It’s that time again, the weather is warm the city of Columbus is getting busy and Paper Crane knocking the dust off the cameras and preparing for the summer shooting schedule. We feel so blessed to have such loyal and supportive customer base. We are really looking forward to the next few years of projects. In case you haven’t noticed we have a new site design and if you’re reading this you will notice that we have a blog and several new features on the site. This experience is very new to us and would love to hear from you about how we can improve the site. If you have a topic you would like to hear us talk about let us know. We want to use this site to communicate with you. We also want this to be a place for creative expression of all the arts. If you have a talent and want to share it with the community send it to us. Just think how cool it would be to have paintings, photography, songs, and performances from the real people that make up the magic community. I have always thought there is so much potential in the magic community to be great. When I meet people in our little world I see a passion that is unmatched by any other art form. I think its time that the rest of the world sees that too.

The words Single Trick DVD can make a lot of magicians cringe. Some see it as a decline of quality products put out by inexperienced kids just looking to cash in on magic’s recent popularity. I hear all the time “why pay 20 dollars for a DVD with one effect when you can buy a book for 50 and get 70 effects” or whatever the number may be. I even hear comparisons to some of the older DVD’s which had 8 or 9 effects for 35 dollars. I admit that for the longest time I was on the side against single trick DVD’s until I realized the actual value in a 20 to 25 dollar one trick DVD.

I live close to a magic shop where I spend a lot of time hanging out and talking to magicians. I see what people buy and I try to learn as much as possible from customers why they buy and what they buy. I notice that the majority of customers are preferring the single trick DVD’s over the content heavy book and multiple effect DVD. I also see a lot of magic hanging out there and what I notice is that most of the customers are performing stuff that can be found on single trick DVD’s. When I bring up a book to a knowledgeable customer I usually get the same response, “oh that book is great there is a ton of killer material in there”. When asked to show me what they do out of the book they usually do two things say they don’t perform anything from the book or do the same trick that everyone else does from that book. So if this is true then aren’t books just glorified single trick DVD’s?

I may be getting a little ahead of myself with that last statement. My points is that magic is changing rapidly the same way music is. Gone are the days of the great album now the focus is on the single. In magic the days when people want to know your take on the sandwich plot or your philosophy on the subject of Equivoke are over too. People are much less worried about routines and patter then they are about new ideas and exploring principle that fool magicians. I’m undecided about what I prefer but I can certainly see that a balance between the two s neccessary.