THE SILENT PRIDE OF A MAGIC INVENTOR

Now I realize that I'm fairly new with inventing magic. I have however learned so much in a short time while in the process of creating my "Butetrfly in a BOX"

Effect I wasn't really aware of how many magicians out there have created magic effects and marketed them. I remember when I first came up with the effect how excited I was. I was so proud to have created the effect from top to bottom. Everything from the box, the technical contraption, directions, dvd and of course marketing the effect. Everything somehow fell into place. I had some struggles and just when I would hit a wall a door would suddenly appear.

Prior to the release of the effect I started making video teasers of the effect. I really didn't show the effect. It was just to stir interest and it did. As I was learning more about the process of inventing magic and researching I discovered that there is a lot of magicians that have and still are inventing magic. The one thing that I was perplexed about the most was how they really didn't talk about there effects to much. They would just post their magic effect and market it. I thought "What's wrong with me? why am I so geeked out over creating a magic effect and having one of the biggest magic distributors in the world, Murpy's Magic take on my "Butterfly in a Box?"



Then the more I thought of it the more I noticed how a lot of magic inventors really don't seem to talk much about their magic effects they created. It almost seems as thought they just belt them out one after another which is great to have that kind of mind, Don't get me wrong, but at least talk about it. I find it fascinating to hear stories of how ideas came to be. Their inspirations and thought process.

I on the other hand would post, talk, make videos and blog about my whole experience with my effect which has been very THERAPEUTIC yes I said it THERAPEUTIC. I remember as I was getting closer to the release of my effect feeling somewhat apprehensive. I had a lot of overwhelming support in the magic community but I really didn't know to many personally. When my effect finally debuted on October 31st I was excited to get a few orders in line. Then Murphy's Magic got wind of the effect and contacted me. I couldn't believe it. Finally someone that was giving me a chance.
Murphy's magic started with a order of 80 boxes and the sold in little over one hour. then they ordered 200 and those sold within a few days. My wife Tracey and I knew we had something so we started making production stations in my studio so we could be more productive in making the "BUTTERFLY IN A BOX" product.

It was intense. I started surfing the internet and googling my trick to see what came up. I guess I thought it would be cool to see my effect at online magic shops. I was shocked to find a large number of online magic shops that are carrying my effect. Big online magic shops such as penguinmagic.com, seomagic-usa.com, ronjo.com, emagicsupply.com and more. The one that I really thought was really cool was  when I clicked on a google link and saw my video and description of the effect all in Japanese or Chinese writing.

Then a few weeks later I was stalking myself again to see what came up on google and I came across a very popular magic forum. When I entered the forum I didn't like what I read. There was some not so good comments made from some magicians. I took it a little personal and started second guessing myself. I kind of took a break from the social media and just tried to absorb things in. I kind of vented on this blog here just to let things out. After I left the social network and and I was blogging I noticed a sudden increase in my blog activity. I thought "What the heck is going on"

Steve Hart

In my "FUNK STAGES" I had my great friend, Steve Hart (http://www.magic2motivate.com/) supporter and life coach walk me thorough the feelings and bitterness I had toward negativity of my effect. He told me to just let it go. He advised me to let it manifest on it's own and reminded me about how many I have sold and they keep selling. He said "These guys that are ripping into your effect really or probably aren't working magicians. They are probably just trying to be someone by talking about your effect and bullying knocking it down. Your true magicians will see the hard work you put into it and the inventive and creativeness thought that went into the inner workings in the box. And who cares if they are knowing it down. They should be able to voice there opinion. You should take that as a compliment Mark! if they are talking about it that is good, that is great."

The conversation really started to lift me up and I was feeling much better about myself.
Then a few weeks later I had received a email from the master himself "Jeff Mcbride" He informed me that they talked very good about my effect "Butterfly in a BOX" and reviewed it. In fact Jeff McBride opened up the effect on his live internet show that he does on Mondays called "Magical Wisdom" http://virtual.magicalwisdom.com/tv
To top it off it get's better. OH YES! I also had received from Jeff McBride a quote of my "Butterfly in a BOX" that said

"I love butterfly effects, and Marks updated version of the classic Steve Duschek effect is a winner!
This is a practical and affordable magic effect for the parlor,walk around or stage."
-Jeff McBride creator of McBride's Magic & Mystery School, Las Vegas

Good luck too!
Jeff

I was ecstatic! I felt that the magic GOD's were guiding me.

You see there really isn't a manual on what you may have to face with the process of inventing, manufacturing and marketing magic. At least I don't think there is.
After the "Butterfly in a BOX" success I wanted to create more magic effects to the community. I was really having a great time coming up with ideas and turning those ideas into reality.

It was almost as if my brain was shifting. I love performing magic, but now I found myself on the other-side and found my brain constantly thinking of effects that I could share with the community. I had so many thoughts flowing. I finally I bought some note pads to carry with me. As soon as I would get a thought or idea of a effect I would quickly rip out the note pad and first put in the date, time and name possible a betea name of the effect.

One day I was watching a youtube video and I came across a magician who was giving a video tutorial of how to make a box out of Bicycle plying cards. I thought it was brilliant so I started learning to make these boxes. The first few boxes were very poor, but then I got better and better and better. Finally I got it down and I could make a box without looking at the video. Then I thought "You know I want to go one step further. I want to make the box so that it folds into itself. You can fold the walls of the box. Unfold, rotate and flip it" That's when the light bulb lit up. I thought what if I could make a cool production using the box. I put my thinking cap on and in a few days I came up with a new magic effect that I would call "Out of the BOX" Yes! another effect with the word "BOX" in it. I don't have a thing with boxes, really! 

After I got the technical aspects down I contacted Patrick Wolford at Murphy's Magic. He is the go to guy. The guy that decides whether they are going to carry your magic product idea or not. I made a video demo of "Out of the BOX" and sent it to him. He loved it and was very supportive of me moving forward with it. We skyped a bit and exchanged ideas. While we were skyping Patrick was looking at youtube videos and came across a video where a magician was performing the same trick I was doing almost to the T. It was quite scary. Suddenly my effect "Out of the BOX" came to a screeching halt. Partick reminded me that the inventor of the effect Ray Roch and the producer of the effect Paul Romhany already had a dvd on the market called "The Impossible Box"

Ray Roch- Creator of "The Impossible Box"

For more info on "The Impossible Box" you can check out the youtube video or go  to participating magic shops to purchase it.



After I found out that Ray had already created a box effect I quickly put the brakes on my "Out of the BOX" trick. I think I was more impressed then upset. Well I was upset maybe a little because I was really looking forward to releasing my second effect. I just thought how amazing it was of how identical Ray's and mine were. I decided to contact Ray. We skyped and I told him about the trick that I came up with that I thought was original only to discover his effect was invented 17 years later not to mention that Ray was in a totally different country. That's the amazing part. How we are all connected with our thinking more then you can imagine. Ray and I talked for about a hour. I told him how my box folds flat and you can refold it into itself and direction you want. He told me that with his box he can produce a apple.

The conclusion of our skype session was that ray thought mine was different enough to continue my marketing of the effect. My mouth about dropped. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do.
Several weeks later out of the blue I get a call from a magician friend -Keith Cobbs- to do a lecture for the "Conjurers Magic Club" I never did a lecture, but I new what I wanted to show and talk about.

I performed my "Out of the Box" effect and talked about how I thought I invented this effect only to find that another magician in another country had already invented it 17 years earlier. I was 17 years to late. The members thought my story was interesting and I talked about how I put the breaks on the effect and contacted Ray. I explained that whenever magicians think of a effect that we should research our homework and find out as much as possible to find out if there is anything on the magic market like it and if there is anything remotely close that we should contact the creator and ask for their permission, support and credit them and possibly pay them money. It a code, a ethics and respect thing.

Shortly after the lecture I made a video version at home where I reiterated my lecture. You can here the lecture here on this yuotube link.
 
A few days later after making this video lecture I thought I would show Ray because I mentioned his trick "The Impossible Box" in the lecture. In the lecture I performed a demo of the effect. You can get a sneak peek if you want. When Ray saw the video he was very impressed with my handling of the effect and asked if we could have a skype meeting.  

We talked some more about my method and workings and Ray kept pressing me to bring this to the magic community. I really didn't want to. I said "Ray! whenever I perform my "Out of the Box" trick I'm going to think of your effect. I'm going to think, this is Ray's trick." Ray pressed me more with his support and assured me that mine was different enough and that he suggested I move forward.

After some thought I decided to move forward with the effect. I'm not sure exactly when the effect will be release as the original debut was supposed to be Juy 3rd 2013.

For now I would like to wrap things up with a few things. First to all the magicians out there that seem to gravitate towards negativity. They have a habit of trying to knock you down or have underlined insults toward other inventors and there effects. Perhaps this is a behavior that you have to face. Maybe the only way that you can feel good and secure about yourself is by cutting them up, belittling them just to make yourself feel better. Maybe the real reason is that you yourself may not feel like your accomplishing anything and so you need a create drama, negativity and basically BULLYING to make YOURSELF FEEL BETTER. I would like to encourage you to think out of the BOX. Don't be like the creator of the blog "Weekly Magic Failure"because the only one that is failing is Rolland who needs to try to gain success by putting, ripping, belittling others. He works off other magicians mistakes and short comings to make himself feel better. What I really think is that maybe Rolland needs a HUG.

So I would like to start a HUG ROLAND campaign. maybe he can be save yet. He's actually not bad at thimbles. So Rolland if your visiting my blog I wanted to just tell you that we all have short comings  and maybe it's time to start working on yours. By the way I noticed you took your picture off. I guess it's okay to take others and post, but you don't want others to share yours. That's okay I have plenty. Fair is Fair


 One last thing! One of the things I enjoy the most with creating magic ideas is the whole birth and creation of the magic effect. When I'm in this mode I'm in my own world and element. I like to make video trailers, make posts, share and talk about my idea. It is in know way a ego or look at me look at me type attitude. It is something that I want to share with the magic community and hopefully inspire others to INVENT.

It is such a great gift and I wish I would see the magic inventors discuss the process, creation, challenges and triumphs of there effect either before or after the effect comes out. Don't sell yourself short by pumping magic effect after magic effect out. I guess what I'm saying is it's okay to have the ability to create magic effect after magic effect, but don't cut yourself short of your GIFT of CREATING. Talk about it. Share your story.

So that's about it. I think now I'm going to create some more videos because YES! THEY ARE THERAPEUTIC.
Here is one now that I made about a year ago called "The Legends of Magic" I'm no singer or musician, but I enjoyed making this song.