moore

There are plenty of megastar magicians in Europe equally as famous as those guys in their respective territories. There are plenty of magicians in Europe selling similar ticket numbers as those guys do. Again though focusing on the outliers is to miss the bigger picture; in the middle there are lite...

Tom Moore

Magic in Europe is valued much higher than the US. Obviously there are exceptions but generally the magic theatres in Europe are high end offerings selling a luxurious premium product to a select audience; not a family entertainment product. Magic theatres are in the special party & corporate ho...

Tom Moore

There's very little video of him as he really was all about live performance and honing his repertoire - the other video worth watching is the documentary of him from 1983. He's in his late 60's so past his prime but still has the spark that made him great and its good to see how he addressed the is...

Tom Moore

Oh I love everything he’s ever done but in this show in particular they’ve clearly really worked hard to make this performance really pop.

Tom Moore

Someone has helpfully uploaded the 1982 TV special "Magic with the stars" to youtube and it is well worth watching https://youtu.be/GrSrEiBG3-s there's the usual 1980's issues (it's crammed with too many cameo's and there's a dance number in between everything) but aside from that it has s...

Tom Moore

More often than not it’s because producers get paid less.... but that the title sounds illustrious and like a promotion for the individual concerned so in lieu of pay rises tv shows give the talent credits as head writer or producer, maybe employs their friends/partners in minor staffing roles and l...

Tom Moore

There's several different techniques here rolled in to one. Using the 3 graces plot with a kicker animal production facilitated by the million dollar mystery method is basically a creation of the Henning team. Prior to them the 3 graces plot was used with other production boxes, was used with other ...

Tom Moore

I will repeat though that “impossible” which ran for several months in the west end got plenty of standing ovations. A British magic show, with predominantly British performers and a predominantly British audience.

Tom Moore

But I AM qualified! I was doing magic when you were breastfeeding and to date I have never seen a magician getting a standing ovation except where other magicians have been present. And I bet nobody else here has either. You have made an extraordinary statement and I rather think that requires extr...

Tom Moore

I repeat. I have NEVER seen a magician getting a standing ovation from an audience of laymen. Most of the big las vegas magic shows have standing ovations Virtually every illusion act working on cruise ships (that i design/write/direct for) get consistent standing ovations. The big touring magic sh...

Tom Moore

I have a theory that most of these iconic / legacy conventions have built their entire existence around stage shows / performers yet the quality and availability of good stage performers has dropped off a cliff in the last 20 years which means that these conventions don’t have any wow or novelty fac...

Tom Moore

He sold the act to Penn & Teller who now perform it nightly in their show as "tomsoni & co"

Tom Moore

I wouldn’t say that it’s common, but it certainly has been done. A contemporary example would be Jerome Murat, whose statue act is currently being performed by three different people, internationally. The originator still does the act, but all three performers work under the same name. I’d politely...

Tom Moore

There are officially sanctioned “franchise” stage magic acts - a stage act that you can book all over the world but which is physically performed by different people in each country; often using the same performer name so that the audience thinks they are seeing the same act. Of course there are als...

Tom Moore

The "bounce" required to release can be eliminated through a combination of assistant strength and using a different locking mechanism - most people use a simple ratchet system made out of steel; I designed (and i'm quite sure others have created similar solutions) a locking system made ou...

Tom Moore

There's a cool illustration of Robert-Houdin doing this "Ethereal Suspension" in Christopher's Panorama of Magic, which also includes the kicker. That’ll be because he invented it.... as P&T alluded what was presents in the show was almost exactly the original Houdin trick even down t...

Tom Moore

Surprisingly enough almost every assumption you've made about my career, experience, financial motives, how/why i'm employed and what i spend a very large chunk of my time doing is completely and totally wrong Mark but as you've made it clear you're not interested in behaving like a grownup i'll duc...

Tom Moore

Let’s try to cut down on the insults mark - there’s a fine topic here to discuss and you don’t need to ruin it by calling anyone who disagrees with you names. I’m curious about your data - yes some people shout they’ve looked something up on YouTube but I’m not convinced it’s significantly more than...

Tom Moore

So a serious question - how is the local library stocking magic books different to YouTube? My local library in the tiny village I grew up in had loads of magic books (not just the absolute beginners ones- they had illusions and stage magic) that were decades old so had exactly the same “permanence”...

Tom Moore

Perhaps he will change his mind when some teenager exposes all HIS designs for illusions on You Tube. ....and thus you prove my point. I’m moderately successful with 27yrs in this business and yet my stuff isn’t routinely exposed on YouTube precisely because I focus on creating unique, different an...

Tom Moore

YouTube’s entire business is driving people to their website to watch the adverts that surround the videos they host; that is their reason for existing. The CEO has a legal obligation to promote and encourage the business’s actual business - ie it is her job to do anything she can (legally) to get p...

Tom Moore

You should probably check you ego in at the door here Mark - I speak as someone who earns 100% of his income from magic, also employs 4 full time staff and several dozen casual staff all from magic money so I’d hazard that I and many other members in here have considerably more to loose from exposur...

Tom Moore

You should worry about what happened 100 years ago - tricks were exposed in national newspapers where they were viewed by millions more people than view all youtube exposure videos yet magic survived. 99% of the exposure on YouTube is off the shelf routines with off the shelf props; if that’s what y...

Tom Moore

Before you go any further you should familiarise yourself with the “Streisand effect” and also the letters pages of any major magic magazine from 100 years ago....

Tom Moore

Although responding to this particular post this is really a more general response to magicians as a whole. It takes professional comedians many years to learn good quality, successful heckler put downs and techniques to stop trolls - most professional comedians will also tell you how much effort th...

Tom Moore

Did the general public really think it was a transporter or some superfast rocket sled? Magic exists only in the gap between what it looks like is happening and what is really happening; audiences are a lot smarter than most magicians think they are but still every magic trick in the world relies o...

Tom Moore

One side effect of this has been that he has pulled all “audience member runaround” tricks from the show and I can’t see him putting them back in. I have a couple of effects that use audience run-around and in the last year I’ve been asked more questions about them by producers / directors and I wou...

Tom Moore

Daniels clocked up just short of 2 years at the prince of wales theatre in the west end (1500 seats, 8 show per week plus also recording the tv show at the same time) and I believe he still has the record for the longest “named performer” run in the west end.

Tom Moore

Define “improvement” - the Wakeling sawing is directly evolved from the Selbit effect and many performers present it as the Selbit effect or as an authentic Victorian performance when actually it’s not. I have a lot of issues with the Wakeling sawing - it’s too well made (half the deception of the S...

Tom Moore

Paul Daniels presented a surprisingly accurate recreation of the Selbit sawing in his 80's tv show; right down to the pacing & convincers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjCerkXPw78 It's well worth a watch to see how the effect /should/ be presented and just how corrupted it was as it morphed in...

Tom Moore

The most common way of storing/recording 3D films now is by storing alternate images on alternate frames of the tv signal or frames of a film but running at double speed because anything slower than 24fps looks “wrong” to the brain (see my previous comments). More complicated modern solutions involv...

Tom Moore

No that’s a completely different idea, it’s nowhere near 3D, it’s basically a pseudo depth illusion. This is widely used in modern smartphone displays to create a depth perception illusion ( http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/06/28/ios-7-parallax-effect-explained/) and does it all without glueing IR ...

Tom Moore

Aurostereoscopic technologies (basically 3D without glasses) have been around as long as 3D film has but there’s a couple of basic physics and geometry fundamentals that have stopped the technology from becoming practical and viable for anything more than a single viewer. I’ve worked on 3D film tech...

Tom Moore

Yeah er, there’s a lot of illusions where the method is revealed and disproven - I’ve yet to see a sub trunk where the magician didn’t ask the spectator to bang the lid “to check there’s no trapdoors or “that these handcuffs aren’t fake”

Search found 444 matches