Magic Tricks

This is another great lesson from Dan Harlan, not only showing you how to perform these effects from the Tarbell Course, but how to MAKE the props for yourself , including how to properly make the much maligned Spring Flowers (production items).

For some reason, most of the so-called “Spring Flowers” on the market today are made from shiny mylar and they don’t resemble flowers in any way. I had to laugh (and cheer) at around the 59:00 minute mark - to - 1:01:00 mark where Dan tells it like it is about those gaudy mylar “flowers” with an impassioned plea to performers who use those things to THROW THAT JUNK AWAY and use some proper spring flowers (and an impassioned plea to manufacturers who are making those horrible mylar “flowers” to STOP DOING IT ! That mylar trash looks cheap and is in very poor taste. )

He also mentions that most of the time even with spring flowers made in the traditional way from tissue paper are shaped wrong and the coloration is not very good. Then Dan shows you how to take pre-made paper spring flowers you get from the magic shop and shape them properly using a template and how to apply some simple color variation on the petals using Sharpie markers which makes the flowers look much more attractive and realistic. If you decorate them as Dan demonstrates, the spring flowers are a very startling production item and from a short distance will pass for real flowers. As Dan says: take a little extra time to make your props look good, something you can be proud of using, so you end up final production items that are pleasing to the eye and look professional.

The one thing I would have liked to see Dan mention is that very often it is more effective to use Spring Flowers where the blooms are all a single color (for example , all red blooms , all pink, all yellow , or all white blooms) or a mixture of two colors , say mostly white and a few pink, with a large proportion of all GREEN leaves mixed in (so a proportion of about 60% blooms with 40% all green leaves) . Jeff McBride mentions this on his video series “Jeff McBride: On Stage” . This will appear more realistic , especially if it’s the classic production of loose flowers from a paper cone. If you want to convince yourself of how good this can look , search on YouTube for : “Dani Lary The Magical Gardener”. Dani Lary performs a MASSIVE production of flowers , but even with a smaller production of flower it looks good if you have a large proportion of green leaves and single color of blooms (red only , or white only) or two colors (white and pink ).